7 ms·

How does something like that even happen...? All I can consider is the relatively small size of the UK, and how one can drive from one side of the other in the

How does something like that even happen...? All I can consider is the relatively small size of the UK, and how one can drive from one side of the other in the UK in just 15 or so hours...

markdown 4y ago
Concerted efforts by the Tories over decades to defund public health so that they can raise a generation of people who sincerely believe that it's best for the country for the government to get out of Healthcare and leave that to the more efficient private sector. It's a very slow process that requires first the defunding, then some brainwashing via television. The American model.
- nradov 4y ago
  The UK NHS budget has been steadily increasing. You can't plausibly claim that the Tories have defunded public health over decades. Some might claim that the funding should have increased at a faster rate, but there are limits to what any society can spend on healthcare. https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/projects/nhs-in-a-nutshell/nhs-budget https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/projects/nhs-in-a-nutshell/nhs-...
  - stuaxo 4y ago
    At the same time getting rid of the nurses bursary that helped new nurses get trained. Salaries not increasing with inflation. Staff finding it harder to stay in the UK after Brexit. Closure of many hospitals, a gradual move (including the previous gov) to many more privatised services. All these things have increased costs without improving the service.
  - anonporridge 4y ago
    It's easier for people to believe in a personified evil with a face that can be hated and a body that can be killed than it is for them to accept that many of our biggest problems are intractable hyperobjects which are simultaneously nobody's fault and everybody's fault.
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      I do not think anyone would have a problem with intractable hyperobjects if the King, Prime Minister, and others also had to wait in the same queue at the emergency room. What people have a problem with is that the problem seems to be tractable for some, and not for others, and whether or not those “some” are worthy of it.
      - oigursh 4y ago
        If the wealthy and connected were forced to access the same services as the rest of us, the services would be better.
  - 58028641 4y ago
    Just cause the dollar amount is increasing doesn't mean it isn't being defunded. You have to account for inflation, population size, and population age distribution.
    - 0xy 4y ago
      NHS spending has increased by over 6.5% yearly since 2010, with even more massive increases planned for 2024-25. Want a comparison? France's healthcare spending increased 0.3% yearly in the same timeframe. The UK is outpacing France's spending increases by 2,066%. The spending argument is made from political propaganda, not from fact.
      - markdown 4y ago
        Tell that to the nurses who have to work ungodly hours to keep the system going.
      - petre 4y ago
        France is still in the EU and has lots of former colonies to extract healthcare workers from. Their cultural diplomacy is one of the best compared to any former European colonialistic power.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - geysersam 4y ago
        > increased by over 6.5% yearly since 2010 Could you provide a source for that? Such an increase would imply a doubling of the budget over that time period. I can't find anything that suggests the NHS budget has doubled since 2010. From what I can gather, the NHS spending adjusted for inflation increased modestly over the time period. Taking into account the fact that costs in the healthcare sector have increased more than CPI globally, that increase could well correspond to a decrease in purchasing power. That doesn't yet take into account the UK specific issues around Brexit.
