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The NHS is still functioning. I am still able to get GP appointments within two weeks, be prescribed medication, etc... . Your suggestion, if widely adopted, ri

by n4r9 4y ago

The NHS is still functioning. I am still able to get GP appointments within two weeks, be prescribed medication, etc... . Your suggestion, if widely adopted, risks splitting the country into a two-tier system and hastening the demise of the NHS. Much better to vote in a party that will start to fund it properly and undo some of the privatisation and mismanagement that has been damaging it for years.

benjaminwootton 4y ago
Ours cannot offer a telephone appointment for 3-4 weeks. That is not acceptable for pretty much any situation require healthcare. The NHS has a record budget of £200 billion for 2022. Serious questions: How much extra money do they need to provide an adequate health service, and how would another party fund the gap considering our current economic situation?
- pedro2 4y ago
  Via Twitter, recheck accuracy: > So. All those dodgy VIP purchases the Tories made in 2020/2021. They were added as a spend on the NHS budget, to make it look like they were spending more money on our National Health Service https://twitter.com/davidjboughton/status/1598426168390197338 https://twitter.com/davidjboughton/status/159842616839019733...
  - tailspin2019 4y ago
    Nice so a bunch of that NHS cash is sitting in some offshore account owned by that “Lord” (Lady?) who just took a leave of absence…
- robga 4y ago
  "Ours cannot offer a telephone appointment for 3-4 weeks". This is labelled an anecdote. My anecdote is that I can always get an in-person appointment on-the-day at my London NHS GP, and I live not in a particularly affluent location. It doesn't take much time to find raw, trusted statistics in about the same time as it took to type this message. The source I found [0} explains that: 38.9% of appointments in October 2022 took place on the same day that they were booked, 46% <= 1 day, 66% <= 1 week, 80% <= 2 weeks, 89% <= 3 weeks, 99.91% <= 4 weeks. And 73% of appointments were face to face. There is always more to the data, sure. e.g. I just made an appointment for my GP about an annual asthma check, and I asked for it to be late next week. If your GP can not offer a telephone appointment for 3-4 weeks, then it is clearly a national outlier. Throwing your anecdote into a heated debate does little to manage the temperature. I recommend referencing primary source information to support your assertions. [0] https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/appointments-in-general-practice/october-2022 https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/sta...
- n4r9 4y ago
  > The NHS has a record budget of £200 billion for 2022 Spending over the last couple of years is obviously going to be an outlier due to the effects of COVID and COVID restrictions. > How much extra money do they need The strangling of the NHS has been occurring over many years, so it's difficult to give a simple figure in response. But it is telling that in 2016 junior doctors organised the first general NHS strike in 40 years in response to Hunt's contract scrapping overtime rates while increasing overtime hours. We now have a serious issue with junior doctors leaving the NHS: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/hsr2.419 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/hsr2.419 This year the Royal College of Nursing organised a strike for the first time in its 100+ year history, in response to years of below-inflation pay rises. In 2018, the Health Foundation put out a response to the government's proposed budget increase of 3.4%: https://www.health.org.uk/news-and-comment/news/health-foundation-response-to-government-announcement-of-additional-nhs-funding https://www.health.org.uk/news-and-comment/news/health-found... > Increases of at least 4% a year are the minimum needed to tackle the backlog of financial problems from eight years of austerity. Increases of just 3.4% a year mean longer waits for treatment, ongoing staff shortages, deterioration of NHS buildings and equipment, and little progress to address cancer care. > It’s worrying that yet again, the funding increase appears to only apply to NHS England’s budget. This excludes vital areas of health spending such as staff training, capital investment and public health. There are at least 92,000 staff vacancies in the NHS and public health spending fell by a fifth in real terms between 2013/14 and 2018/19. £200 billion looks like a big number, but it's meaningless when critical front-line services are seeing real-terms cuts. There is a consistent pattern of the government cutting investment to the front line, ignoring the objections, and deflecting blame when the inevitable consequences occur. We are seeing those consequences not because the NHS is inherently wasteful, but because the government is choosing to make public services look like they perform badly.
543g43g43 4y ago
>risks splitting the country into a two-tier system and hastening the demise of the NHS. You mean, something like the rest of Europe has? Sign me up!
- n4r9 4y ago
  It would potentially be something more like the US where your level of care is heavily dependent on what you can afford. The US is pursuing full market access for their pharmaceutical companies - who are notorious for their price gouging tactics - and the UK is in a pretty weak position post-Brexit. There's a reasonable likelihood that UK health spending will sky-rocket while patient outcomes plummet.
- DanBC 4y ago
  No, they mean something like England already has for dentistry or social care or opticians - access is available if you pay for it, and not much available if you can't pay for it.
  - 543g43g43 4y ago
    Sounds like what we have already! Given OP's choice of words ("two-tier"), it brought to mind something more like the European system.

