Future of the NHS

[mr friendly guy]

In the Brexit thread, people brought up some interesting things about the NHS, and I thought it might be worth discussing this after doing a bit more research.

https://www.expressandstar.com/news/uk- ... mp-survey/

Almost half of Britons think PM lying about protecting NHS from Trump – survey
UK News | Published: Oct 27, 2019

Only 18% of people believed the Tories would keep the NHS publicly-run, according to a Survation poll.

Almost half of people think Boris Johnson is failing to tell the truth when it comes to protecting the NHS in a trade deal with the US, according to a new survey.

Pollsters Survation found that 45% did not believe the Prime Minister was being honest when he assured the public that the NHS was “not on the table” when UK and US negotiators sit down to thrash out a post-Brexit trade deal.

In total, more than 70% of those quizzed said the NHS should be safeguarded during trade talks.

Ellen Lees, campaigns officer for We Own It – the pro-nationalisation group that commissioned the research, said it showed the public were “firmly against” any health service sell-off.

Speaking with Vice President Mike Pence during his visit to Downing Street last month, Mr Johnson said: “Of course, we will do everything to increase free trade but the National Health Service is not on the table as far as our negotiations go.”

But when 2,000 people were asked what statement was “closest to your view”, just under half said they agreed that “Boris Johnson is not telling the truth” regarding the pledge.

Close to a third said they did think the Conservative Party leader was telling the truth, while 25% said they did not know.

Asked how concerned they were about the impact a future trade deal with America could have on the publicly-run health service, 35% said “very concerned”.

Only 14% of people said they were “not at all concerned” and 16% said the option of carving up parts of the NHS and allowing foreign control should be an option in any trade deals completed when Britain leaves the European Union.

Almost three-quarters of those surveyed disagreed.

The survey, carried out online between October 9-14, found only 18% of people trusted the Tories to ensure it remained a “publicly funded and publicly run” institution.

Labour received the backing of a third of respondents – narrowly in front of 24% of people who said they did not trust any party to protect the free-at-entry provision.

Ms Lees said: “This poll shows clearly that the public understand just how big of a threat a US trade deal is to our NHS.

“And it shows that they’re firmly against the idea that our NHS could be sold off bit by bit to Donald Trump and American private healthcare giants.”

Tony O’Sullivan, co-chair of Keep Our NHS Public, said: “The NHS has faced six years of destructive top-down disorganisation.

“Legislation to return the NHS wholly to the care and responsibility of public service and ending privatisation is the only cast-iron defence against a Johnson-Trump deal.

“Only this will guarantee for our children the future of the NHS as a public service for all.”

In August, Mr Johnson announced £850 million to fund infrastructure upgrades at 20 hospitals in England and freed up another £1 billion of money saved by NHS trusts for further investment.

So the fear is that the NHS will have parts privatised.

My understanding about healthcare in the UK is you don't have a strong private component, unlike say Australia where we have a private and public component. I have said this before way back to Canadians who were stunned that we had a mixture of both, that the private sector takes off some of the workload from an overworked public sector. Perhaps a way to prevent this "sell off" of the NHS, is to allow some private services.

For example, I believe in the UK if your family doctor / General practitioner wanted to do do an xray or some other radiological scan its done by the hospitals which causes a blow out in wait times scans. In Australia, generally most x-rays done by your GP would be done privately, but if you request, most are happy to bulk bill (ie its free for the patient) for most scans that are government covered (there are exceptions, but you can be bulk billed if a specialists order them). In my office I have 4 different forms for four radiology companies and I have in the past referred to different companies as well, and we get adverts from new companies just setting up shop.

Would instituting a sort of private and public sector in the health system help the NHS wait times and prevent this feared "sell off." Thoughts from the board.

[Steel]

The UK already has loads of private healthcare and private health insurance alongside the NHS. Private treatment has short/no wait times, comparable costs to other countries. I will note that the majority of private healthcare doctors have had their training entirely paid for by the NHS, greatly subsidising private healthcare costs.

Given that if people want to pay for healthcare in the UK then they can, it makes little sense to turn the NHS into a paying institution as well.

The real issue is that if the NHS is privatised, even if it is free at the point of use, then the Tories will be able to bloat costs and use it to funnel public funds to their mates. The NHS costs less than half per capita compared to the US system for better primary care outcomes.

[Bedlam]

I've had some interesting experiences with the NHS vs Private over the last few months.

I was referred for a scan by my (NHS) GP and told that it would probably be several months before it took place on the NHS. I have private health insurance via my employer so I looked into that to see if I could get it done quicker, and was told it would be about a month before I could see a doctor via that due to most of the ones they would cover being on holiday.

I got notice of the scan being done via the NHS (but at a private clinic) about a fortnight later and it was to be done literally on the day before the appointment with the private doctor. I rearranged the appointment for a week later and he said he could probably get the results of the scan to talk through with me then (he didn't but sent me details a day later). He then arranged the follow on testing about a month later from a private hospital.

I got the results of the scan from the NHS on the day of the private follow up testing (about a month before they were available to the private doctor). As a result of the follow up the private doctor recommended that I have my treatment from the NHS 'because they're better at this sort of thing'. My next two batches of treatment are via the NHS but the private doctor is still running it but wearing his NHS 'hat' rather than his private 'hat' (he works for the NHS 3 days a week and private 2 days).

So from all this is does appear that NHS and private services are much more integrated than I thought before all this started.

[SpottedKitty]

Interesting poll results.

Not sure how I would have answered — I'm prepared to accept Boris might have been telling the truth, but I'm fairly sure he'd be incompetent to actually manage to do it.

[His Divine Shadow]

The tories will 100% sell out the NHS if they think they can get away with it. Or they will continue to hobble it while helping private institutions to create a false picture of the private side being better in peoples mind, then privatize it.