      - growse 4y ago
        You can increase more than others and still be funded less than them. The EU on average still spends dramatically more per capita on health. The spending argument is nuanced and complex. Declaring that it's "not from fact" just reveals your partisan leanings. https://www.health.org.uk/news-and-comment/charts-and-infographics/how-does-uk-health-spending-compare-across-europe-over-the-past-decade https://www.health.org.uk/news-and-comment/charts-and-infogr...
  - cyclotron3k 4y ago
    Very interesting. So what's causing the blowout in A&E wait times?
    - Jonnax 4y ago
      More money doesn't just mean better service. For example, I spoke to a doctor that has to travel between multiple hospitals during the course of their work. There used to be an in-house service that the NHS owned for transporting medical staff between locations. That has been privatised as in a contract has gone out for tender and a company won to do the service. The service used to be reliable. Now they often have to book Ubers out of pocket to get where they need on time. The inhouse service is gone. So of course and renewals are going to cost more. When people talk about the deterioration of the service, a common counterargument is that the money being spent is going up as a way to shut down conversation.
- 4dayworkweek4u 4y ago
  [flagged]
anonporridge 4y ago
My understanding after reading this article is that the problem has nothing to do with ambulances or medics. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/20/world/europe/uk-ambulance-delay-nhs-strike.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/20/world/europe/uk-ambulance... First order problem, the hospitals have no beds. This means that ambulances end up waiting for hours and medics twiddling their thumbs at the ER until the staff can finally take the patient. Medics can't just abandon the patient because there legally needs to be a proper handoff. So your emergency can't be responded to quickly because we can't trivially spin up thousands of new medic units to spend all their time waiting in line at the hospital. Second order problem, the hospitals have no beds because of a lack of long term care services. From the article... > There is an acute lack of beds in the accident and emergency department, or A&E, as emergency rooms are called in Britain, which are overcrowded because of an inability to find room for patients elsewhere in hospitals. That is because patients ready to be discharged from the hospital often have nowhere to go as a result of dwindling social services — which have been hobbled by a lack of government funding and severe staffing shortages. Now the question is why aren't there enough non hospital care services? Could be many reasons, but I'd speculate that it's a combination of a) an increasing population of old, sick people who need care in a society whose demographics are beginning to turn upside down, and b) because Brexit means it's drastically harder to import poor, foreign workers willing to do the shitty job of elder care for low wages. If this prognosis is correct, it starts to beg the question of whether Britain's world renowned health care system was only possible because it could extract excess, cheap labor from poor countries to take care of their old people, when Britain's own young people were never going to do that work for the wages offered.
- fidgewidge 4y ago
  The care home vaccine mandates were far more impactful than Brexit. There were mass resignations when the government forced care home workers (and only them) to take the COVID shots.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  b) is not exclusive to Britain. A very large portion of the US benefits from poorer countries to the south with high birth rates and porous borders. Probably applies to almost all large developed countries.
iosono88 4y ago
[dead]
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

