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The word "funding" does not appear in this article. The NHS has been systematically underfunded since the Conservative entered power more than a decade ago. The
by verytrivial 4y ago
The word "funding" does not appear in this article. The NHS has been systematically underfunded since the Conservative entered power more than a decade ago. The crisis is real, but it is a political choice.
- upsidesinclude 4y ago
- rob_c 4y agoBut let's ignore the blairite solution to sell the land and get further into debt and refuse to take more money from the populace or detach NHS funding from state pensions...
- acallaghan 4y agoI mean blaming the PM that was last in power over 15 years ago seems a stretch?
- rob_c 4y agoYes citing counter example of how the problem is not on one side of the political divide is clearly wrong...
- kergonath 4y agoTwo wrongs do not make a right. I’d wager the people upset about the Tories are not by and large enamoured with Tony Blair’s New Labour either.
- rob_c 4y agoYou would think that but a lot of people can't see beyond its the Tories in power. We'd be better off with proportional representation but the beeb did an excellent job at mis-selling that to the masses
- kergonath 4y agoIt is frustrating to see the country getting polarised this way. A 2-party system is not helpful to a functioning democracy. I am not a fan of fully proportional representation as it leads to government instability and ineffectiveness, but a party getting an absolute majority in Parliament whilst getting 40% of the vote is a travesty. Also, after having lived through Brexit and the successive government, the BBC is not fit for purpose. It is fine as a public media group, but it’s sanctity in the mind of a lot of British people is not really well founded.
- rob_c 4y agoYeah have to agree with pretty much all of that. My worry is that we are defecto the 52nd state these days and we've adopted the 2 party system from across the pond since the coalition was little more than a sitting government against fox hunting, their arguably biggest achievement was placing Cameron in a position where he bailed after throwing national policy under the bus to appease his own party. I won't pretend that Brexit hasn't been mishandled as a lot of the opposition predicted (also in news water wet), but the EU/EC has unfortunately for them shown a lot of its attitude toward Britain is as promoters had been saying. Sorry not maeaning to derail too much.
- n4r9 4y agoI'd argue that the UK has always had a 2-party system, and if anything the US adopted it from us. The Lab/Con split goes back to ~1910, prior to which we had the Tory/Liberal split going back to ~1850, prior to which we had a Tory/Whig split going back to ~1780, prior to which the political system was very different.
- verytrivial 4y agoI'm not sure this is a very strong defence of how the Government has managed the NHS since then, though is it? Or should I read this as a veiled appeal for Corbyn to return as the leader of the Opposition for another try? (In which case I'll take my leave.)
- rob_c 4y agoI'm not citing evidence for that I'm showing how both sides of the political divide won't dare touch the holy cow that is the NHS. It's interesting how every time you show there's a problem with a political party everyone assumes instead of damning the system your trying to politically point score. I think the real change needs to be made in the civil service and certain powers striped from Whitehall but it'll never happen.
- goodluckchuck 4y agoA systemic risk to national healthcare systems is that they can be underfunded (or overfunded) in a way that private healthcare can’t because individuals are more diverse and make decisions more attuned to their individual situation. People have different preferences for how and how much they would choose to invest own healthcare, and if everyone is forced to bear one another’s bills, there will inevitably be people who are unhappy with the group’s decisions. Since it’ll be a compromise of different groups, I can imagine it’d be destined to frustrate both sides 90% of the time.
- klabb3 4y agoWell yeah that's how every insurance works, including private ones. You are put in a pool together with others who may be more or less costly than you on average. Not just insurance either. If you're buying stuff at all you're paying a premium for stuff you're often not using, eg customer support, return policies, marketing etc. One you accept that you never have identical cost/benefit with others, we're just talking what level is acceptable, and what services should be covered. People seem fine with paying for fire departments, even though some people live in wooden houses and have candles at night. Healthcare has a similarly low fraud incentive, and is generally not something we "invest" in. Most of the world has recognized that and arrange it through a publicly funded system.
