When do we scrap the NHS and copy the German system?
May not be easy and possibly not even advisable to 'copy' the whole shebang, but it may be useful to look at certain issues and take some ideas away from that.
Like level of funding for example.
At the moment they are advertising for diversity and inclusion staff - salary over double that being paid nurses
Money is important, but so is a decent set of priorities
It's hardly surprising that an organisation with over 1.5m employees has some people dedicated to impriving diversity and inclusion.
Presumably you'd be fine with a properly funded NHS if they just dropped these roles?
I want them to have a proper set of priorities
Money goes further if spent on the most important things does it not?
I am not sure how much is spent on things you don't consider are priorities but I suspect for the example quoted it a miniscule proporton of the overall spend.
More importantly who decides what is a proper set of priorities? I doubt you and I would ever agree.
It is not just non jobs however, the nhs also does things like tattoo removal etc. Frankly as someone with tattoos I think if I want them gone it should be me paying for it not the tax payer
I agree. But none of this should be used as an excuse not to fund the NHS at German levels of funding if we want German levels of health care.
Would be crazy to spend at Germans levels without changing our system over to the German one and disbanding the NHS.
Why?
Why do assume the only reason it functioned better is money?
Would pumping twice as much money into british leyland have turned it into volkwagen I think we know the answer is no
But of course the NHS is actually tremendously efficient. We spend only 2/3rds of what Germany spends per person on health care and yet get overall outcomes that are much better than 2/3rds as good as Germany's.
So, slow hand clap for destroying your own argument
Only if you're happy with a health service 'not quite as good as Germany's'.
Personally I'd like our health service to be the best in the world... which it could be for a lot less per person than many other country's. But the government have for too long tried to do it on the cheap.
Anyway, I don't know why I bother arguing with you. The argument is over, you've lost. The NHS is not going to be dismantled; it's going to be funded much better going forward. Covid-19 will see to that.
So we will persist with a sub-standard health service just because.
No, it's going to be better funded going forward.
I believe most of the shortcomings in service are caused or exacerbated by inadequate funding.
I guess you think it's an inate feature of a state run service?
As I thought, the answer is always more money.
Well, that was what Boris and his Brexiteers promised...
When do we scrap the NHS and copy the German system?
May not be easy and possibly not even advisable to 'copy' the whole shebang, but it may be useful to look at certain issues and take some ideas away from that.
Like level of funding for example.
At the moment they are advertising for diversity and inclusion staff - salary over double that being paid nurses
Money is important, but so is a decent set of priorities
It's hardly surprising that an organisation with over 1.5m employees has some people dedicated to impriving diversity and inclusion.
Presumably you'd be fine with a properly funded NHS if they just dropped these roles?
I want them to have a proper set of priorities
Money goes further if spent on the most important things does it not?
I am not sure how much is spent on things you don't consider are priorities but I suspect for the example quoted it a miniscule proporton of the overall spend.
More importantly who decides what is a proper set of priorities? I doubt you and I would ever agree.
It is not just non jobs however, the nhs also does things like tattoo removal etc. Frankly as someone with tattoos I think if I want them gone it should be me paying for it not the tax payer
I agree. But none of this should be used as an excuse not to fund the NHS at German levels of funding if we want German levels of health care.
Would be crazy to spend at Germans levels without changing our system over to the German one and disbanding the NHS.
Why?
Why do assume the only reason it functioned better is money?
Would pumping twice as much money into british leyland have turned it into volkwagen I think we know the answer is no
But of course the NHS is actually tremendously efficient. We spend only 2/3rds of what Germany spends per person on health care and yet get overall outcomes that are much better than 2/3rds as good as Germany's.
So, slow hand clap for destroying your own argument
Only if you're happy with a health service 'not quite as good as Germany's'.
Personally I'd like our health service to be the best in the world... which it could be for a lot less per person than many other country's. But the government have for too long tried to do it on the cheap.
Anyway, I don't know why I bother arguing with you. The argument is over, you've lost. The NHS is not going to be dismantled; it's going to be funded much better going forward. Covid-19 will see to that.
So we will persist with a sub-standard health service just because.
No, it's going to be better funded going forward.
I believe most of the shortcomings in service are caused or exacerbated by inadequate funding.
I guess you think it's an inate feature of a state run service?
As I thought, the answer is always more money.
Finally, you've got it! Well done.
So if the answer is always money then why is the US system so rubbish? And no comments about private vs public etc. You have just said the answer is always more money.
If there's no vaccine, then perhaps 60-70% are going to get this virus.
Given what we know about the disease, shouldn't the government be doing everything it can to try and get the overweight and obese on a diet (and exercising)?
Yes social distancing, but that's playing for time. If you're getting the disease, you want to be in the best shape you can be to beat it right?
What do you suggest the government do?
I mean at a minimum get someone senior in the press conferences to say: if you're overweight, now is the time to deal with it. You can help yourself, and help the NHS.
I don't want to blame overweight people and I appreciate that can be a tricky line to walk at times, but we should be broadcasting this increases your likelihood of dying.
Other measures could be to allow more time outside for the overweight!? Try to get supermarkets to stock less unhealthy food? Or ban advertising of alcohol for now? There must be a few public health interventions we could try.
Not only get those who are overweight to try and shift the extra pounds, but with so many people working from home, try to give advice on how not to pile it on.
As a long time WFHer, I know how easy it is having the kitchen so close. You really have to discipline yourself.
Yeah, and having a cheeky beer after work is so much easier now. Previously I was too exhausted to even bother.
When do we scrap the NHS and copy the German system?
May not be easy and possibly not even advisable to 'copy' the whole shebang, but it may be useful to look at certain issues and take some ideas away from that.
Like level of funding for example.
At the moment they are advertising for diversity and inclusion staff - salary over double that being paid nurses
Money is important, but so is a decent set of priorities
It's hardly surprising that an organisation with over 1.5m employees has some people dedicated to impriving diversity and inclusion.
Presumably you'd be fine with a properly funded NHS if they just dropped these roles?
I want them to have a proper set of priorities
Money goes further if spent on the most important things does it not?
I am not sure how much is spent on things you don't consider are priorities but I suspect for the example quoted it a miniscule proporton of the overall spend.
More importantly who decides what is a proper set of priorities? I doubt you and I would ever agree.
It is not just non jobs however, the nhs also does things like tattoo removal etc. Frankly as someone with tattoos I think if I want them gone it should be me paying for it not the tax payer
I agree. But none of this should be used as an excuse not to fund the NHS at German levels of funding if we want German levels of health care.
Would be crazy to spend at Germans levels without changing our system over to the German one and disbanding the NHS.
Why?
Why do assume the only reason it functioned better is money?
Would pumping twice as much money into british leyland have turned it into volkwagen I think we know the answer is no
But of course the NHS is actually tremendously efficient. We spend only 2/3rds of what Germany spends per person on health care and yet get overall outcomes that are much better than 2/3rds as good as Germany's.
So, slow hand clap for destroying your own argument
Only if you're happy with a health service 'not quite as good as Germany's'.
Personally I'd like our health service to be the best in the world... which it could be for a lot less per person than many other country's. But the government have for too long tried to do it on the cheap.
Anyway, I don't know why I bother arguing with you. The argument is over, you've lost. The NHS is not going to be dismantled; it's going to be funded much better going forward. Covid-19 will see to that.
So we will persist with a sub-standard health service just because.
No, it's going to be better funded going forward.
I believe most of the shortcomings in service are caused or exacerbated by inadequate funding.
I guess you think it's an inate feature of a state run service?
So as I said we will persist with a sub-standard health service. And we will pay a lot more for it to stay sub-standard.
As long as people like you wrongly attribute the failures of the system to a lack of funding we will never see it improve.
And no it is not an innate feature of a state run system. It is an innate feature of a system that is treated less like a public service and more like a religion where anyone who criticises it is condemned as being a shill for a US type system.
Serious question, I seemed to remember a few regular posters like GideonWise had contracted it. Have they all been seen posting?
Haven't seen @JackW about since before the election! Hope he and his family are doing well but fear I'm typing into the ether. If you do happen to be reading ... miss you Jack! Right now we could really do with your kind of injection of perspective and wit!
If there's no vaccine, then perhaps 60-70% are going to get this virus.
Given what we know about the disease, shouldn't the government be doing everything it can to try and get the overweight and obese on a diet (and exercising)?
