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Diagnosing the NHS – politicalbetting.com
Diagnosing the NHS – politicalbetting.com
This is something that has been done many, many times before by lots of medical professionals, politicians, think tanks and other various people attached to the NHS in some way. We have had the insiders view, the outsiders view, the private healthcare view and on exceedingly rare occasions, patient views. How will this be any different? I guess it won’t, at least it won’t set out to be different for the sake of it.
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Move to an insureance based system
Take on the BMA
Use AI
Train more doctors and nurses
Start healthcare at primary school with good food and exercise.
Other European systems with insurance based funding have better outcomes than us because they have more money, newer infrastructure and more staff. My experience of the French system, which I assume you’ve also experienced, is that it’s all very impressive except for the interminable form filling at the end.
The problem is that the very last users of electric vehicles are going to be long-distance freight. Which is also why HS2 needs to be completed yesterday, as it frees up freight paths on the WC main line so that freight going from Southampton and Felixstowe heading for the midlands and North can do most of the journey by rail.
Population is now "down" to around 124 million.
Japan will not run out of people; the population will re-stabilise at a much lower level in a few decades.
This may upset Japanese nationalist politicians, but will overall be positive for quality of life.
Japan are a few decades ahead in this transition to a more sustainable population level. We'd do well to learn from them, rather than being caught on an upwards escalator propelled by mass immigration.
We might like to remember that when they complain about tax rises.
The biggest problem is that the NHS has the inertia of a fully-laden oil tanker, so there need to be parallel structures created alongside if there’s to be any noticable improvement in parliamentary term timescales. They’re also close to a single monopoly employer for many professions, so increases in numbers of these will need to come from outside the country.
I know it's been discussed a lot on here recently, but wearable health trackers are going to be massively useful in the future. They not only encourage certain types of people to be more active, but the heart-rate monitoring is just the start of what they will be able to do.
We have our own system here which lots of people want to close down . If we did we'd just have bigger queues.
I am 75 get tested annually because I failed a Lucozade test once -apparently now OK but classed as prediabetic - I take no drugs and have not changed my diet. But I get called in for annual tests because the GP practise gets paid for them. My wife 73 never sees the doctor. Better would be perhaps 3 year meetings for everyone over 60 with their GP - not the nurse - to see if we are OK, but decided by the GP rather than because he/she was paid to do extra tests.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBMoPUAeLnY
He has also invited Kamala Harris to sit down with him.
A one-size fits all rationed model isn't good and the NHS is a massive bottleneck.
Do I expect to get anywhere with this argument?
Absolutely not: the NHS is a religion.
I’m doubt the Tories are going to campaign on removing it entirely. Lets be honest, any tax rise Labour propose is going to be criticised but yet how can you argue they are not necessarily?
This is their choice not to reintroduce a reduction which was barely noticed anyway.
Of course, it means more people get chronically sick, or die.
On the other hand, just now I saw a pair of magnificent raptors down from the Alpine peaks, and as I sit here on my ryokan balcony in the regal sun I can vermillion dragonflies hovering in the golden light
A world with many fewer humans will be a wilder greener and lovelier world
There’s no culture of private medical insurance for the masses in this country and that isn’t going to change over night.
If I were paying say £2.50 per litre when I fill up that would be consistent with inflation.
Given how totally jammed up is the current NHS, I think the only way to clear the backlog is going to be to send people abroad for treatment, perhaps paid for by a limited one-off tax on something. VAT to 25% for one year might raise £30bn, for example. (It raised £160bn last year, but a lot of high-end spending might be deferred if the cut was known to be temporary). Labour should be able to sell “5p for the NHS”, and it will be largely forgotten about by 2029.
Well yeah OK, but what do we think to this as a campaign tactic just over a week out from polling day?
It's an interesting choice from Team Trump in what I think has been a MUCH better campaign compared to either 2016 or 2020.
It's a nice political attempt at framing, but the trouble is it doesn't wash because firstly it's not true and secondly your party hasn't had the message and action discipline to make it stick.
* Not on PB
I’ve not watched the whole thing, will probably listen in the car on Monday, but from the clips going around he’s not said anything totally outrageous, which is pretty good effort given it’s nearly three hours long!