How does something like that even happen...? All I can consider is the relatively small size of the UK, and how one can drive from one side of the other in the UK in just 15 or so hours...

markdown 4y ago

Concerted efforts by the Tories over decades to defund public health so that they can raise a generation of people who sincerely believe that it's best for the country for the government to get out of Healthcare and leave that to the more efficient private sector. It's a very slow process that requires first the defunding, then some brainwashing via television. The American model.

nradov 4y ago
The UK NHS budget has been steadily increasing. You can't plausibly claim that the Tories have defunded public health over decades. Some might claim that the funding should have increased at a faster rate, but there are limits to what any society can spend on healthcare. https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/projects/nhs-in-a-nutshell/nhs-budget https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/projects/nhs-in-a-nutshell/nhs-...
- stuaxo 4y ago
  At the same time getting rid of the nurses bursary that helped new nurses get trained. Salaries not increasing with inflation. Staff finding it harder to stay in the UK after Brexit. Closure of many hospitals, a gradual move (including the previous gov) to many more privatised services. All these things have increased costs without improving the service.
- anonporridge 4y ago
  It's easier for people to believe in a personified evil with a face that can be hated and a body that can be killed than it is for them to accept that many of our biggest problems are intractable hyperobjects which are simultaneously nobody's fault and everybody's fault.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    I do not think anyone would have a problem with intractable hyperobjects if the King, Prime Minister, and others also had to wait in the same queue at the emergency room. What people have a problem with is that the problem seems to be tractable for some, and not for others, and whether or not those “some” are worthy of it.
    - oigursh 4y ago
      If the wealthy and connected were forced to access the same services as the rest of us, the services would be better.
- 58028641 4y ago
  Just cause the dollar amount is increasing doesn't mean it isn't being defunded. You have to account for inflation, population size, and population age distribution.
  - 0xy 4y ago
    NHS spending has increased by over 6.5% yearly since 2010, with even more massive increases planned for 2024-25. Want a comparison? France's healthcare spending increased 0.3% yearly in the same timeframe. The UK is outpacing France's spending increases by 2,066%. The spending argument is made from political propaganda, not from fact.
    - markdown 4y ago
      Tell that to the nurses who have to work ungodly hours to keep the system going.
    - petre 4y ago
      France is still in the EU and has lots of former colonies to extract healthcare workers from. Their cultural diplomacy is one of the best compared to any former European colonialistic power.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - geysersam 4y ago
      > increased by over 6.5% yearly since 2010 Could you provide a source for that? Such an increase would imply a doubling of the budget over that time period. I can't find anything that suggests the NHS budget has doubled since 2010. From what I can gather, the NHS spending adjusted for inflation increased modestly over the time period. Taking into account the fact that costs in the healthcare sector have increased more than CPI globally, that increase could well correspond to a decrease in purchasing power. That doesn't yet take into account the UK specific issues around Brexit.
    - growse 4y ago
      You can increase more than others and still be funded less than them. The EU on average still spends dramatically more per capita on health. The spending argument is nuanced and complex. Declaring that it's "not from fact" just reveals your partisan leanings. https://www.health.org.uk/news-and-comment/charts-and-infographics/how-does-uk-health-spending-compare-across-europe-over-the-past-decade https://www.health.org.uk/news-and-comment/charts-and-infogr...
- cyclotron3k 4y ago
  Very interesting. So what's causing the blowout in A&E wait times?
  - Jonnax 4y ago
    More money doesn't just mean better service. For example, I spoke to a doctor that has to travel between multiple hospitals during the course of their work. There used to be an in-house service that the NHS owned for transporting medical staff between locations. That has been privatised as in a contract has gone out for tender and a company won to do the service. The service used to be reliable. Now they often have to book Ubers out of pocket to get where they need on time. The inhouse service is gone. So of course and renewals are going to cost more. When people talk about the deterioration of the service, a common counterargument is that the money being spent is going up as a way to shut down conversation.
4dayworkweek4u 4y ago
[flagged]

anonporridge 4y ago

My understanding after reading this article is that the problem has nothing to do with ambulances or medics. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/20/world/europe/uk-ambulance-delay-nhs-strike.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/20/world/europe/uk-ambulance... First order problem, the hospitals have no beds. This means that ambulances end up waiting for hours and medics twiddling their thumbs at the ER until the staff can finally take the patient. Medics can't just abandon the patient because there legally needs to be a proper handoff. So your emergency can't be responded to quickly because we can't trivially spin up thousands of new medic units to spend all their time waiting in line at the hospital. Second order problem, the hospitals have no beds because of a lack of long term care services. From the article... > There is an acute lack of beds in the accident and emergency department, or A&E, as emergency rooms are called in Britain, which are overcrowded because of an inability to find room for patients elsewhere in hospitals. That is because patients ready to be discharged from the hospital often have nowhere to go as a result of dwindling social services — which have been hobbled by a lack of government funding and severe staffing shortages. Now the question is why aren't there enough non hospital care services? Could be many reasons, but I'd speculate that it's a combination of a) an increasing population of old, sick people who need care in a society whose demographics are beginning to turn upside down, and b) because Brexit means it's drastically harder to import poor, foreign workers willing to do the shitty job of elder care for low wages. If this prognosis is correct, it starts to beg the question of whether Britain's world renowned health care system was only possible because it could extract excess, cheap labor from poor countries to take care of their old people, when Britain's own young people were never going to do that work for the wages offered.

fidgewidge 4y ago
The care home vaccine mandates were far more impactful than Brexit. There were mass resignations when the government forced care home workers (and only them) to take the COVID shots.
lotsofpulp 4y ago
b) is not exclusive to Britain. A very large portion of the US benefits from poorer countries to the south with high birth rates and porous borders. Probably applies to almost all large developed countries.

iosono88 4y ago

[dead]

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]