Yes social distancing, but that's playing for time. If you're getting the disease, you want to be in the best shape you can be to beat it right?
I have the flu jab every year and, so far it's worked but I understand it has limited efficiency, I believe 60%. I'm sure Foxy will put me right. Pending Foxy's advice, I reckon cure is better than prevention.
Eh, the flu jab isn't a cure? And we don't have a vaccine at all for COVID and may never.
And if you go to all the trouble of getting into great shape and then they come up with a vaccine, well you'll be healthier and probably happier.
If there's no vaccine, then perhaps 60-70% are going to get this virus.
Given what we know about the disease, shouldn't the government be doing everything it can to try and get the overweight and obese on a diet (and exercising)?
Yes social distancing, but that's playing for time. If you're getting the disease, you want to be in the best shape you can be to beat it right?
What do you suggest the government do?
I mean at a minimum get someone senior in the press conferences to say: if you're overweight, now is the time to deal with it. You can help yourself, and help the NHS.
I don't want to blame overweight people and I appreciate that can be a tricky line to walk at times, but we should be broadcasting this increases your likelihood of dying.
Other measures could be to allow more time outside for the overweight!? Try to get supermarkets to stock less unhealthy food? Or ban advertising of alcohol for now? There must be a few public health interventions we could try.
Not only get those who are overweight to try and shift the extra pounds, but with so many people working from home, try to give advice on how not to pile it on.
As a long time WFHer, I know how easy it is having the kitchen so close. You really have to discipline yourself.
Yes, i think you're absolutely right about the temptations of WFH. Maybe I've missed it, but I have not seen any govt advice on this. I do remember Whitty advising its a great time quit smoking.
When do we scrap the NHS and copy the German system?
May not be easy and possibly not even advisable to 'copy' the whole shebang, but it may be useful to look at certain issues and take some ideas away from that.
Like level of funding for example.
At the moment they are advertising for diversity and inclusion staff - salary over double that being paid nurses
Money is important, but so is a decent set of priorities
It's hardly surprising that an organisation with over 1.5m employees has some people dedicated to impriving diversity and inclusion.
Presumably you'd be fine with a properly funded NHS if they just dropped these roles?
I want them to have a proper set of priorities
Money goes further if spent on the most important things does it not?
I am not sure how much is spent on things you don't consider are priorities but I suspect for the example quoted it a miniscule proporton of the overall spend.
More importantly who decides what is a proper set of priorities? I doubt you and I would ever agree.
It is not just non jobs however, the nhs also does things like tattoo removal etc. Frankly as someone with tattoos I think if I want them gone it should be me paying for it not the tax payer
I agree. But none of this should be used as an excuse not to fund the NHS at German levels of funding if we want German levels of health care.
Would be crazy to spend at Germans levels without changing our system over to the German one and disbanding the NHS.
Why?
Why do assume the only reason it functioned better is money?
Would pumping twice as much money into british leyland have turned it into volkwagen I think we know the answer is no
But of course the NHS is actually tremendously efficient. We spend only 2/3rds of what Germany spends per person on health care and yet get overall outcomes that are much better than 2/3rds as good as Germany's.
The financing of the German healthcare non-system is an absolute nightmare.
The best approach would surely be an NHS (with its monolithic organisation and economies of scale) with German level funding!
Not necessarily, but you cannot simply cut and paste a system from one country to the next, whether Health, Education or political. Each country has arrived at what it has got for a variety of historical, cultural, economic and political reasons.
When do we scrap the NHS and copy the German system?
May not be easy and possibly not even advisable to 'copy' the whole shebang, but it may be useful to look at certain issues and take some ideas away from that.
Like level of funding for example.
At the moment they are advertising for diversity and inclusion staff - salary over double that being paid nurses
Money is important, but so is a decent set of priorities
It's hardly surprising that an organisation with over 1.5m employees has some people dedicated to impriving diversity and inclusion.
Presumably you'd be fine with a properly funded NHS if they just dropped these roles?
I want them to have a proper set of priorities
Money goes further if spent on the most important things does it not?
I am not sure how much is spent on things you don't consider are priorities but I suspect for the example quoted it a miniscule proporton of the overall spend.
More importantly who decides what is a proper set of priorities? I doubt you and I would ever agree.
It is not just non jobs however, the nhs also does things like tattoo removal etc. Frankly as someone with tattoos I think if I want them gone it should be me paying for it not the tax payer
I agree. But none of this should be used as an excuse not to fund the NHS at German levels of funding if we want German levels of health care.
Would be crazy to spend at Germans levels without changing our system over to the German one and disbanding the NHS.
Why?
Why do assume the only reason it functioned better is money?
Would pumping twice as much money into british leyland have turned it into volkwagen I think we know the answer is no
But of course the NHS is actually tremendously efficient. We spend only 2/3rds of what Germany spends per person on health care and yet get overall outcomes that are much better than 2/3rds as good as Germany's.
But surely that is just proof that throwing money at the system is not necessarily the answer.
There are certainly a few easy wins we could learn from European health systems such as charging for GPs visits and then refunding for all but the very rich as long as they actually attend. Seems a very good way to cut down on missed appointments in a stroke.
The cost of the bureaucracy?
Well it seems to work very well in other countries with excellent health care systems.
Actually our whole GP system is rubbish
Can we agree on "could be better"?
I am actually of the view that, unlike almost any other part of the health service, the GP system is probably just unfit for purpose. Before all of this Covid stuff blew up if a Polish colleague wanted to have something sorted out urgently they would get on a plane and go back to Poland. One of the reasons for this is because the GPs system is not set up there as a gatekeeper to prevent people seeing specialists. Which is very much how it operates here.
As some of you may remember I had skin cancer a few years ago. I saw 4 different GPs at my local surgery 3 of whom refused to put me forward to a specialist and had me try various treatments at home. It was a year before I saw a specialist at Queens and she promptly scolded me for not having gone to see her sooner. Like I had any choice.
When do we scrap the NHS and copy the German system?
May not be easy and possibly not even advisable to 'copy' the whole shebang, but it may be useful to look at certain issues and take some ideas away from that.
Like level of funding for example.
At the moment they are advertising for diversity and inclusion staff - salary over double that being paid nurses
Money is important, but so is a decent set of priorities
It's hardly surprising that an organisation with over 1.5m employees has some people dedicated to impriving diversity and inclusion.
Presumably you'd be fine with a properly funded NHS if they just dropped these roles?
I want them to have a proper set of priorities
Money goes further if spent on the most important things does it not?
I am not sure how much is spent on things you don't consider are priorities but I suspect for the example quoted it a miniscule proporton of the overall spend.
More importantly who decides what is a proper set of priorities? I doubt you and I would ever agree.
It is not just non jobs however, the nhs also does things like tattoo removal etc. Frankly as someone with tattoos I think if I want them gone it should be me paying for it not the tax payer
I agree. But none of this should be used as an excuse not to fund the NHS at German levels of funding if we want German levels of health care.
Would be crazy to spend at Germans levels without changing our system over to the German one and disbanding the NHS.
The Germans have always been good at avoiding paying towards the good of others and lapping up whatever goodies others surrender to them.
Well spotted, and just imagine how many ventilators, how much PPE the 350 trillion quid the Fourth Reich extorted weekly from your coffers may have bought the NHS.
The government has been trying to reduce the level of obesity (and therefore diabetes) for about 30 years and it's only got worse during that time. Odd, because the government campaign against smoking was a big success during the same period.
If there's no vaccine, then perhaps 60-70% are going to get this virus.
Given what we know about the disease, shouldn't the government be doing everything it can to try and get the overweight and obese on a diet (and exercising)?
Yes social distancing, but that's playing for time. If you're getting the disease, you want to be in the best shape you can be to beat it right?
What do you suggest the government do?
I mean at a minimum get someone senior in the press conferences to say: if you're overweight, now is the time to deal with it. You can help yourself, and help the NHS.
I don't want to blame overweight people and I appreciate that can be a tricky line to walk at times, but we should be broadcasting this increases your likelihood of dying.
Other measures could be to allow more time outside for the overweight!? Try to get supermarkets to stock less unhealthy food? Or ban advertising of alcohol for now? There must be a few public health interventions we could try.
Not only get those who are overweight to try and shift the extra pounds, but with so many people working from home, try to give advice on how not to pile it on.