- thrown_22 4y agohttps://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/healthcaresystem/bulletins/healthcareexpenditureukhealthaccountsprovisionalestimates/2021 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan... In 1997 the NHS had 1/5th the budget it does today. Do we think that service has improved 5 times in the period? Like universities the NHS has been eaten from the inside by administrators whose sole purpose is to keep doctors from doing actual work. Talk to a nurse and 4/5th of the bullshit they have to deal with is pointless paper work.
- klelatti 4y ago2021 and 2020 were inflated by the pandemic. 1997 to 2019 is an increase of about 3.5x CPI over this period was about 80% but large % of NHS costs are salaries so would be expected to run ahead of CPI by at least 1%. Net of all this funding has gone up by say 50%-100% But over this period the UK has had a very large increase in the elderly population who are disproportionate users of the NHS (over 85s up by about 80% roughly I think). Having had quite a bit of contact with the NHS over the last few years I’ve seen much less form filling than I’d probably have expected. And of course that form filling for the nurse is also known as data collection / management information which in any other context would be deemed essential for proper management of the service.
- bloqs 4y agoThis is misprescription - it's the LACK of administrative staff to do that specific paperwork that has caused this. Political microwaving of the whole system to "reduce costs" but keep "front line staff" has meant everyone is doing jobs they arent qualified to do and suck at. The amount of people who think they understand the NHS is interesting, and clearly newspaper driven.
- refurb 4y agoWhat does "underfunded" mean? The UK has a similar system to Canada. Costs are controlled by controlling the funding. You set a cap to what you'll spend and let the system figure out how best to allocate those funds. It's a big reason why the cost per capita for healthcare is quite low - you simply choose not to spend more. The demand for healthcare spending is almost infinite. You can set it up so everyone get an MRI the same day the doctor orders it. If you cut back and it takes a week for a non-urgent MRI is that a "proper" level of funding? How about waiting one month? Two months? The truth is, a country needs to decide how much money they are willing to spend on healthcare. Some spend very little, some spend a lot. There is no "fully funded" system, only trade offs.
- trinovantes 4y agoYou can start by paying doctors/nurses a better wage for the shit they have to put up with for the last 2 years Our Ontario government capped nurse pay to 1% per year which is effectively a 8% paycut/year given the current inflation
- makomk 4y agoAs a start, that means that your costs have substantially increased to provide the same amount of healthcare as before. That makes the funding problem bigger. I'm not sure how it is in Canada, but the NHS in the UK employs about 1.4 million people - and a lot of the problems with it are actually problems with our social care system being broken and leaving it nowhere to discharge patients to, which accounts for another 1.6 million workers. The UK's population is about 70 million people in total, a reasonable proportion of which are either too young or retired. This is only going to get more daunting as the population ages here and in other western countries, and as new treatments are developed and healthcare expectations increase. On top of that, the real economy's capacity to supply workers with stuff to buy with their income is in deep trouble worldwide right now and everyone is feeling it. That means real wage drops across the board and real damage to the ability to actually fund something like this.
- naasking 4y ago
- dominotw 4y agoIs there a mathematical way to deduce that its underfunded. I am wondering how we can tell the difference between poor management vs underfunding.
- simonh 4y agoThe pressure on NHS budgets is largely due to economic conditions. Looking at funding compared to GDP rather than nominal terms shows this. NHS funding peaked at 7.5% of GDP in 2010, but that peak was mainly due to a drop in GDP, not an increase in funding. With tax revenue declining due to recession and an extended period of low growth those funding levels were unsustainable. We're still actually spending about the same percentage of GDP on health care now as we were in 2009. The blue bars in the chart are recessions, when funding relative to GDP jumped mainly due to a drop in GDP, not an increase in funding. https://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/news-item/70-years-of-nhs-spending#then-and-now https://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/news-item/70-years-of-nhs-s... The historical lesson is yes, if you want big increases in NHS funding elect a Labour government (although by 1997 the Conservatives were already ramping up health care spending), but I'm not convinced the UK economy has much leeway to support spending a lot more than the current 7% of GDP on health care.
- DawnQFunk2 4y ago