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General UK politics VIII - The Last Tory

Jack by the hedge said:
It means they have a perverse incentive to have too few GPs in the practice, so I can't get to see a doctor when I want to. Which is Garrison's point. I don't want to smash the NHS because of the parts that aren't working. I want them fixed.
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Incorrect. It means patients will receive more treatment than is necessary. Healthcare is something the free market can only ever make worse because:

1) Consumers often need healthcare in a particular time frame.
2) Consumers have insufficient knowledge to make informed choices about want and how much of it they need.

GP practices are currently funded based on the number of patients they have on their lists. Whether you see your GP once every decade or ten times a week makes no difference to the amount of money they get given. For GP partners this funding model theoretically provides an incentive to keep their patient population as healthy as possible to maximise their profit. New GP service providers cherry-pick the healthiest patients and dump the sick patients on regular GP surgeries. A better funding model would probably be to put every GP on a salary and get rid of the partnership model.

One reason you can't see a GP when you want to is that many GPs don't work more than 2-3 days a week because (a) working full time (8 sessions = 4 days a week for a GP) is too stressful and (b) they are paid so well they don't need to. Obviously the more GPs who go part time puts more stress on the full time GPs, who will then want to reduce their workload by going part time...
 
How can I receive more treatment than is necessary when I can't get an appointment?

Anyway, this digression emerged from what did John Prescott ever do for us? and as I recall, when he was last in government they had targets for being able to see your GP within 48 hours which sounds entirely fantastical now.
 
Jack by the hedge said:
How can I receive more treatment than is necessary when I can't get an appointment?

Anyway, this digression emerged from what did John Prescott ever do for us? and as I recall, when he was last in government they had targets for being able to see your GP within 48 hours which sounds entirely fantastical now.
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Reforms New Labour put in place and were continued by the Conservative party have lead directly to the crisis in the NHS.

We have been living in what is effectively a one party state that primarily represents the interests of the ultra-wealthy for over twenty five years now.

The current lot don't even seem to care about being seen to be behaving respectably; they merely assert that the bribes they take aren't bribes.
 
Andy_Ross said:
Bollocks.
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So the marketisation of the NHS and outsourcing to private providers, which was expanded under New Labour and progressed ever since have been a success?

There are some services that the private sector will never be able to provide efficiently, yet ever since Blair the Labour party has toed the neoliberal line and continued to privatise the state, its assets and regulate the private sector ever more lightly.

Our politicians misrepresent and lie to us constantly with one eye on those cushy roles on the board of companies they help out while in office.

Great news! Alan Milburn is going to advise on healthcare. What's he been doing since he was Health Secretary?

en.wikipedia.org

Alan Milburn - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

<snip>

In 2013 Milburn joined PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) as Chair of PwC's UK Health Industry Oversight Board, whose objective is to drive change in the health sector, and assist PwC in growing its presence in the health market.[27][28] Milburn continued to be chairman of the European Advisory Board at Bridgepoint Capital, whose activities include financing private health care companies providing services ito the NHS,[29][30] and continued as a member of the Healthcare Advisory Panel at Lloyds Pharmacy.[31][32] As of 2022 he remains a Senior Adviser to PwC.[33]
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Wake up.
 
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The current nonsense with the petition just illustrates how much worse the media has gotten since the last labour government was in power. The utter dishonesty and manipulation is absurd, manufacturing stories out of whole cloth and creating their own alternate reality.
 
Andy_Ross said:
Starmer has to prepare for a snap election apparently.
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I'd like to see the Venn diagram of the people calling for a rerun of the election and those Brexiters who wouldn't countenance a second referendum (for much more valid reasons). Some people are surprisingly naive, or more likely disingenuous, about how our parliamentary democracy works.
 
Someone should tell Elon that Tommy Robinson has been jailed 4 times

For kicking a policeman in the head, for committing £160K mortgage fraud, for contempt of court and ironically, being an illegal immigrant to the USA when he travelled there on a false passport.
 
Looks like it's all over for Starmer, Michael Caine has endorsed the petition, from his home in the USA.
 
It's funny how celebrities should keep out of politics, until it's politics you agree with.
 
Ivor the Engineer said:
Incorrect. It means patients will receive more treatment than is necessary. Healthcare is something the free market can only ever make worse because:

1) Consumers often need healthcare in a particular time frame.
2) Consumers have insufficient knowledge to make informed choices about want and how much of it they need.

GP practices are currently funded based on the number of patients they have on their lists. Whether you see your GP once every decade or ten times a week makes no difference to the amount of money they get given. For GP partners this funding model theoretically provides an incentive to keep their patient population as healthy as possible to maximise their profit. New GP service providers cherry-pick the healthiest patients and dump the sick patients on regular GP surgeries. A better funding model would probably be to put every GP on a salary and get rid of the partnership model.

One reason you can't see a GP when you want to is that many GPs don't work more than 2-3 days a week because (a) working full time (8 sessions = 4 days a week for a GP) is too stressful and (b) they are paid so well they don't need to. Obviously the more GPs who go part time puts more stress on the full time GPs, who will then want to reduce their workload by going part time...
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My son's girlfriend is about to qualify as a GP and from what I've been told, the situation is exactly as you outline above, although I don't know about being 'paid well'. Stressful, certainly. And the junior doctors dispute was no joke. But I don't see it is something that goes back to Blair.

I pay a nominal fee for healthcare here but people are free to go private (which I have done now and then). Most people at work are covered by health insurance so can afford to pay for private dentists and health treatment and claim reimbursement (but it is nothing like the US system that leaves people bankrupt). I still work for a UK firm so I don't have the cover. Some services such as vaccinations are entirely free for certain age groups. But the health service does struggle: shortage of qualified staff; requiring overseas help, health centres closing down or amalgamating with others further away. Income tax is as much as 40% here but the welfare state is still struggling. Not an easy solution, as it takes years to train people up and equipment is not cheap.
 
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