As a long time WFHer, I know how easy it is having the kitchen so close. You really have to discipline yourself.
Yeah, and having a cheeky beer after work is so much easier now. Previously I was too exhausted to even bother.
My weakness was tucking into Mrs U's baked goods. Every time I would go to get coffee, very easy just help yourself to a slice of cake or a muffin.
I went to intermittent fasting about 3 years ago and find that works well for me as I have very specific eating window. I don't know if I buy into all the supposed extra health benefits of IF that some gurus try to push, but it definitely helps limits your calorie intake.
If there's no vaccine, then perhaps 60-70% are going to get this virus.
Given what we know about the disease, shouldn't the government be doing everything it can to try and get the overweight and obese on a diet (and exercising)?
Yes social distancing, but that's playing for time. If you're getting the disease, you want to be in the best shape you can be to beat it right?
What do you suggest the government do?
I mean at a minimum get someone senior in the press conferences to say: if you're overweight, now is the time to deal with it. You can help yourself, and help the NHS.
I don't want to blame overweight people and I appreciate that can be a tricky line to walk at times, but we should be broadcasting this increases your likelihood of dying.
Other measures could be to allow more time outside for the overweight!? Try to get supermarkets to stock less unhealthy food? Or ban advertising of alcohol for now? There must be a few public health interventions we could try.
We talked about this a year or so ago. Obesity kills regardless of covid. And it cost the country a fortune.
We should have some sort of calorie tax imo. Everyone can have a personal allowance of 2000 calories (paid as a UI?). Then tax calories like hell.
It may not cut obesity that much but it would raise a lot of money to help pay for the consequences.
I don't think we have the govt capacity to implement something like that now. Maybe in future. But we could ban advertising of alcohol. We could use free advertising to pump out public health messaging.
When do we scrap the NHS and copy the German system?
May not be easy and possibly not even advisable to 'copy' the whole shebang, but it may be useful to look at certain issues and take some ideas away from that.
Like level of funding for example.
At the moment they are advertising for diversity and inclusion staff - salary over double that being paid nurses
Money is important, but so is a decent set of priorities
It's hardly surprising that an organisation with over 1.5m employees has some people dedicated to impriving diversity and inclusion.
Presumably you'd be fine with a properly funded NHS if they just dropped these roles?
I want them to have a proper set of priorities
Money goes further if spent on the most important things does it not?
I am not sure how much is spent on things you don't consider are priorities but I suspect for the example quoted it a miniscule proporton of the overall spend.
More importantly who decides what is a proper set of priorities? I doubt you and I would ever agree.
It is not just non jobs however, the nhs also does things like tattoo removal etc. Frankly as someone with tattoos I think if I want them gone it should be me paying for it not the tax payer
I agree. But none of this should be used as an excuse not to fund the NHS at German levels of funding if we want German levels of health care.
Would be crazy to spend at Germans levels without changing our system over to the German one and disbanding the NHS.
Why?
Why do assume the only reason it functioned better is money?
Would pumping twice as much money into british leyland have turned it into volkwagen I think we know the answer is no
But of course the NHS is actually tremendously efficient. We spend only 2/3rds of what Germany spends per person on health care and yet get overall outcomes that are much better than 2/3rds as good as Germany's.
So, slow hand clap for destroying your own argument
Only if you're happy with a health service 'not quite as good as Germany's'.
Personally I'd like our health service to be the best in the world... which it could be for a lot less per person than many other country's. But the government have for too long tried to do it on the cheap.
Anyway, I don't know why I bother arguing with you. The argument is over, you've lost. The NHS is not going to be dismantled; it's going to be funded much better going forward. Covid-19 will see to that.
So we will persist with a sub-standard health service just because.
No, it's going to be better funded going forward.
I believe most of the shortcomings in service are caused or exacerbated by inadequate funding.
I guess you think it's an inate feature of a state run service?
As I thought, the answer is always more money.
Finally, you've got it! Well done.
So if the answer is always money then why is the US system so rubbish? And no comments about private vs public etc. You have just said the answer is always more money.
The NHS is a very effective way to provide health care. It is delivering quite good care very cheaply, relative to our developed country peers. IT could deliver excellent health care if it weren't forever cash-starved.
Oh, and by the way, this argument is now won - Covid-19 has seen to that.
If there's no vaccine, then perhaps 60-70% are going to get this virus.
Given what we know about the disease, shouldn't the government be doing everything it can to try and get the overweight and obese on a diet (and exercising)?
Yes social distancing, but that's playing for time. If you're getting the disease, you want to be in the best shape you can be to beat it right?
I have the flu jab every year and, so far it's worked but I understand it has limited efficiency, I believe 60%. I'm sure Foxy will put me right. Pending Foxy's advice, I reckon cure is better than prevention.
Eh, the flu jab isn't a cure? And we don't have a vaccine at all for COVID and may never.
And if you go to all the trouble of getting into great shape and then they come up with a vaccine, well you'll be healthier and probably happier.
When do we scrap the NHS and copy the German system?
May not be easy and possibly not even advisable to 'copy' the whole shebang, but it may be useful to look at certain issues and take some ideas away from that.
Like level of funding for example.
At the moment they are advertising for diversity and inclusion staff - salary over double that being paid nurses
Money is important, but so is a decent set of priorities
It's hardly surprising that an organisation with over 1.5m employees has some people dedicated to impriving diversity and inclusion.
Presumably you'd be fine with a properly funded NHS if they just dropped these roles?
I want them to have a proper set of priorities
Money goes further if spent on the most important things does it not?
I am not sure how much is spent on things you don't consider are priorities but I suspect for the example quoted it a miniscule proporton of the overall spend.
More importantly who decides what is a proper set of priorities? I doubt you and I would ever agree.
It is not just non jobs however, the nhs also does things like tattoo removal etc. Frankly as someone with tattoos I think if I want them gone it should be me paying for it not the tax payer
I agree. But none of this should be used as an excuse not to fund the NHS at German levels of funding if we want German levels of health care.
Would be crazy to spend at Germans levels without changing our system over to the German one and disbanding the NHS.
Why?
Why do assume the only reason it functioned better is money?
Would pumping twice as much money into british leyland have turned it into volkwagen I think we know the answer is no
But of course the NHS is actually tremendously efficient. We spend only 2/3rds of what Germany spends per person on health care and yet get overall outcomes that are much better than 2/3rds as good as Germany's.
So, slow hand clap for destroying your own argument
Only if you're happy with a health service 'not quite as good as Germany's'.
Personally I'd like our health service to be the best in the world... which it could be for a lot less per person than many other country's. But the government have for too long tried to do it on the cheap.
Anyway, I don't know why I bother arguing with you. The argument is over, you've lost. The NHS is not going to be dismantled; it's going to be funded much better going forward. Covid-19 will see to that.
So we will persist with a sub-standard health service just because.
No, it's going to be better funded going forward.
I believe most of the shortcomings in service are caused or exacerbated by inadequate funding.
I guess you think it's an inate feature of a state run service?
As I thought, the answer is always more money.
Finally, you've got it! Well done.
So if the answer is always money then why is the US system so rubbish? And no comments about private vs public etc. You have just said the answer is always more money.
The NHS is a very effective way to provide health care. It is delivering quite good care very cheaply, relative to our developed country peers. IT could deliver excellent health care if it weren't forever cash-starved.
Oh, and by the way, this argument is now won - Covid-19 has seen to that.
The government has been trying to reduce the level of obesity (and therefore diabetes) for about 30 years and it's only got worse during that time. Odd, because the government campaign against smoking was a big success during the same period.
As I understand it, the German success with Covid-19 is down to higher rates of testing. That is down to Germany being the centre of EU testing capability, which reflects on industrial strategy not Health spending. So we should spend more on UK based testing capability and not get all ideological on relative health spending. Discuss.
If there's no vaccine, then perhaps 60-70% are going to get this virus.
Given what we know about the disease, shouldn't the government be doing everything it can to try and get the overweight and obese on a diet (and exercising)?
Yes social distancing, but that's playing for time. If you're getting the disease, you want to be in the best shape you can be to beat it right?
I have the flu jab every year and, so far it's worked but I understand it has limited efficiency, I believe 60%. I'm sure Foxy will put me right. Pending Foxy's advice, I reckon cure is better than prevention.
Eh, the flu jab isn't a cure? And we don't have a vaccine at all for COVID and may never.
