I agree what a wonderful service we get from the NHS. Of course we all come across the lazy nurse or insensitive doctor but overall I am amazed at the compassionate speedy and efficient service I’ve had. I agree with the comments about GP’s and avoid mine wherever possible. I sincerely hope we never lose the NHS in this country. I wonder what our treatments actually cost when you add up the drugs and consultations.
Tottaly agree with you cherub,
I am also fed up of the benifit system as it stands today, where was it when i needed it?? nowhere , as i have said before i personaly know many people who have lived their life on the dole, no intension of working , given council housing, money to furnish them, money for baby equipment ,ect ect oh and lets not forget the free laptops and broadband too which have just been doled out,which the unemployed also now benifit from. Im sick to death of the likes of us , "Tax Payers "having to fund other peoples lifestyles.
Some More Facts and Figures Of Labour Under the NHS
NHS Deficits. The NHS in England is this year forecasting a gross deficit of £883 million.
Waiting Lists. Almost one million people in the UK are still waiting for treatment on the NHS.
Threat to Staff Numbers. Since February 2006, over 18,000 job losses have been announced by NHS Trusts in England
Dentists. 10,000 dentists have left the NHS since Labour came to power.
MRSA. The number of people who have died from the hospital superbug MRSA has more than doubled since 1997, despite Labour’s 23 ‘initiatives’ to tackle the problem
Productivity in the NHS has fallen by up to 1.3 per cent in each year since 1997 despite record increases in spending.
Administrators in the NHS. The number of NHS managers is increasing three times as fast as the number of new doctors and nurses.
Benifits.
Benefit Fraud. At least £2.6 billion of taxpayers’ money disappeared in 2004-05 in benefit fraud and error.
Child Support Agency. The backlog of cases at the CSA amounts to over 273,600 and £3.5 billion of debt remains uncollected.
Tax credits. Of the 6.5 million recipients - 2 million have been overpaid and over 900,000 are underpaid.
Incapacity Benefits. 2.7 million people of working age are claiming incapacity benefits.
Rise in Long-Term Benefit Claims. The number of people receiving incapacity benefit for five years or more is now twenty times as large as it was when Labour came to power.
As for the "two faces "of Gordon Brown , well after today say no more!!!
Linda
Like I said before, at least we have an NHS to have this debate about. No doubt the Conservatives will strip it away bit by bit until only the rich can afford medical care. God help us then. They never wanted an NHS. I’m glad I’ve been able to access it.
Ah yes, the two faces of Mr Brown today, too embarrassing for words, and as usual “not his fault” but that of an aide. I am always at great pains to point out to people that whilst he may have been brought up in his constituency he wasn’t actually born here. When he spouts forth about poor people turning up on his parents doorstep back in the 60s I am left wondering if we did actually live in the same town as I do not recognise his descriptions of it.
As for the NHS, whilst it may have been introduced by Bevan, it was planned and engineered by Beveridge who was a Conservative. Had the Tories gained power after the war the country would have still got it, but not until about the late 40s (I covered this as part of my history degree and used to spend a lot of time in the Public Record Office at Kew).Half of the waste comes from the fact it now seems to be a “World Health Service” - when I was still living in back in 2003 London some of the hospitals had signs up over 30 different languages and all comers were taking advantage and requiring interpreters. I believe the record for different languages at the time was St Mary’s in Paddington with 33.
I recently attended a local hospital where they were unveiling a new x-ray machine for cancer. There were 6 senior hospital managers waiting in reception for Nicola Sturgeon from the Toytown Parliament in Holyrood, plus various other administrators milling around clipboards in hand. Is it absolutely necessary to have all these managers sitting in offices on vast salaries when the money could be spent on better nursing or patient care?
Well Cherub we all have our own opinions. Democracy is a great thing!
Not sure whether I should put my head over the parapet, but has anyone counted how many NHS managers are actually nurse managers? Loads of us (yes, I am one) have worked our way to management positions and are skilled and committed to improving care for patients.
My first diagnosis with bc was March 1997, just before the Labour landslide, and my second was last June.I have seen huge differences in care in that time.
I don’t belong to any political party but I am very worried about the Tories getting hold of the NHS - it has taken years to improve things following the last Conservative government.
Yep, Gordon Brown didn’t look clever today…
Blimey some facts have gone awry here haven’t they?!
William Beveridge was most certainly NOT a Tory - he was a Liberal MP who became leader of the Liberals in the House of Lords!
He was massively influenced by the Fabian socialists.
