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Peter, we've lost the NHS

Started by Johnny Yesno, December 08, 2021, 07:15:41 PM

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Johnny Yesno

I've just received an email containing the following link from a distraught Labour party comrade:

https://consortiumnews.com/2021/12/06/us-empire-seizes-uks-national-health-service/

They say that the authors are two stalwart NHS campaigners (I recognise Bob Gill from TyskySour interviews). They also give the following advice, although they acknowledge it is too late to stop this:

QuoteWrite to the following and tell them how angry you are and urge them to do everything they can in the House to stop the final theft of our NHS:

Shadow Minister for Health & Social Care Wes Streeting   wes.streeting@parliament.uk

and in the Lords where apparently protocol dictates you open your email Dear Lady X and the salutation is Yours sincerely:

Baroness Merron   merrong@parliament.uk; Baroness Thornton  thorntong@parliament.uk;  Baroness Wheeler. contactholmember@parliament.uk

Fuck.

Egyptian Feast

If I emailed Wes Streeting to tell him how angry I am, I don't think it would be very useful as whatever message I was attempting to convey would be lost after the first instance of me calling him a horrible little cunt.

Johnny Yesno

Yes, that is a serious flaw in the advice.


Johnny Yesno

Ah, I'd already posted before I noticed that.

CHECK OUT THIS DUNCE

Perhaps we could ask Barry for a thread merge.

Buelligan

FWIW, I think it's great that people are raising it.  Just wish there was something that'd actually work that we could do.

Johnny Yesno

I think the only constructive advice is don't get sick :-(

Buelligan

Yeah.  And, if we do, if it's something really dangerous and catching and pop round to our local MPs gaff, quick smart and lick the doornob.

Goldentony

just write to them, easy, jobs a good'n

madhair60


Zetetic

The problem with all these articles that sell this vision:
QuoteThe [English] NHS will, in the immediate future, resemble ... a ... corporate cash cow repurposed to make profit

Is that I can't help think of the funding increases required to enable this, and the Barnett consequentials.

Zetetic

Quotethe growing unmet patient need will have to be serviced either through out-of-pocket payments, top-up private insurance, or not at all
This is a much more credible issue, because it's happening right now, at scale - to the point where the English NHS is really struggling to commission short-term elective capacity from private providers even though it's trying to, because those providers are more interested in privately-funded patients.

But this raises the question - Why should I care about the Bill, when it's clear that not particularly necessary to enable this?

Johnny Yesno

Quote from: Zetetic on December 08, 2021, 10:06:35 PMthe Barnett consequentials.

They played their last gig on a decommissioned nuclear sub, didn't they?

Buelligan

Quote from: Zetetic on December 08, 2021, 10:06:35 PMThe problem with all these articles that sell this vision:
Is that I can't help think of the funding increases required to enable this, and the Barnett consequentials.


Here I am, here, in pretty spanking health, let me say.  Teetotal, non-smoker, veggan (presque vegan), yogic huge-walker, mountain-whupper, haven't been to a doctor in fucking years, all kinds of good.  Being offered cut rate supernice, just for your mates, top-up health insurance at around 50€ a month - after first year rates may rise (heheh, might they?).  And there are people, I asked the man (who is around 60 years old and healthy) I clean for, who are paying =/- 200€pcm.  Or more.

Can't help but think what would a NHS Français be able to do with all those 50€+ every month.  What would they be capable of?  Rather than it going to support the lifestyles of shareholders, actuaries and their fucking bimbos.

67,000,000 x 50 = 3,350,000,000€ a month

Even half of that, even a quarter, is a fuck of a lot of money.  And that's on top of our taxes.

Zetetic

Right, but that's the second option I've touched on above - ongoing strangulation of the NHSs, increased privately-funded healthcare. And that doesn't need any legal changes - it's been happening for a decade and, via COVID, is now much accelerated.

But that's rather in opposition to turning the English NHS into a "cash-cow". I don't think most people really appreciate how massively underfunded the NHSs are at this point, and how difficult it is for anyone to extract profits from taking on a "provider" role (outside of specific specialist services). To enable shareholders to skim at scale from public funds there needs to be some public funds. This isn't speculation - we've seen many failed attempts to turn a profit from taking over services in England in the last decade.

Buelligan

There are more ways than one of building a cash-cow.  For instance, rather than private companies taking money out of the the state's cow, why not get the State to take it away?  Allow services to atrophy, eventually, only the truly desperate will run the risk of secondary infection and over-worked staff in crumbling buildings.  Everyone with any money they can scrape together at all will be in the queue to pay the insurers.  That is happening, has been happening, since Thatcher.  It's still happening and this bill is another stab into the old bovine.

ETAThe cash-cow isn't the NHS, it's the need for the NHS (or healthcare) and the willing desperation of those who need it, to pay.

Zetetic

Yes:
Quote from: Zetetic on December 09, 2021, 09:20:05 AMRight, but that's the second option I've touched on above - ongoing strangulation of the NHSs, increased privately-funded healthcare. And that doesn't need any legal changes - it's been happening for a decade and, via COVID, is now much accelerated.

But that's rather in opposition to turning the English NHS into a "cash-cow".

QuoteIt's still happening and this bill is another stab into the old bovine.
I mean this metaphor itself suggests that it's about killing the cow, not milking it.

Zetetic

The reason why I bang on about this is that the claims about the risks of NHS-funded private provision (outside of specific specialist services) have 1) made "keep the NHS public!" campaigners a laughing stock in health policy circles and 2) distracted enormously from the real risks of degradation and the true birth of a endemic two tier system.