And if you go to all the trouble of getting into great shape and then they come up with a vaccine, well you'll be healthier and probably happier.
Flu jab efficacy varies from year to year as the manufacturers have to anticipate which strains are going to be a problem in 6 months time. Flu viruses mutate rather quicker than most.
If there's no vaccine, then perhaps 60-70% are going to get this virus.
Given what we know about the disease, shouldn't the government be doing everything it can to try and get the overweight and obese on a diet (and exercising)?
Yes social distancing, but that's playing for time. If you're getting the disease, you want to be in the best shape you can be to beat it right?
I have the flu jab every year and, so far it's worked but I understand it has limited efficiency, I believe 60%. I'm sure Foxy will put me right. Pending Foxy's advice, I reckon cure is better than prevention.
Eh, the flu jab isn't a cure? And we don't have a vaccine at all for COVID and may never.
And if you go to all the trouble of getting into great shape and then they come up with a vaccine, well you'll be healthier and probably happier.
When do we scrap the NHS and copy the German system?
May not be easy and possibly not even advisable to 'copy' the whole shebang, but it may be useful to look at certain issues and take some ideas away from that.
Like level of funding for example.
At the moment they are advertising for diversity and inclusion staff - salary over double that being paid nurses
Money is important, but so is a decent set of priorities
It's hardly surprising that an organisation with over 1.5m employees has some people dedicated to impriving diversity and inclusion.
Presumably you'd be fine with a properly funded NHS if they just dropped these roles?
I want them to have a proper set of priorities
Money goes further if spent on the most important things does it not?
I am not sure how much is spent on things you don't consider are priorities but I suspect for the example quoted it a miniscule proporton of the overall spend.
More importantly who decides what is a proper set of priorities? I doubt you and I would ever agree.
It is not just non jobs however, the nhs also does things like tattoo removal etc. Frankly as someone with tattoos I think if I want them gone it should be me paying for it not the tax payer
I agree. But none of this should be used as an excuse not to fund the NHS at German levels of funding if we want German levels of health care.
Would be crazy to spend at Germans levels without changing our system over to the German one and disbanding the NHS.
Why?
Why do assume the only reason it functioned better is money?
Would pumping twice as much money into british leyland have turned it into volkwagen I think we know the answer is no
But of course the NHS is actually tremendously efficient. We spend only 2/3rds of what Germany spends per person on health care and yet get overall outcomes that are much better than 2/3rds as good as Germany's.
So, slow hand clap for destroying your own argument
Only if you're happy with a health service 'not quite as good as Germany's'.
Personally I'd like our health service to be the best in the world... which it could be for a lot less per person than many other country's. But the government have for too long tried to do it on the cheap.
Anyway, I don't know why I bother arguing with you. The argument is over, you've lost. The NHS is not going to be dismantled; it's going to be funded much better going forward. Covid-19 will see to that.
So we will persist with a sub-standard health service just because.
No, it's going to be better funded going forward.
I believe most of the shortcomings in service are caused or exacerbated by inadequate funding.
I guess you think it's an inate feature of a state run service?
As I thought, the answer is always more money.
Finally, you've got it! Well done.
So if the answer is always money then why is the US system so rubbish? And no comments about private vs public etc. You have just said the answer is always more money.
The NHS is a very effective way to provide health care. It is delivering quite good care very cheaply, relative to our developed country peers. IT could deliver excellent health care if it weren't forever cash-starved.
Oh, and by the way, this argument is now won - Covid-19 has seen to that.
Oh and your 'effective provider' is 10th out of 11 first world countries in the very basic measure of keeping people alive. The only country with worse clinical outcomes than the UK is the one that spends more than any other country on earth on its health care - the USA.
When do we scrap the NHS and copy the German system?
May not be easy and possibly not even advisable to 'copy' the whole shebang, but it may be useful to look at certain issues and take some ideas away from that.
Like level of funding for example.
At the moment they are advertising for diversity and inclusion staff - salary over double that being paid nurses
Money is important, but so is a decent set of priorities
It's hardly surprising that an organisation with over 1.5m employees has some people dedicated to impriving diversity and inclusion.
Presumably you'd be fine with a properly funded NHS if they just dropped these roles?
I want them to have a proper set of priorities
Money goes further if spent on the most important things does it not?
I am not sure how much is spent on things you don't consider are priorities but I suspect for the example quoted it a miniscule proporton of the overall spend.
More importantly who decides what is a proper set of priorities? I doubt you and I would ever agree.
It is not just non jobs however, the nhs also does things like tattoo removal etc. Frankly as someone with tattoos I think if I want them gone it should be me paying for it not the tax payer
I agree. But none of this should be used as an excuse not to fund the NHS at German levels of funding if we want German levels of health care.
Would be crazy to spend at Germans levels without changing our system over to the German one and disbanding the NHS.
Why?
Why do assume the only reason it functioned better is money?
Would pumping twice as much money into british leyland have turned it into volkwagen I think we know the answer is no
But of course the NHS is actually tremendously efficient. We spend only 2/3rds of what Germany spends per person on health care and yet get overall outcomes that are much better than 2/3rds as good as Germany's.
So, slow hand clap for destroying your own argument
Only if you're happy with a health service 'not quite as good as Germany's'.
Personally I'd like our health service to be the best in the world... which it could be for a lot less per person than many other country's. But the government have for too long tried to do it on the cheap.
Anyway, I don't know why I bother arguing with you. The argument is over, you've lost. The NHS is not going to be dismantled; it's going to be funded much better going forward. Covid-19 will see to that.
So we will persist with a sub-standard health service just because.
No, it's going to be better funded going forward.
I believe most of the shortcomings in service are caused or exacerbated by inadequate funding.
I guess you think it's an inate feature of a state run service?
As I thought, the answer is always more money.
Finally, you've got it! Well done.
So if the answer is always money then why is the US system so rubbish? And no comments about private vs public etc. You have just said the answer is always more money.
The NHS is a very effective way to provide health care. It is delivering quite good care very cheaply, relative to our developed country peers. IT could deliver excellent health care if it weren't forever cash-starved.
Oh, and by the way, this argument is now won - Covid-19 has seen to that.
Thankfully you are going to be disappointed.
Lol! You gratefully believe our health service is going to continue to be underfunded?
If there's no vaccine, then perhaps 60-70% are going to get this virus.
Given what we know about the disease, shouldn't the government be doing everything it can to try and get the overweight and obese on a diet (and exercising)?
Yes social distancing, but that's playing for time. If you're getting the disease, you want to be in the best shape you can be to beat it right?
What do you suggest the government do?
I mean at a minimum get someone senior in the press conferences to say: if you're overweight, now is the time to deal with it. You can help yourself, and help the NHS.
I don't want to blame overweight people and I appreciate that can be a tricky line to walk at times, but we should be broadcasting this increases your likelihood of dying.
Other measures could be to allow more time outside for the overweight!? Try to get supermarkets to stock less unhealthy food? Or ban advertising of alcohol for now? There must be a few public health interventions we could try.
We talked about this a year or so ago. Obesity kills regardless of covid. And it cost the country a fortune.
We should have some sort of calorie tax imo. Everyone can have a personal allowance of 2000 calories (paid as a UI?). Then tax calories like hell.
It may not cut obesity that much but it would raise a lot of money to help pay for the consequences.
I don't think we have the govt capacity to implement something like that now. Maybe in future. But we could ban advertising of alcohol. We could use free advertising to pump out public health messaging.
The obese , smokers and drinkers do not cost the healthcare system more money on the contrary they cost it less. There have been studies done on it.
When do we scrap the NHS and copy the German system?
May not be easy and possibly not even advisable to 'copy' the whole shebang, but it may be useful to look at certain issues and take some ideas away from that.
Like level of funding for example.
At the moment they are advertising for diversity and inclusion staff - salary over double that being paid nurses
Money is important, but so is a decent set of priorities
It's hardly surprising that an organisation with over 1.5m employees has some people dedicated to impriving diversity and inclusion.
Presumably you'd be fine with a properly funded NHS if they just dropped these roles?
I want them to have a proper set of priorities
Money goes further if spent on the most important things does it not?
I am not sure how much is spent on things you don't consider are priorities but I suspect for the example quoted it a miniscule proporton of the overall spend.
More importantly who decides what is a proper set of priorities? I doubt you and I would ever agree.