by n4r9 4y ago

benjaminwootton 4y ago

Ours cannot offer a telephone appointment for 3-4 weeks. That is not acceptable for pretty much any situation require healthcare. The NHS has a record budget of £200 billion for 2022. Serious questions: How much extra money do they need to provide an adequate health service, and how would another party fund the gap considering our current economic situation?

pedro2 4y ago
Via Twitter, recheck accuracy: > So. All those dodgy VIP purchases the Tories made in 2020/2021. They were added as a spend on the NHS budget, to make it look like they were spending more money on our National Health Service https://twitter.com/davidjboughton/status/1598426168390197338 https://twitter.com/davidjboughton/status/159842616839019733...
- tailspin2019 4y ago
  Nice so a bunch of that NHS cash is sitting in some offshore account owned by that “Lord” (Lady?) who just took a leave of absence…
robga 4y ago
"Ours cannot offer a telephone appointment for 3-4 weeks". This is labelled an anecdote. My anecdote is that I can always get an in-person appointment on-the-day at my London NHS GP, and I live not in a particularly affluent location. It doesn't take much time to find raw, trusted statistics in about the same time as it took to type this message. The source I found [0} explains that: 38.9% of appointments in October 2022 took place on the same day that they were booked, 46% <= 1 day, 66% <= 1 week, 80% <= 2 weeks, 89% <= 3 weeks, 99.91% <= 4 weeks. And 73% of appointments were face to face. There is always more to the data, sure. e.g. I just made an appointment for my GP about an annual asthma check, and I asked for it to be late next week. If your GP can not offer a telephone appointment for 3-4 weeks, then it is clearly a national outlier. Throwing your anecdote into a heated debate does little to manage the temperature. I recommend referencing primary source information to support your assertions. [0] https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/appointments-in-general-practice/october-2022 https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/sta...
n4r9 4y ago
> The NHS has a record budget of £200 billion for 2022 Spending over the last couple of years is obviously going to be an outlier due to the effects of COVID and COVID restrictions. > How much extra money do they need The strangling of the NHS has been occurring over many years, so it's difficult to give a simple figure in response. But it is telling that in 2016 junior doctors organised the first general NHS strike in 40 years in response to Hunt's contract scrapping overtime rates while increasing overtime hours. We now have a serious issue with junior doctors leaving the NHS: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/hsr2.419 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/hsr2.419 This year the Royal College of Nursing organised a strike for the first time in its 100+ year history, in response to years of below-inflation pay rises. In 2018, the Health Foundation put out a response to the government's proposed budget increase of 3.4%: https://www.health.org.uk/news-and-comment/news/health-foundation-response-to-government-announcement-of-additional-nhs-funding https://www.health.org.uk/news-and-comment/news/health-found... > Increases of at least 4% a year are the minimum needed to tackle the backlog of financial problems from eight years of austerity. Increases of just 3.4% a year mean longer waits for treatment, ongoing staff shortages, deterioration of NHS buildings and equipment, and little progress to address cancer care. > It’s worrying that yet again, the funding increase appears to only apply to NHS England’s budget. This excludes vital areas of health spending such as staff training, capital investment and public health. There are at least 92,000 staff vacancies in the NHS and public health spending fell by a fifth in real terms between 2013/14 and 2018/19. £200 billion looks like a big number, but it's meaningless when critical front-line services are seeing real-terms cuts. There is a consistent pattern of the government cutting investment to the front line, ignoring the objections, and deflecting blame when the inevitable consequences occur. We are seeing those consequences not because the NHS is inherently wasteful, but because the government is choosing to make public services look like they perform badly.

543g43g43 4y ago

>risks splitting the country into a two-tier system and hastening the demise of the NHS. You mean, something like the rest of Europe has? Sign me up!

n4r9 4y ago
It would potentially be something more like the US where your level of care is heavily dependent on what you can afford. The US is pursuing full market access for their pharmaceutical companies - who are notorious for their price gouging tactics - and the UK is in a pretty weak position post-Brexit. There's a reasonable likelihood that UK health spending will sky-rocket while patient outcomes plummet.
DanBC 4y ago
No, they mean something like England already has for dentistry or social care or opticians - access is available if you pay for it, and not much available if you can't pay for it.
- 543g43g43 4y ago
  Sounds like what we have already! Given OP's choice of words ("two-tier"), it brought to mind something more like the European system.