The Tories opposed the foundation of the NHS right up to the THIRD reading of the NHS act in 1946.
Nye Bevan was right - Atlee and Co were “lower than vermin.”
As for Mr Brown and his gaffe - well I’d LOVE to know what Mr Cameron and his Eton cronies have to say about the great British public behind closed doors.
Guess we will never know eh, but hopefully Mr Cameron or Mr Clegg will have the insight not to do it in earshot of the world !! Gordon Brown has done a lot of damage today not only to himself but to the Labour party , a Priminister should know better.
I agree ,Thank god for democracy ,
I am also a nurse in the NHS, have been for over 30 years, and it does not matter who gets into number 10 there are going to big cuts in the NHS despie what the politicians tell us during their campaign. And do not believe the cuts will be at management level, the managers will do what they can to kep their jobs, the jobs will be on the front line, thats where the cuts are starting already, The wards are running short staffed because there is no money to employ adequate numbers, there are limits to what can be ordered in the way of dressings.
In short the NHS is not safe whoever gets in power, I fear for my job and I am very experienced and well qualified!
Another “fact” to put right! It was the Conservative government under John Major that got rid of NHS dentists. They left the NHS in their millions in the early 90’s because of the impossible restrictions placed on them. This is when Denplan was first launched, hatched by Ken Clarke. They devised an private insurance scheme so people wouldnt have to pay upfront for expensive treatment. Denplan is a good scheme and the quality of dentistry covered by it is excellent - one big drawback - it costs money. If you have money - great, if you don’t, tough luck. Hence the two tiered dental system we have today where most of the NHS is staffed by young dentists from EU countries who dont understand our system well enough and are likely to leave when they have earned enough. This is what will happen under the Tories. We will pay health insurance and those who can afford it will have wonderful care. Those who cant will receive the equivalent of what the NHS dentistry is today.
I cannot imagine that any party would be able to privatise the NHS. There is just too much involved for them to be able to achieve that within one term of office - and that’s all they would have as soon as the voting public realise what they were doing.
What I really want to see is standards improving and consistency across all NHS Trusts so that everyone can have the same service levels and not be part of a postcode lottery.
Don’t shoot me down for saying this, but I’ve had my bc care privately, after dx. I am lucky to have private health insurance as a work benefit so my GP advised me to use it and free up NHS resources for someone else. There have been good and bad aspects of each. My dx on the NHS took 6 weeks from me first finding the lump to the day they told me I had cancer. It took over a week to get an appointment to see my GP, then over 2 weeks to get an appointment for the breast clinic, then nearly 3 weeks of the various tests and results. I think that was much too long and needs to be improved by whatever government we have next.
The advantages of private care for this disease were that I have been treated by the head of the team - the main surgeon and the head of the team of oncologists. Did that make a difference - who knows? I have been able to schedule appointments and surgery to suit me - convenient to fit them around work committments. I had a private room for the 9 nights I was in hospital, and I had a special parking permit which was actually one of the things that saved me a huge amount of stress - I saw the others queueing round the car park each day when I went for rads. My rads treatment itself was no different from NHS and I had no choice over timing - and there was still a long wait for it.
The main disadvantage of my private care was that I never really had a BCN. I left the NHS one behind and then I ended up having to switch hospitals and lost the private one they introduced me to.
For me, the best part of the NHS care has been the support I’ve had from my GP - he has been my BCN substitute.
For those who are interested, the bills for my private care have amounted to just over £16,000. That is for WLE, SNB, further surgery for complications, rads and all outpatient consultations. I know that is a lot of money, but I think its incredibly good value for the care I’ve received.
One last observation - I believe the NHS cannot be beaten when it comes to care for serious, urgent or life-threatening conditions, but if you need orthopedic surgery or anything else to relieve a chronic condition and improve your quality of life - that is where it doesn’t do so well. Maybe that’s asking too much.
E xx
hi
this is an interesting thread. Although it has now veered from the nhs to politics more generally, I would like to add a slightly different view about the nhs and treatment received.
The care I have had through the whole BC thing has been fantastic, and I wholeheartedly agree with the earlier posters bigging up their nhs cancer care. However, for the past twenty years on and off (and for about six months last year, most determindly *on*) i have had debilitating, diagnosis-resistant pain and stiffness in my back/neck/shoulders, and the nhs has been… a bit useless, tbh. My last physiotherapist (who described me as ‘the lady with the concrete neck’) discharged me because she didn’t think she was doing any good. I disagreed, but that didn’t seem to matter :-/
I have found a stark difference in the treatment I received for back pain and for breast cancer. On one occasion when I tried to make another appointment to see the consultant rheumatologist who had told me to come back if the pain worsened, I was given an appointment four months in the future!