It is not just non jobs however, the nhs also does things like tattoo removal etc. Frankly as someone with tattoos I think if I want them gone it should be me paying for it not the tax payer
I agree. But none of this should be used as an excuse not to fund the NHS at German levels of funding if we want German levels of health care.
Would be crazy to spend at Germans levels without changing our system over to the German one and disbanding the NHS.
Why?
Why do assume the only reason it functioned better is money?
Would pumping twice as much money into british leyland have turned it into volkwagen I think we know the answer is no
But of course the NHS is actually tremendously efficient. We spend only 2/3rds of what Germany spends per person on health care and yet get overall outcomes that are much better than 2/3rds as good as Germany's.
So, slow hand clap for destroying your own argument
Only if you're happy with a health service 'not quite as good as Germany's'.
Personally I'd like our health service to be the best in the world... which it could be for a lot less per person than many other country's. But the government have for too long tried to do it on the cheap.
Anyway, I don't know why I bother arguing with you. The argument is over, you've lost. The NHS is not going to be dismantled; it's going to be funded much better going forward. Covid-19 will see to that.
So we will persist with a sub-standard health service just because.
No, it's going to be better funded going forward.
I believe most of the shortcomings in service are caused or exacerbated by inadequate funding.
I guess you think it's an inate feature of a state run service?
As I thought, the answer is always more money.
Finally, you've got it! Well done.
So if the answer is always money then why is the US system so rubbish? And no comments about private vs public etc. You have just said the answer is always more money.
The NHS is a very effective way to provide health care. It is delivering quite good care very cheaply, relative to our developed country peers. IT could deliver excellent health care if it weren't forever cash-starved.
Oh, and by the way, this argument is now won - Covid-19 has seen to that.
Thankfully you are going to be disappointed.
Lol! You gratefully believe our health service is going to continue to be underfunded?
No I gratefully believe that no matter how much money you throw at it it won't get better. And at that point the zealots like you will have to face the fact that you were wrong - or rather others will have to do that thinking for you since you are clearly incapable of conceiving of that possibility.
When do we scrap the NHS and copy the German system?
May not be easy and possibly not even advisable to 'copy' the whole shebang, but it may be useful to look at certain issues and take some ideas away from that.
Like level of funding for example.
At the moment they are advertising for diversity and inclusion staff - salary over double that being paid nurses
Money is important, but so is a decent set of priorities
It's hardly surprising that an organisation with over 1.5m employees has some people dedicated to impriving diversity and inclusion.
Presumably you'd be fine with a properly funded NHS if they just dropped these roles?
I want them to have a proper set of priorities
Money goes further if spent on the most important things does it not?
I am not sure how much is spent on things you don't consider are priorities but I suspect for the example quoted it a miniscule proporton of the overall spend.
More importantly who decides what is a proper set of priorities? I doubt you and I would ever agree.
It is not just non jobs however, the nhs also does things like tattoo removal etc. Frankly as someone with tattoos I think if I want them gone it should be me paying for it not the tax payer
I agree. But none of this should be used as an excuse not to fund the NHS at German levels of funding if we want German levels of health care.
Would be crazy to spend at Germans levels without changing our system over to the German one and disbanding the NHS.
Why?
Why do assume the only reason it functioned better is money?
Would pumping twice as much money into british leyland have turned it into volkwagen I think we know the answer is no
But of course the NHS is actually tremendously efficient. We spend only 2/3rds of what Germany spends per person on health care and yet get overall outcomes that are much better than 2/3rds as good as Germany's.
But surely that is just proof that throwing money at the system is not necessarily the answer.
There are certainly a few easy wins we could learn from European health systems such as charging for GPs visits and then refunding for all but the very rich as long as they actually attend. Seems a very good way to cut down on missed appointments in a stroke.
The cost of the bureaucracy?
Well it seems to work very well in other countries with excellent health care systems.
Actually our whole GP system is rubbish
Can we agree on "could be better"?
I am actually of the view that, unlike almost any other part of the health service, the GP system is probably just unfit for purpose. Before all of this Covid stuff blew up if a Polish colleague wanted to have something sorted out urgently they would get on a plane and go back to Poland. One of the reasons for this is because the GPs system is not set up there as a gatekeeper to prevent people seeing specialists. Which is very much how it operates here.
As some of you may remember I had skin cancer a few years ago. I saw 4 different GPs at my local surgery 3 of whom refused to put me forward to a specialist and had me try various treatments at home. It was a year before I saw a specialist at Queens and she promptly scolded me for not having gone to see her sooner. Like I had any choice.
My Polish colleagues go home and pay privately to see Polish doctors - it's quick and they get really fast results / treatments. They have more doctors per head of population and it's relatively cheap because the state doesn't set prices, the market does. Is that better? I don't know.
When do we scrap the NHS and copy the German system?
May not be easy and possibly not even advisable to 'copy' the whole shebang, but it may be useful to look at certain issues and take some ideas away from that.
Like level of funding for example.
At the moment they are advertising for diversity and inclusion staff - salary over double that being paid nurses
Money is important, but so is a decent set of priorities
It's hardly surprising that an organisation with over 1.5m employees has some people dedicated to impriving diversity and inclusion.
Presumably you'd be fine with a properly funded NHS if they just dropped these roles?
I want them to have a proper set of priorities
Money goes further if spent on the most important things does it not?
I am not sure how much is spent on things you don't consider are priorities but I suspect for the example quoted it a miniscule proporton of the overall spend.
More importantly who decides what is a proper set of priorities? I doubt you and I would ever agree.
It is not just non jobs however, the nhs also does things like tattoo removal etc. Frankly as someone with tattoos I think if I want them gone it should be me paying for it not the tax payer
I agree. But none of this should be used as an excuse not to fund the NHS at German levels of funding if we want German levels of health care.
Would be crazy to spend at Germans levels without changing our system over to the German one and disbanding the NHS.
Why?
Why do assume the only reason it functioned better is money?
Would pumping twice as much money into british leyland have turned it into volkwagen I think we know the answer is no
But of course the NHS is actually tremendously efficient. We spend only 2/3rds of what Germany spends per person on health care and yet get overall outcomes that are much better than 2/3rds as good as Germany's.
So, slow hand clap for destroying your own argument
Only if you're happy with a health service 'not quite as good as Germany's'.
Personally I'd like our health service to be the best in the world... which it could be for a lot less per person than many other country's. But the government have for too long tried to do it on the cheap.
Anyway, I don't know why I bother arguing with you. The argument is over, you've lost. The NHS is not going to be dismantled; it's going to be funded much better going forward. Covid-19 will see to that.
So we will persist with a sub-standard health service just because.
No, it's going to be better funded going forward.
I believe most of the shortcomings in service are caused or exacerbated by inadequate funding.
I guess you think it's an inate feature of a state run service?
As I thought, the answer is always more money.
Finally, you've got it! Well done.
So if the answer is always money then why is the US system so rubbish? And no comments about private vs public etc. You have just said the answer is always more money.
The NHS is a very effective way to provide health care. It is delivering quite good care very cheaply, relative to our developed country peers. IT could deliver excellent health care if it weren't forever cash-starved.
Oh, and by the way, this argument is now won - Covid-19 has seen to that.
Thankfully you are going to be disappointed.
Lol! You gratefully believe our health service is going to continue to be underfunded?
No I gratefully believe that no matter how much money you throw at it it won't get better. And at that point the zealots like you will have to face the fact that you were wrong - or rather others will have to do that thinking for you since you are clearly incapable of conceiving of that possibility.
When it doesn't improve though they will just conclude they didnt throw enough money
When do we scrap the NHS and copy the German system?
May not be easy and possibly not even advisable to 'copy' the whole shebang, but it may be useful to look at certain issues and take some ideas away from that.
Like level of funding for example.
At the moment they are advertising for diversity and inclusion staff - salary over double that being paid nurses
Money is important, but so is a decent set of priorities
It's hardly surprising that an organisation with over 1.5m employees has some people dedicated to impriving diversity and inclusion.
Presumably you'd be fine with a properly funded NHS if they just dropped these roles?
I want them to have a proper set of priorities
Money goes further if spent on the most important things does it not?
I am not sure how much is spent on things you don't consider are priorities but I suspect for the example quoted it a miniscule proporton of the overall spend.
More importantly who decides what is a proper set of priorities? I doubt you and I would ever agree.