(You might say that you don't care about 1 - since these are overwhelmingly liberal centrist scum, alas - but I think it's unfortunately quite important for actually changing anything, if we're not in general strike territory.)

(Edit: I obviously also care about a third issues which is that the spectre of privatising A&Es or whatever distracts from the specific specialist services that actually are highly and increasingly privatised.)

Buelligan

Forgive me, I edited.  And I don't fully understand all the ramifications of the bill.  I do understand that the British love their NHS.  The government are hell-bent on handing that money (huge potential earning opportunity) to their friends who are not healthcare specialists or workers.  We know this.

The government can't simply smirk in our faces, like they do with most stuff, and hand it over - they know for a certainty, heads would roll.  So they've been busily making it useless and, at the same time, changing a reg here, a law there, tiny, tiny, bites at that cow, to enable their mates, the maggots, to worm in everywhere.  Eventually that cow will die.  We all know it.  This bill is the next assault.

It is about killing the cow (NHS) and replacing it with a suite of new cows that cost more and deliver luxury for the rich, enormous wealth for the owners and nothing for the rest of us. 

monkfromhavana

What I don't understand is that, if they're going to create a two-tier system where the richest people get private treatment and the rest of us get no treatment or substandard treatment, how is that different to how it is now? in that case it's not that Private companies are taking over the NHS, it's that the government are just cutting all funding for all healthcare.

Ditto nurses pay - they won't give them a decent pay rise, so nurses leave the profession. How would that help private companies coming in to take over the NHS and rinse ordinary people out of their savings if there aren't any nurses?

I just don't get what the plan is, unless it's just to make sure that 90% of the UK's population don't have any access to any healthcare at all.

Zetetic

Well, quite.

QuoteDitto nurses pay - they won't give them a decent pay rise, so nurses leave the profession.
I think this is actually now an extremely optimistic reading of the situation. The workforce crises mean that the job is extremely damaging, characterised by overwork and moral distress. Pay increases can't compensate for that and won't necessarily end the vicious circle that we're now in.

Buelligan

Off the top of my head, I'd say one reason for what you're describing here might be that most of these people have a dogmatic aversion to the idea that anyone gets anything that hasn't been paid for in The Market.  Attach that to their allergy to tax-paying and the affront it causes them to see money spent and markets controlled by the State and you have anaphylactic capitalist shock.



Allowing the NHS to exist shows something that they cannot allow to be seen.



https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/projects/nhs-in-a-nutshell/nhs-budget
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_health_expenditure_per_capita

monkfromhavana

Quote from: Zetetic on December 09, 2021, 11:20:22 AMWell, quite.

If that's the case, I don't see anyone voting for them and there being mass protests if 90% of the population don't have any access to any healthcare as there is none, and even if there were, there would be no doctors, nurses etc.

Is it back to leeches?

Zetetic

Across the NHSs of the UK, we must be getting closer to 1 in 5 people on a waiting list at this point.

monkfromhavana

Quote from: Zetetic on December 09, 2021, 01:58:15 PMAcross the NHSs of the UK, we must be getting closer to 1 in 5 people on a waiting list at this point.

Then I don't understand why American healthcare companies would want to take over healthcare for the 10% of people who can afford it.

These companies would make money selling health insurance, but no-ones going to buy health insurance if there aren't any doctors, nurses etc and you still have to wait 4 years for a procedure.

They can't just rinse the taxpayer by inflating the costs of services for the taxpayer via government because there's no money there and still no doctors and nurses.

So what's the plan? I know I'm probably being startlingly thick, but I don't see what anyone should be concerned about the privatisation of something that won't exist, and I don't see why companies would want to get something privatised that won't exist.

Zetetic

#25
You can still attract enough doctors and nurses, at higher pay into environments where - unlike universal provision - you can control demand.

And the control of demand - by pricing - is also tied up with being able to offer shorter waiting times (and so an attractive product for a small set of the millions of people on those lists).

QuoteI don't see what anyone should be concerned about the privatisation of something that won't exist, and I don't see why companies would want to get something privatised that won't exist.
To be clear - I agree, if we're talking about taxpayer-funded 'NHS'-based private provision; for the most part there isn't much money in this (and that's why I can't take this very seriously, outside of certain specific specialist services).

But what the decade-long chronic and couple-of-years-long acute collapse has done is begin to seriously boost demand for privately-funded healthcare.

(Edit: I know I'm repeating myself and you @monkfromhavana here, but I think it's worth trying to as clear as possible given how messy the terminology is and how confusing "privatisation" can be on its own.)

Johnny Yesno

Quote from: monkfromhavana on December 09, 2021, 01:37:30 PMIs it back to leeches?

Don't diss the leeches. They're excellent for munching away dead tissue and making sure blood keeps flowing through the tiny blood vessels so injuries can heal.

Zetetic


touchingcloth

Quote from: Buelligan on December 08, 2021, 09:24:47 PMJust wish there was something that'd actually work that we could do.

Never get old, never get sick. Idiot.

Fambo Number Mive

Reminds me of Kinnock's speech in 1983 about Thatcher. I warn you not to be young, I warn you not to be ordinary, I warn you not to fall ill and I warn you not to grow old.

Probably one of the best political speeches, as rubbish as Kinnock was once he became leader you'd never get the current turd we have as Labour leader saying anything like that.