I’m sure people (correctly) think that ah well, back pain isn’t life threatening, cancer is, so it’s far more important. But as for quality of life being affected by a condition - pff! All the trauma, anxiety, exhaustion, distress, inconvenience, pain and discomfort of my six months of BC treatment pale into insignificance against constant, immobilising, undiagnosed pain, which sucks the joy out of every single moment of the day (and which of course, a lot of people secretly don’t really believe in, because of the lack of diagnosis…!).
So, yes, our nhs is great, and a thing to be proud of and to cherish. But it could still be a lot better.
emma
I’ve just discovered that, due to recently moving house, and being currently rather exhausted/busy/preoccupied with my daily rads trip, I’ve neglected to register to vote in time :-/
D*mn you, BC!!!
Another interesting debate. Frankly I am astounded that anyone can be so sure what ANY government will do with the NHS.
The NHS isn’t free. It is paid for by those who are working and paying national insurance and taxes. There is an increasing older population who are retired, many of whom won’t be paying into the system any longer and who may need services (rightfully so) in their older age. In addition we have a fast growing population in England which will require more services rather than cuts to even keep to the level of service we have now.
On top of this the figures as at 2009 show that just under 10% of youung people were classified by the government as NEETs (not in employment, education or training). This equates to nearly 1 million young people between the age of 16 and 25.
So whoever gets in it will take a lot more than pledges on the NHS to keep all of this going long-term. They will strategies to address all of the above, get the economy going and much more.
Elinda x
Well said MSMolly.
x
I’m sure most people are fully aware that the NHS isn’t free. I think the fact remains that whilst the NHS isn’t perfect, it is in a much better position than it was under the Tory administration. Whilst we may wait a few weeks to see a consultant at the moment, lets not forget that under the previous Tory administration waiting lists of 6 months and more were not uncommon and this was for potentially serious illnesses which happened personally within our family.
I think that is largely true but it is still a bit of a postcode or type of health problem lottery.
For example, there are no waiting lists for mental health so people can wait and wait for treatment.
The point I was making about the NHS not being free was that it is so dependent on other things that need to be addressed by whatever party.
Elinda x
Also add that I’ve lived in various parts of the country and each time I’ve had a gynae referral including this year it has been a matter of months not weeks to see a consultant. I’m waiting now…
Elinda
God how refreshing to find some healthy debate on these boards again!
The truth is that those of us who have nailed our political colours to the mast are of no interest in this election - it is the floating voters who hold sway.
I just hope that people’s memories will serve them well and remember how appalling things were under Thatcher and Major.
I recall my elderly aunt who was dying of cancer being told by her GP to go and lie in the middle of the road. That, he said, was the only way they could get an ambulance and get her a hospital bed. When she was finally admitted she spent 4 nights on a trolley in a corridor by the men’s toilets.
That was 1992.
The same year that Norman Lamont lost £3.3 billion on Black Wednesday.
At the heart of this election is the economy - because THAT alone will impact most on our lives.
It is all well and good for Cameron to bung up posters everywhere claiming what he “would” do with the NHS - but how will he pay for it? The Tory figures just don’t stand up at all.
There will be HAVE to be swingeing cuts whoever gets into office - it just depends where the cuts will be. As the Tories have such a filthy record with the NHS, I don’t see why that should be any different this time round.
The Tories didn’t want the NHS at its inception and many of them don’t want it now.
People like Tory Euro MP Daniel Hannon who appeared on US television trashing the NHS, describing it as a “relic” and saying that the only people who admire it are “those on the serious Left.”
Last year BMI Healthcare ran a poll of MPs asking them if they supported tax relief on private health insurance. (So you pay less income tax if you can afford to take out private health insurance.) 66% Tories supported it - only 1% of Lab and 5% Liberals supported it. So if you are wealthy enough to afford private healthcare you are then rewarded for it! Meanwhile the rest of us that can’t afford it end up paying more tax than those that can!
Only the Tories could support something so fundamentally wrong.
Tonight should be interesting. I am betting Cameron will make it a hatrick of lousy poll results and Cleggmania will continue to grow.
I still think it will be a hung Parliament.
Well said, I totally agree - let’s hope more voters are aware of these issues and don’t get swayed by the ‘flavour of the month’ Lib Dems
Sarah