It is not just non jobs however, the nhs also does things like tattoo removal etc. Frankly as someone with tattoos I think if I want them gone it should be me paying for it not the tax payer
I agree. But none of this should be used as an excuse not to fund the NHS at German levels of funding if we want German levels of health care.
Would be crazy to spend at Germans levels without changing our system over to the German one and disbanding the NHS.
Why?
Why do assume the only reason it functioned better is money?
Would pumping twice as much money into british leyland have turned it into volkwagen I think we know the answer is no
But of course the NHS is actually tremendously efficient. We spend only 2/3rds of what Germany spends per person on health care and yet get overall outcomes that are much better than 2/3rds as good as Germany's.
But surely that is just proof that throwing money at the system is not necessarily the answer.
There are certainly a few easy wins we could learn from European health systems such as charging for GPs visits and then refunding for all but the very rich as long as they actually attend. Seems a very good way to cut down on missed appointments in a stroke.
The cost of the bureaucracy?
Well it seems to work very well in other countries with excellent health care systems.
Actually our whole GP system is rubbish
Can we agree on "could be better"?
I am actually of the view that, unlike almost any other part of the health service, the GP system is probably just unfit for purpose. Before all of this Covid stuff blew up if a Polish colleague wanted to have something sorted out urgently they would get on a plane and go back to Poland. One of the reasons for this is because the GPs system is not set up there as a gatekeeper to prevent people seeing specialists. Which is very much how it operates here.
As some of you may remember I had skin cancer a few years ago. I saw 4 different GPs at my local surgery 3 of whom refused to put me forward to a specialist and had me try various treatments at home. It was a year before I saw a specialist at Queens and she promptly scolded me for not having gone to see her sooner. Like I had any choice.
I can understand how you feel. I have different experiences with my GP. I think people are often driven by personal experiences but surely we must try to step back to see the big picture. Sorry that sounds preachy and I don't mean it to. Hope you are well now.
When do we scrap the NHS and copy the German system?
May not be easy and possibly not even advisable to 'copy' the whole shebang, but it may be useful to look at certain issues and take some ideas away from that.
Like level of funding for example.
At the moment they are advertising for diversity and inclusion staff - salary over double that being paid nurses
Money is important, but so is a decent set of priorities
It's hardly surprising that an organisation with over 1.5m employees has some people dedicated to impriving diversity and inclusion.
Presumably you'd be fine with a properly funded NHS if they just dropped these roles?
I want them to have a proper set of priorities
Money goes further if spent on the most important things does it not?
I am not sure how much is spent on things you don't consider are priorities but I suspect for the example quoted it a miniscule proporton of the overall spend.
More importantly who decides what is a proper set of priorities? I doubt you and I would ever agree.
It is not just non jobs however, the nhs also does things like tattoo removal etc. Frankly as someone with tattoos I think if I want them gone it should be me paying for it not the tax payer
I agree. But none of this should be used as an excuse not to fund the NHS at German levels of funding if we want German levels of health care.
Would be crazy to spend at Germans levels without changing our system over to the German one and disbanding the NHS.
Why?
Why do assume the only reason it functioned better is money?
Would pumping twice as much money into british leyland have turned it into volkwagen I think we know the answer is no
But of course the NHS is actually tremendously efficient. We spend only 2/3rds of what Germany spends per person on health care and yet get overall outcomes that are much better than 2/3rds as good as Germany's.
But surely that is just proof that throwing money at the system is not necessarily the answer.
There are certainly a few easy wins we could learn from European health systems such as charging for GPs visits and then refunding for all but the very rich as long as they actually attend. Seems a very good way to cut down on missed appointments in a stroke.
The cost of the bureaucracy?
Well it seems to work very well in other countries with excellent health care systems.
Actually our whole GP system is rubbish
Can we agree on "could be better"?
I am actually of the view that, unlike almost any other part of the health service, the GP system is probably just unfit for purpose. Before all of this Covid stuff blew up if a Polish colleague wanted to have something sorted out urgently they would get on a plane and go back to Poland. One of the reasons for this is because the GPs system is not set up there as a gatekeeper to prevent people seeing specialists. Which is very much how it operates here.
As some of you may remember I had skin cancer a few years ago. I saw 4 different GPs at my local surgery 3 of whom refused to put me forward to a specialist and had me try various treatments at home. It was a year before I saw a specialist at Queens and she promptly scolded me for not having gone to see her sooner. Like I had any choice.
My Polish colleagues go home and pay privately to see Polish doctors - it's quick and they get really fast results / treatments. They have more doctors per head of population and it's relatively cheap because the state doesn't set prices, the market does. Is that better? I don't know.
Anything that removes the gatekeepers has to be a good idea. Though I am not a fan of paying for stuff at point of use except in the form of fines as I mentioned earlier for missed appointments. I think free at the point of use is vital. The rest is definitely up for debate and hopefully change.
And like a lot of things in the US, it is often extreme and massively weighted towards the poor.
And the other end of the spectrum, they go really big on the healthy living and exercise regimes.
I am still to this day shocked by the difference of produce available in leading supermarkets. You go to a good neighbourhood and there will be 10 different grocery stores where you can literally get every non-GM vegan friendly low fat, no sugar, gluten free yadda yadda yadda stuff under the sun.
Then you go to a say a small poor town, and it will be one Walmart and a Dollar General, will very limited selection of fresh produce. I remember going to one where it was a single Walmart, no fresh items and this town was a good hour drive from the next one.
We have nothing like that extreme in the UK. Even at the low end, Aldi and Lidl stock lots of fresh and healthy items at reasonable prices.
When do we scrap the NHS and copy the German system?
May not be easy and possibly not even advisable to 'copy' the whole shebang, but it may be useful to look at certain issues and take some ideas away from that.
Like level of funding for example.
At the moment they are advertising for diversity and inclusion staff - salary over double that being paid nurses
Money is important, but so is a decent set of priorities
It's hardly surprising that an organisation with over 1.5m employees has some people dedicated to impriving diversity and inclusion.
Presumably you'd be fine with a properly funded NHS if they just dropped these roles?
I want them to have a proper set of priorities
Money goes further if spent on the most important things does it not?
I am not sure how much is spent on things you don't consider are priorities but I suspect for the example quoted it a miniscule proporton of the overall spend.
More importantly who decides what is a proper set of priorities? I doubt you and I would ever agree.
It is not just non jobs however, the nhs also does things like tattoo removal etc. Frankly as someone with tattoos I think if I want them gone it should be me paying for it not the tax payer
I agree. But none of this should be used as an excuse not to fund the NHS at German levels of funding if we want German levels of health care.
Would be crazy to spend at Germans levels without changing our system over to the German one and disbanding the NHS.
Why?
Why do assume the only reason it functioned better is money?
Would pumping twice as much money into british leyland have turned it into volkwagen I think we know the answer is no
But of course the NHS is actually tremendously efficient. We spend only 2/3rds of what Germany spends per person on health care and yet get overall outcomes that are much better than 2/3rds as good as Germany's.
The financing of the German healthcare non-system is an absolute nightmare.
The best approach would surely be an NHS (with its monolithic organisation and economies of scale) with German level funding!
Not necessarily, but you cannot simply cut and paste a system from one country to the next, whether Health, Education or political. Each country has arrived at what it has got for a variety of historical, cultural, economic and political reasons.
Good post, I'd also throw in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_dependence so even if system B might actually have turned out better for country X than system A, it may well be that that they're going to be stuck with system A regardless (unless there's some cataclysm from which they restart with a blank state).
When do we scrap the NHS and copy the German system?
May not be easy and possibly not even advisable to 'copy' the whole shebang, but it may be useful to look at certain issues and take some ideas away from that.
Like level of funding for example.
At the moment they are advertising for diversity and inclusion staff - salary over double that being paid nurses
Money is important, but so is a decent set of priorities
It's hardly surprising that an organisation with over 1.5m employees has some people dedicated to impriving diversity and inclusion.
Presumably you'd be fine with a properly funded NHS if they just dropped these roles?
I want them to have a proper set of priorities
Money goes further if spent on the most important things does it not?
I am not sure how much is spent on things you don't consider are priorities but I suspect for the example quoted it a miniscule proporton of the overall spend.
More importantly who decides what is a proper set of priorities? I doubt you and I would ever agree.
