Serious News Thread

[Ekona]

Anyone know what the average taxpayer actually pays to the NHS per year? The figures have got to be out there somewhere, even roughly.

[Jezreel]

Something in here
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politic ... -bill.html

[RB]

For a £25,000 income (average????) £942.75 that was 3 years ago, it can only have gone up.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politic ... -bill.html

More than I pay BUPA.

Edit, Jez found it too

[Jezreel]

Of course it's more than you pay BUPA, you're also helping those that can't (some won't) help themselves. Social care.

[Ekona]

Jeez. That just makes the NHS look even more shit.

Perhaps it does need someone to come in, strip the crap out and start again. Give it to the private sector for 10 years, then nationalise it again when it actually works.

[Jezreel]

It will never be renationalised that's the problem. Once gone, forever gone IMO.
What do you consider to be so desparately broken with it? I do concede that there IS a lot, but what makes you think privatising it will work over working with what's there?

[Ekona]

From a totally outside POV, there has to be massive savings made at the management and supply levels. I believe I'm right in saying that, as a rule, the NHS massively overpay for the basics as Trusts buy stuff individually not as a collective, so the potential purchasing power is huge. Medicines as well, I bet there's a fortune to be saved there.

Too many middle-managers on too high a salary. Cut the chaff, get shot of 10x junior execs on £100k each and hire one single exec on £1M who is at the top of his/her game. Give them carte blanche to make the changes without any political interference, then if they succeed give them a bonus too. That's better and more efficient than having ten guys just milling around, saving the odd quid here or there but primarily looking out for themselves and the in-fighting that goes on with that situation.

Force the Trusts to work together, give them a couple of years off of the targets to see if they CAN actually do a better job, and if they can't then get people in who can. I'd rather pay more tax for a system that works than what I'm paying for one that doesn't.

[Helios]

Maybe the additional NHS costs are made up by them having to maintain the hospitals, pay all the support staff, run the ambulances, pay the bills and look after millions more patients?

Do private healthcare providers contribute to the entire costs or do they just lease a section of a hospital building?

I don't really know how the NHS is funded or how everyone is employed.

[Dan]

If BUPA can provide high quality care for what I pay them

They can't, at least not to anywhere the extent the NHS does. Get really sick in most private hospitals? You'll be in an ambulance to your nearest NHS hospital pretty rapidly. Private healthcare in this country exists by skimming off profitable work and leaving the complex, expensive stuff to the NHS. I'm not against this in principle - it relieves a significant burden on the NHS, and people who want to get their care in nicer surroundings get it. However it's untrue to suggest that you intrinsically get superior care in a private system, and it is a fallacy to state that because private hospitals make a profit that they could do a better job of running the NHS.

They've actually tried, and withdrew from their contract early because they were loosing money, and concerns were raised about the quality of care provided.

Efficiency in the NHS can undoubtedly improved, but I'd be wary of blaming managers alone for this. The King's Fund suggest the NHS is actually under-managed.

[Jezreel]

Good post and nice link. Thanks,

[Ekona]

If t really is under managed, then it's in even more trouble. Where does the money come from to add management at a time when budgets are at their lowest? Is a specific NHS tax the answer perhaps? Charge every person an extra X% on their wages, assuming they're above the £10K threshold.

[Dan]

If we want the NHS as we know it to survive then the solution is simple (if not easy). The NHS needs more money, social care needs more money, and the government has to stop using it as a political football and treating it's employees like crap.

I don't know if the NHS would actually benefit from more managers. I work at a relatively junior level, and my job is service provision, not involvement with the managerial aspects of running a hospital so I can't claim any great insight into this. I'm just trying to provide an antithesis to this idea that the NHS's failings are all secondary to legions of overpaid 'fat-cat' managers who are running the service into the ground. I don't think it's unreasonable that senior managers are paid well (if you want good people you have to pay for them), and I'm not sure that this meme that there are thousands of unnecessary middle managers dicking about and achieving nothing has any basis in fact.

[Jezreel]

Perhaps if cunts made google et al pay their fucking way properly then we could afford social care more easily. THAT'S where the fat-cat shysters are. Government.

[Mr.Clark]

But don't worry, the MPs are getting another pay rise this year.

From a totally outside POV, there has to be massive savings made at the management and supply levels. I believe I'm right in saying that, as a rule, the NHS massively overpay for the basics as Trusts buy stuff individually not as a collective, so the potential purchasing power is huge. Medicines as well, I bet there's a fortune to be saved there.

Force the Trusts to work together, give them a couple of years off of the targets to see if they CAN actually do a better job, and if they can't then get people in who can. I'd rather pay more tax for a system that works than what I'm paying for one that doesn't.

OH GOD THIS SO MUCH THIS.


Me and a mate were having one of our "put the world to rights" chats recently and he said that the way to fix the NHS (you know, it's that simple!) was to start by improving transport links everywhere, then ditching a lot of the underperforming local hospitals and replacing them with fewer, larger, "super-hospitals". Keep remembering the improved transport links, as this is the critical bit. I was talking about needing local A&Es and so forth, but if you could be quickly, cheaply and easily taken somewhere with an awesome hospital, would it be such an issue if that hospital wasn't as local?

Of course, it'll never happen because
a) people are precious about their local hospitals (understandable given that it's currently not that easy to get to other places in an emergency, especially in rural areas)
b) it would be political suicide to suggest closing hospitals, even if it was genuinely a good idea
and c) the government won't put the investment into the transport situation, let alone the NHS itself...

[MEGAHYDER]

They made a super hospital in Glasgow but forgot the infrastructure bit. They've put on more busses but it's still hard to get to.