the nhs is a political ping pong ball with the political parties all claiming they will spend more etc etc. but none of them will do what is necessary and overhaul the whole thing, its a nightmare. the specialists all want to protect their private money making empires and work as little as possible in the nhs. the unions want in on every little decision to extract more out of the system, google the accounts of the major unions and see how much they pay themselves,nice when your members are on strike pay. systems and hospitals cant be streamlined or moved because everyone wants their own hospital in their backyard. i work in accounts and have over the years done temp work in a county pct, an nhs trust and east mids amb service and you would not beleive the amount of money wasted on stuff like car leasing schemes and repair contracts and infrastructure projects that should never have been started. one trust wanted to lease a car for a nurse trainer who worked accross a number of sites the unions insisted that if she got a car then everyone of a similar grade got one even if they worked on a single site. it cost a rediculous amount and the administration costs as it was then expanded to allow staff to get a private car through the scheme and have the cost deducted at source was one and a half full time accounts staff. i did a cost analysis of the increase in administrative costs for a trust over a 5 year period and a study of the savings that could be made by reforming the temp recruitment or bank system and boy did that open a can of worms yet the unions went mad you would think that they would want to reduce the number of temps used and the filling of permanent posts yet they fought tooth and nail to keep the bank system. so now i just ignore the politicians as no matter what they give the nhs its like feeding a black hole, until the whole thing is reformed top down it aint going to improve.
j
How true, because let’s all be clear, the NHS is not underfunded – NHS spending has risen from £78 billion, in 2006 to some £126billion + this year , and it has been rising at a greater rate in the last few years than it ever has before, nor is it being privatised, it will always be free .
Auxiliary services, which perhaps can be better & more cheaply & efficiently run by outside organisations should however be put up to competition – so that money saved can be put towards front line healthcare – that’s not privatisation of the NHS , it’s plain common sense, even the Labour Party understand this, and went down the same road.
If anyone really thinks that the NHS is better run by any political party, just look at the dreadful state of the NHS in Wales – land of my birth.
Because of an ageing population , not the fault of any particular political party, actually, more the success of healthcare generally, and a massive increase in population, mainly from immigration, ( btw I am not commenting on whether immigration is good, bad or indifferent, just that it is one reason for a population increase ), & the ‘lottery win ‘ new contracts given to GP’s by Mr. Blair, the NHS is costing more certainly, but it is not underfunded.
The problem lies not with underfunding, it is the waste of a lot of this funding ( clearly well known within the NHS) and if this can be reversed, there would be no real healthcare problems – the funding is there, it just needs better managing.
But until this can be done, then more good money will have to be poured in – but from where?
Truth needs to be told about restrictive practices, management waste, inefficiencies and costs, but no party is brave enough, ’cause the truth will lose them votes!
Ironically, the NHS is still the envy of the world, so front line staff are clearly doing us proud!
When the NHS was founded back in1948 it had a budget of
£437m, which is about £9 Billion at today’s value
£64.17 billion in 2003/04
£109.72 billion in 2013/14,
£113.03 billion 2014/15 ,
and in 2015/6 around £115.4 Billion, to the £126 billion quoted above!
So no matter how many times ’’the terrible state of the NHS and the underfunding’ is dropped into every conversation, it is still an out & out deception ,designed to frighten the elderly & the vulnerable- just another Project Fear trying to influence voting?