It is not just non jobs however, the nhs also does things like tattoo removal etc. Frankly as someone with tattoos I think if I want them gone it should be me paying for it not the tax payer
I agree. But none of this should be used as an excuse not to fund the NHS at German levels of funding if we want German levels of health care.
Would be crazy to spend at Germans levels without changing our system over to the German one and disbanding the NHS.
The Germans have always been good at avoiding paying towards the good of others and lapping up whatever goodies others surrender to them.
Well spotted, and just imagine how many ventilators, how much PPE the 350 trillion quid the Fourth Reich extorted weekly from your coffers may have bought the NHS.
I hadn't thought it was that much!
See how sneaky we are? You didn't even notice.
So sneaky and thin skinned too. Almost like having an unwanted tattoo.
When do we scrap the NHS and copy the German system?
May not be easy and possibly not even advisable to 'copy' the whole shebang, but it may be useful to look at certain issues and take some ideas away from that.
Like level of funding for example.
At the moment they are advertising for diversity and inclusion staff - salary over double that being paid nurses
Money is important, but so is a decent set of priorities
It's hardly surprising that an organisation with over 1.5m employees has some people dedicated to impriving diversity and inclusion.
Presumably you'd be fine with a properly funded NHS if they just dropped these roles?
I want them to have a proper set of priorities
Money goes further if spent on the most important things does it not?
I am not sure how much is spent on things you don't consider are priorities but I suspect for the example quoted it a miniscule proporton of the overall spend.
More importantly who decides what is a proper set of priorities? I doubt you and I would ever agree.
It is not just non jobs however, the nhs also does things like tattoo removal etc. Frankly as someone with tattoos I think if I want them gone it should be me paying for it not the tax payer
I agree. But none of this should be used as an excuse not to fund the NHS at German levels of funding if we want German levels of health care.
Would be crazy to spend at Germans levels without changing our system over to the German one and disbanding the NHS.
Why?
Why do assume the only reason it functioned better is money?
Would pumping twice as much money into british leyland have turned it into volkwagen I think we know the answer is no
But of course the NHS is actually tremendously efficient. We spend only 2/3rds of what Germany spends per person on health care and yet get overall outcomes that are much better than 2/3rds as good as Germany's.
But surely that is just proof that throwing money at the system is not necessarily the answer.
There are certainly a few easy wins we could learn from European health systems such as charging for GPs visits and then refunding for all but the very rich as long as they actually attend. Seems a very good way to cut down on missed appointments in a stroke.
The cost of the bureaucracy?
Well it seems to work very well in other countries with excellent health care systems.
Actually our whole GP system is rubbish
Can we agree on "could be better"?
I am actually of the view that, unlike almost any other part of the health service, the GP system is probably just unfit for purpose. Before all of this Covid stuff blew up if a Polish colleague wanted to have something sorted out urgently they would get on a plane and go back to Poland. One of the reasons for this is because the GPs system is not set up there as a gatekeeper to prevent people seeing specialists. Which is very much how it operates here.
As some of you may remember I had skin cancer a few years ago. I saw 4 different GPs at my local surgery 3 of whom refused to put me forward to a specialist and had me try various treatments at home. It was a year before I saw a specialist at Queens and she promptly scolded me for not having gone to see her sooner. Like I had any choice.
My Polish colleagues go home and pay privately to see Polish doctors - it's quick and they get really fast results / treatments. They have more doctors per head of population and it's relatively cheap because the state doesn't set prices, the market does. Is that better? I don't know.
Anything that removes the gatekeepers has to be a good idea. Though I am not a fan of paying for stuff at point of use except in the form of fines as I mentioned earlier for missed appointments. I think free at the point of use is vital. The rest is definitely up for debate and hopefully change.
Am I alone in thinking that the current use of video calls to GPs should be continued? Or that the relative quiet of GP surgeries suggests that we need a mechanism to reduce hypochondriacs attending surgeries?
If there's no vaccine, then perhaps 60-70% are going to get this virus.
Given what we know about the disease, shouldn't the government be doing everything it can to try and get the overweight and obese on a diet (and exercising)?
Yes social distancing, but that's playing for time. If you're getting the disease, you want to be in the best shape you can be to beat it right?
What do you suggest the government do?
I mean at a minimum get someone senior in the press conferences to say: if you're overweight, now is the time to deal with it. You can help yourself, and help the NHS.
I don't want to blame overweight people and I appreciate that can be a tricky line to walk at times, but we should be broadcasting this increases your likelihood of dying.
Other measures could be to allow more time outside for the overweight!? Try to get supermarkets to stock less unhealthy food? Or ban advertising of alcohol for now? There must be a few public health interventions we could try.
Not only get those who are overweight to try and shift the extra pounds, but with so many people working from home, try to give advice on how not to pile it on.
As a long time WFHer, I know how easy it is having the kitchen so close. You really have to discipline yourself.
Yeah, and having a cheeky beer after work is so much easier now. Previously I was too exhausted to even bother.
My weakness was tucking into Mrs U's baked goods. Every time I would go to get coffee, very easy just help yourself to a slice of cake or a muffin.
I went to intermittent fasting about 3 years ago and find that works well for me as I have very specific eating window. I don't know if I buy into all the supposed extra health benefits of IF that some gurus try to push, but it definitely helps limits your calorie intake.
When do we scrap the NHS and copy the German system?
May not be easy and possibly not even advisable to 'copy' the whole shebang, but it may be useful to look at certain issues and take some ideas away from that.
Like level of funding for example.
At the moment they are advertising for diversity and inclusion staff - salary over double that being paid nurses
Money is important, but so is a decent set of priorities
It's hardly surprising that an organisation with over 1.5m employees has some people dedicated to impriving diversity and inclusion.
Presumably you'd be fine with a properly funded NHS if they just dropped these roles?
I want them to have a proper set of priorities
Money goes further if spent on the most important things does it not?
I am not sure how much is spent on things you don't consider are priorities but I suspect for the example quoted it a miniscule proporton of the overall spend.
More importantly who decides what is a proper set of priorities? I doubt you and I would ever agree.
It is not just non jobs however, the nhs also does things like tattoo removal etc. Frankly as someone with tattoos I think if I want them gone it should be me paying for it not the tax payer
I agree. But none of this should be used as an excuse not to fund the NHS at German levels of funding if we want German levels of health care.
Would be crazy to spend at Germans levels without changing our system over to the German one and disbanding the NHS.
Why?
Why do assume the only reason it functioned better is money?
Would pumping twice as much money into british leyland have turned it into volkwagen I think we know the answer is no
But of course the NHS is actually tremendously efficient. We spend only 2/3rds of what Germany spends per person on health care and yet get overall outcomes that are much better than 2/3rds as good as Germany's.
The financing of the German healthcare non-system is an absolute nightmare.
The best approach would surely be an NHS (with its monolithic organisation and economies of scale) with German level funding!
Not necessarily, but you cannot simply cut and paste a system from one country to the next, whether Health, Education or political. Each country has arrived at what it has got for a variety of historical, cultural, economic and political reasons.
Good post, I'd also throw in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_dependence so even if system B might actually have turned out better for country X than system A, it may well be that that they're going to be stuck with system A regardless (unless there's some cataclysm from which they restart with a blank state).
I don't think anyone is advocating whole sale copying of another countries systems but looking at where they function better and why. Sometimes yes it will be money, other times how they are organised etc. Sadly the NHS is a cult for those on the left and to question it is heresy
If there's no vaccine, then perhaps 60-70% are going to get this virus.
Given what we know about the disease, shouldn't the government be doing everything it can to try and get the overweight and obese on a diet (and exercising)?
Yes social distancing, but that's playing for time. If you're getting the disease, you want to be in the best shape you can be to beat it right?
I have the flu jab every year and, so far it's worked but I understand it has limited efficiency, I believe 60%. I'm sure Foxy will put me right. Pending Foxy's advice, I reckon cure is better than prevention.
Eh, the flu jab isn't a cure? And we don't have a vaccine at all for COVID and may never.
And if you go to all the trouble of getting into great shape and then they come up with a vaccine, well you'll be healthier and probably happier.
Flu jab efficacy varies from year to year as the manufacturers have to anticipate which strains are going to be a problem in 6 months time. Flu viruses mutate rather quicker than most.
Thanks. Do the various vaccines have very different efficacies?