And that's another point: may people are put off activities or sport because of the competitive nature of them. It doesn't need to be that way: Parkrun is a classic example of where much of the point is just taking part. I reckon there's a physical activity/sport for most people out there: they just need to find it/them.
In addition, many sorts clubs are very exclusive and competitive. This is apparently the case with some triathlon clubs (*) - some are very open to all abilities, even newbies, whereas others are only interested if you're ultra-competitive or doing Ironmans. I know one lady who stopped doing triathlons because her local club was so elitist and unwelcoming.
(*) I haven't joined one yet, but the members of my local club appear very welcoming.
When it’s your vomit, you don’t get to criticise the cleaner.
One thing: I get leaflets through the door every other week from Dominos and PapaJohns, both of which I hate. Yes, they can post what they like - and no doubt this is part of an aggressive marketing campaign - but things like this combined with JustEat and Deliveroo make it very very easy to eat shit.
How do we make it easier to eat well?
Trump spurning conventional Presidential debates on MSM to do 3hrs with Joe Rogan on YouTube and Spotify is an interesting choice.
Have no idea if this will make any difference to the eventual outcome or not.
I can't remember where, but I read one Conservative commentator musing that when the Conservatives were in office in 2010 satisfaction with the NHS had never been higher, now with Labour in office satisfaction with the NHS is in the toilet.*
* Factually true of course but conveniently omitting to consider the intervening 14 years of Conservative management of the NHS.
Rogan’s audience skews male and rural, so theoretically more likely to be Trump votes than Harris voters.
He does get something totally outrageous like 100m views and downloads, by far the most popular podcast out there. This one will likely set records for a single podcast episode, half the country will have watched it before the election.
And now they’ve just accidentally sold the garden
Nonetheless people are writing off the Dems far too easily. An awful lot of Americans fear and despise Donald Trump and would vote for chairman Mao in preference to him
They found it cheaper to get their staff treated fast and back on the job than to hire supply for a long period.
How typical that is I wouldn't know.
Trump has had a few country singers at his rallies, but not the A-list pop artists of the Harris campaign.
Rogan says that Harris has been invited, is welcome to turn up, and says he just wants to talk to her and she who she is. Trump of course was dismissive of the idea, saying that there’s no way she can talk for so long off script!
He probably has half a point, it’s a difficult decision for the Democrats to make. Rogan’s not going to let the campaign edit anything or have a room full of advisors passing her notes, and now that Trump has done three hours Harris doing half an hour would be the story.
One of the reasons payroll taxes are so stupid is that they happen profit or no profit. I would rather they increased Corporation tax - it's a stupid tax too, but at least you have to make a notional profit(*) before they steal it.
If you are running a business in a start-up or expansion phase, you generally haven't got a profit - but payroll taxes still have to be paid - and the greater they are, the slower your expansion, and the more you have to borrow whilst you try and make a go of things. This is a short-term bad effect from changing rates - in the longer term, it will just mean reduced pay for employees, as it's well known that in a steady state without rule changes 100% of the incidence of payroll taxes falls on employees.
*one of the real problems for small businesses, particularly those which are expanding, is that it's possible to make a paper profit without making a cash profit, then get clobbered for a corp tax bill without having any actual additional cash in the business with which to pay said bill.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/oct/25/private-healthcare-boom-fuelled-by-nhs-waiting-lists
The problem is that much of what is left is people who cannot travel and who have significant co morbidities. Someone on dialysis cannot go to Turkey to get a new hip.
You are right though that there isn't enough capacity in the NHS, but it needs a permanent solution not a band aid.
I'm hoping to get over to Okinawa in spring or fall. I lived in Japan as a child and speak Japanese.
TS started her career as a country singer in Nashville, which is a traditionally conservative demographic. She’s probably very middle-of-the-road in her politics.
As with Rogan, she now has a massive audience which transcends any one demographic.
https://x.com/kevinlyfather/status/1849997368277827838?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
But Bondegezou's point about public health services is one we should all remember. Add to that environmental health and pollution control more generally.
