Precisely, NI was originally there to fund the NHS and the road fund license was there find the roads. Both have been hijacked for profit making schemes like rail and energy privatisation.
Andi.
NHS Woes
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Andi.
Its a broken system, people are waiting hours for an ambulance but then the ambulances are waiting for hours outside our A&E because we are full and cant take the patients, A&E is full because we have too many patients and not enough doctors/nurses, also sometimes the wards are full then we can not move people out of A&E so A&E fills up very fast.
ICU is full because the wards are full, when patients can be stepped down to the ward there is no space.
Demand is going up, bed numbers are going down and budgets are going down.
On a 10h A&E shift, a doctor can see between 8 and 13 patients depending on how complicated the patients are, now if you are missing 3 doctors during the day because they cant find a locum to cover the gaps in the rota (they cant find someone to work full-time hence the rota gap) you end up with a backlog of 25 patients before you start a night shift. Doctors are contracted for a 48h working week but many if not all of us take extra shifts during our free days or annual leave. Now they have pushed the locum rates so low and the deductions are so high its just not worth taking an extra shift in your free time.
ICU is full because the wards are full, when patients can be stepped down to the ward there is no space.
Demand is going up, bed numbers are going down and budgets are going down.
On a 10h A&E shift, a doctor can see between 8 and 13 patients depending on how complicated the patients are, now if you are missing 3 doctors during the day because they cant find a locum to cover the gaps in the rota (they cant find someone to work full-time hence the rota gap) you end up with a backlog of 25 patients before you start a night shift. Doctors are contracted for a 48h working week but many if not all of us take extra shifts during our free days or annual leave. Now they have pushed the locum rates so low and the deductions are so high its just not worth taking an extra shift in your free time.
A locum lodger at my mates a few months back was bragging how he was earning so much as a locum he'd be retired at 40. I said to him isnt that part of the problem and his reply, rather to my liking, was the system is abused by everyone, why should I miss out.
So have they killed that plan of his off?
this is the issue with people wanting to whack say 'just' another 5% more on the higher rate of tax etc.. I mean you're talking about junior doctor - house officer/registrar type rates so presumably the 40% boundary and that is clearly having an effect.
there is also the sweet spot at 100k where people get a 60% tax rate, that no doubt affects GPs and consultants re: extra shifts (maybe that Saturday morning clinic once a month isn't worth bothering about anymore etc..)
Man of Honour
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We have 250 patients Ready To Discharge every day who go nowhere with 150 patients a day who need to be admitted.
The reason they go nowhere is because families can't be arsed to get them until the weekend.
We have an A&E capable of treating 250 patients a day but over 500 turn up with over 100 being sent to Ambulatory Emergency Care.
We now also have a UCC GP inside A&E provided by another company - "You have a headache, go see the UCC GP".
I said all this above but nobody takes any notice.
Fake news.....
What's your source? Is it total spend as a percentage of GDP per chance.... (which can heavily skew the figures with a country with a relatively low GDP carrying a big public sector like Greece)
Spending per capita isnt that high in the UK... but its far far above Greece, which is well below the OECD average with the UK being above it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_health_expenditure_per_capita
$2245 VS 4003 per capita in 2015
Edit.... Yep just checked and I was right with my suspicions....
https://www.oecd.org/health/health-systems/Focus-Health-Spending-2015.pdf
As a percentage of GDP Greece beats the UK (9.8 vs 8.5 in the data linked )
But then GDP per capita UK vs Greece is circa $42k vs $26k in international dollars by 2016 figures.....
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita
The UK does not want to follow the example set by Greece!
Comparing international differences in health care outcomes is fraught with difficulty but there is some indication to suggest that the UK is significantly better than Greece here as well
... For example
http://www.health.org.uk/sites/heal...SCompareWithHealthSystemsInOtherCountries.pdf
... Figure 5 healthy life expectancy at 65
UK about 11.5 years
Greece about 8. 5 years!
Interestingly Germany is at the bottom of the table!
This is the problem of quoting a statistic, especially in isolation, whilst ignoring or being ignorant of the context and correct interpretation of the data....
You don't get that figures from some Corbyn /momentum proganda now did you?
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That’s not really true.
SHO rates are £30 an hour in london. Hardly enough to retire on, you don’t get work everyday and it’s a hard graft with no career progression, no sick or holiday pay and you are not treated well at work if you are a locum. It’s also high risk because you don’t know the hospital or system.
I think people need to be billed for some of this stuff, I doubt any insurance companies would entertain paying for additional unnecessary days in hospital.
Ditto to people abusing A&E for stuff they could have waited to go and see their GP about. If you're going to have a private company providing urgent care GPs then let them charge for it, allow people to go there for their out of hours GP service if they like but make them pay for it if they can't be arsed to wait until the next day and go see their usual GP. If they have a genuine urgent case then put themselves forward to be triaged - but if they waste time there and it turns out they've got a sore throat, just want some prescription etc.. then there should be another bill for the nurse's time they just wasted.
Absolute nonsense.
National Insurance was introduced decades before the national health service existed. It has evolved constantly since, and is now just another form of taxation.
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I'm positive if you took a straw poll of a 100 people in the street, the vast majority would believe NI = NHS and Vehicle Tax = Road Tax
That's irrelevant. Why keep perpetuating the myth and fostering ignorance? It just makes it easier for politicians to prey upon ignorance, and keep the public believing that different services are linked to and dependent upon different sources of taxation.
Even though I am at the GPs a lot, legitimately, seeing the amount of people who don't even bother turning up for their appointments makes me think that charging might not be a bad idea.
Soldato
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I wonder why hospitals and ambulances are busy at 12:30 on a Sunday morning? 
Soldato
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Maybe if a large percent of the NHS budget wasn't required to service PFI debt and pay for £1,000 fluorescent tubes, the NHS might be in better shape.
My recent experience with the NHS was pretty damned good. I saw the same consultant and staff I'd seen when on private (insurance wouldn't fund further treatment for a related issue). Saying that, I was an outpatient for the NHS - I would hate to have to stay in an NHS hospital given how overstretched the staff are in most of them.
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It's these deductions which pay for the NHS, no different in the private sector. Labour are wanting to make taxation even more punitive so that will that further disincentivise doctors don't you think?
Unfortunately at that time on a Sunday morning you're competing with the Saturday night boozers who have drank far too much, and are now lying unconscious in a ditch somewhere. They get priority over someone who is awake and responsive. My Gran had the same issue, really bad dizzy spell, unable to breathe properly brought on by chemo but as she was conscious and responsive the ambulance staff had to prioritise the drunkards first, even the paramedics said this.
Well, yes?
I've seen this myself first hand recently. My mum was in hospital for 3 weeks on a cardiology ward, and as you can imagine most of the patients in there are elderly. As my mum spent longer in there and got to know the other patients around her she told me that most of them were waiting for somewhere to take them in before they could be discharged. One lady had been there nearly a fortnight with no where to go. Sad really.
Another thing that became obvious was the health-tourism going on. A few people in there could speak no English at all, and one nurse told my mum that the woman in the bed opposite had been brought in by her family claiming she had fallen ill whilst over here on a weeks holiday. No chance she said, as it was a long term condition not something that just happened, and she was now going to be on the ward in that bed now for a minimum of 3 months at the UKs expense. She said several patients had fallen ill whilst over here visiting relatives, and this happens all the time.