Do we know how many have retired, taken a career break for family reasons, or moved to part time due to the £100k tax nonesense?
Which means it’s time to wheel out maybe the greatest ever movie performance of any single Shakespeare soliloquy
Branagh, doing Crispin
https://youtu.be/bvFHRNGYfuo?si=__giCifwA-GOs9k7
TINGLEZ
She endorsed a Democrat in Tennessee last time round
If you're holding the mop, maybe focus on cleaning up—not tearing down the building.
And not everyone drives everywhere. Car ownership and mileage is correlated with higher incomes. Even in rural parts of the country, 20% of households don't have access to one at all and in cities like Liverpool and Newcastle it's up to 40%. The fuel duty freeze has been a regressive intervention in urban and suburban areas.
Nevertheless, fuel duty is a silly tax because it disincentives the kind of journey we want people to use cars for - longer ones in rural areas. I'd replace it entirely with some sort of congestion charging.
https://www.dw.com/en/how-to-fix-germanys-ailing-health-care-system/a-69236520
https://p.dw.com/p/4gVa4
'Germany has the highest number of hospital beds per capita in the European Union (7.9 beds per 1,000 inhabitants — EU average: 5.3) but maintaining these is expensive. According to Lauterbach, this has left many hospitals on the brink of bankruptcy. The result is that patients are being kept in hospital unnecessarily so hospitals can charge health insurers extra money — which in turn drives up the whole country's health costs and insurance contributions.
The reform means that hospitals will no longer be paid per treatment — instead, they will get a guaranteed income for making certain services available. This, it is hoped, will alleviate the financial pressure on hospitals to pack in as many operations and treatments as they can, even if they are poorly qualified to carry them out.
This measure is supposed to ensure that patients needing complex treatments are referred to specialists earlier. This, according to the Health Ministry, will reduce health costs in the long run, as patients stand a better chance of being cured and are less likely to fall victim to mistakes, as hospital staff will be less rushed and overworked. Lauterbach has claimed this reform will save tens of thousands of lives a year.
"The hospital reform is right and important," Dirk Heinrich, an ear-nose-throat specialist and chairman of the doctors' association Virchowbund, told DW. "We do have too much in-patient care, but what is happening now is way too little. Reforming the hospitals without a comprehensive outpatient treatment reform, and without emergency care reform, won't make a difference."
Eugen Brysch, chairman of patients' protection organization Deutsche Stiftung Patientenschutz was also skeptical. "In the field of outpatient medical care, elderly, chronically ill and care-dependent people will find it almost impossible to find a new doctor," he said.
"We have such an inefficient system, in no other country in Western Europe is life expectancy lower than in Germany," Lauterbach said, arguing that "centralization will improve the quality of care."'
I agree that there needs to be a much more positive approach to preventative care, but am sceptical that it will make the difference needed. The rise in obesity and diabetes etc is a worldwide phenomenon, and so is the decline in mortality from cardiac disease. The rest of the world is gorging on junk food, skiving exercise and hoping to jab themselves thin too. We are 55th of the 193 countries listed here for obesity rates: https://data.worldobesity.org/rankings/
As I pointed out in my header on the 70th Birthday of the NHS, insurance systems whether run by states or corporations are essentially re-distributive, shifting money from young healthy people to older and unhealthy people. Unless a lot of people are left without cover, the problem remains the same.
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2018/07/01/three-score-and-ten-has-the-nhs-reached-the-end-of-its-natural-life/
I think my proposal to untangle the knot to meet consumer demand, while maintaining a service for everyone of individual SIPP accounts ringfenced for health and social care is a much better one than insurance. It would be reasonable to be able to pay for gym memberships* etc from this too, but would give individual citizens a pot to pay for private healthcare and generate a better and more consumer responsive private medical system in this country.
*not that I am convinced gyms are the answer. Far better is exercise designed into life for active travel, so walking and cycling are the default.
FUCKING IMMENSE. And Branagh delivers it so well. And you too can be proud, there were a few Scotsmen in that noble English army at Agincourt
Kamala could go on that?
The other thing they'll probably do is lobby the government to increase immigration and the supply of skilled workers, who might be more willing to take lower salaries.