The QT Interval in Patients with SARS-CoV-2 Infection Treated with Hydroxychloroquine/Azithromycin https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.02.20047050v1 We report the change in the QT interval in 84 adult patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection treated with Hydroxychloroquine/Azithromycin combination. QTc prolonged maximally from baseline between days 3 and 4. in 30% of patients QTc increased by greater than 40ms. In 11% of patients QTc increased to >500 ms, representing high risk group for arrhythmia. The development of acute renal failure but not baseline QTc was a strong predictor of extreme QTc prolongation.
When do we scrap the NHS and copy the German system?
May not be easy and possibly not even advisable to 'copy' the whole shebang, but it may be useful to look at certain issues and take some ideas away from that.
Like level of funding for example.
At the moment they are advertising for diversity and inclusion staff - salary over double that being paid nurses
Money is important, but so is a decent set of priorities
It's hardly surprising that an organisation with over 1.5m employees has some people dedicated to impriving diversity and inclusion.
Presumably you'd be fine with a properly funded NHS if they just dropped these roles?
I want them to have a proper set of priorities
Money goes further if spent on the most important things does it not?
I am not sure how much is spent on things you don't consider are priorities but I suspect for the example quoted it a miniscule proporton of the overall spend.
More importantly who decides what is a proper set of priorities? I doubt you and I would ever agree.
It is not just non jobs however, the nhs also does things like tattoo removal etc. Frankly as someone with tattoos I think if I want them gone it should be me paying for it not the tax payer
I agree. But none of this should be used as an excuse not to fund the NHS at German levels of funding if we want German levels of health care.
Would be crazy to spend at Germans levels without changing our system over to the German one and disbanding the NHS.
Why?
Why do assume the only reason it functioned better is money?
Would pumping twice as much money into british leyland have turned it into volkwagen I think we know the answer is no
But of course the NHS is actually tremendously efficient. We spend only 2/3rds of what Germany spends per person on health care and yet get overall outcomes that are much better than 2/3rds as good as Germany's.
But surely that is just proof that throwing money at the system is not necessarily the answer.
There are certainly a few easy wins we could learn from European health systems such as charging for GPs visits and then refunding for all but the very rich as long as they actually attend. Seems a very good way to cut down on missed appointments in a stroke.
The cost of the bureaucracy?
Well it seems to work very well in other countries with excellent health care systems.
Actually our whole GP system is rubbish
Can we agree on "could be better"?
I am actually of the view that, unlike almost any other part of the health service, the GP system is probably just unfit for purpose. Before all of this Covid stuff blew up if a Polish colleague wanted to have something sorted out urgently they would get on a plane and go back to Poland. One of the reasons for this is because the GPs system is not set up there as a gatekeeper to prevent people seeing specialists. Which is very much how it operates here.
As some of you may remember I had skin cancer a few years ago. I saw 4 different GPs at my local surgery 3 of whom refused to put me forward to a specialist and had me try various treatments at home. It was a year before I saw a specialist at Queens and she promptly scolded me for not having gone to see her sooner. Like I had any choice.
My Polish colleagues go home and pay privately to see Polish doctors - it's quick and they get really fast results / treatments. They have more doctors per head of population and it's relatively cheap because the state doesn't set prices, the market does. Is that better? I don't know.
Anything that removes the gatekeepers has to be a good idea. Though I am not a fan of paying for stuff at point of use except in the form of fines as I mentioned earlier for missed appointments. I think free at the point of use is vital. The rest is definitely up for debate and hopefully change.
Am I alone in thinking that the current use of video calls to GPs should be continued? Or that the relative quiet of GP surgeries suggests that we need a mechanism to reduce hypochondriacs attending surgeries?
The company said the partnership made the decision “[b]ased on the preliminary safety data of the phase 1 clinical trial,” detailed results of which have not been shared. In fact, virtual enrollment of the phase 2 study where interested individuals can sign up via a QR code has already started, putting CanSino ahead of all the others on a long list of COVID-19 vaccine developers.
It was only in mid-March when CanSino kicked off the first-in-human trial of Ad5-nCoV in healthy volunteers in the city of Wuhan, then the epicenter of the outbreak. Moving a vaccine from phase 1 into phase 2 in just three weeks is super fast, if not unprecedented, even with all the urgency around an ongoing pandemic, making the process look more like a phase 1/2 paradigm.
Per the phase 1 trial design, 108 subjects are supposed to be followed for up to six months for analyses of safety as well as T-cell and antibody responses. The study’s primary endpoint was set to look at adverse reactions seven days post injection, data CanSino likely already have.
According to the phase 2 protocol CanSino’s partner posted Friday on China’s clinical trial registry, the new study will again be conducted in Wuhan and will enroll 500 healthy participants. It’s worth noting that the investigators have abandoned the highest dose used in the phase 1 trial. This time, 250 people will get the middle dose, and the remaining 250 will be split up to receive either the low dose or placebo.
The randomized study has three primary endpoints, which will examine adverse reactions within the first 14 days of vaccination as well as serum levels of anti-SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing antibody and antibody against the coronavirus’s spike protein at day 28. Again, all participants will be followed for up to six months....
When do we scrap the NHS and copy the German system?
May not be easy and possibly not even advisable to 'copy' the whole shebang, but it may be useful to look at certain issues and take some ideas away from that.
Like level of funding for example.
At the moment they are advertising for diversity and inclusion staff - salary over double that being paid nurses
Money is important, but so is a decent set of priorities
It's hardly surprising that an organisation with over 1.5m employees has some people dedicated to impriving diversity and inclusion.
Presumably you'd be fine with a properly funded NHS if they just dropped these roles?
I want them to have a proper set of priorities
Money goes further if spent on the most important things does it not?
I am not sure how much is spent on things you don't consider are priorities but I suspect for the example quoted it a miniscule proporton of the overall spend.
More importantly who decides what is a proper set of priorities? I doubt you and I would ever agree.
It is not just non jobs however, the nhs also does things like tattoo removal etc. Frankly as someone with tattoos I think if I want them gone it should be me paying for it not the tax payer
I agree. But none of this should be used as an excuse not to fund the NHS at German levels of funding if we want German levels of health care.
Would be crazy to spend at Germans levels without changing our system over to the German one and disbanding the NHS.
Why?
Why do assume the only reason it functioned better is money?
Would pumping twice as much money into british leyland have turned it into volkwagen I think we know the answer is no
But of course the NHS is actually tremendously efficient. We spend only 2/3rds of what Germany spends per person on health care and yet get overall outcomes that are much better than 2/3rds as good as Germany's.
But surely that is just proof that throwing money at the system is not necessarily the answer.
There are certainly a few easy wins we could learn from European health systems such as charging for GPs visits and then refunding for all but the very rich as long as they actually attend. Seems a very good way to cut down on missed appointments in a stroke.
The cost of the bureaucracy?
Well it seems to work very well in other countries with excellent health care systems.
Actually our whole GP system is rubbish
Can we agree on "could be better"?
I am actually of the view that, unlike almost any other part of the health service, the GP system is probably just unfit for purpose. Before all of this Covid stuff blew up if a Polish colleague wanted to have something sorted out urgently they would get on a plane and go back to Poland. One of the reasons for this is because the GPs system is not set up there as a gatekeeper to prevent people seeing specialists. Which is very much how it operates here.
As some of you may remember I had skin cancer a few years ago. I saw 4 different GPs at my local surgery 3 of whom refused to put me forward to a specialist and had me try various treatments at home. It was a year before I saw a specialist at Queens and she promptly scolded me for not having gone to see her sooner. Like I had any choice.
My Polish colleagues go home and pay privately to see Polish doctors - it's quick and they get really fast results / treatments. They have more doctors per head of population and it's relatively cheap because the state doesn't set prices, the market does. Is that better? I don't know.
Anything that removes the gatekeepers has to be a good idea. Though I am not a fan of paying for stuff at point of use except in the form of fines as I mentioned earlier for missed appointments. I think free at the point of use is vital. The rest is definitely up for debate and hopefully change.
Am I alone in thinking that the current use of video calls to GPs should be continued? Or that the relative quiet of GP surgeries suggests that we need a mechanism to reduce hypochondriacs attending surgeries?
I agree but it's hard to sell politically
Sticking people with things like suspected flu in the waiting rooms with everybody else has to end.
The data show that starting on March 16, the fire department began to experience a huge surge in so-called “cardiac calls,” which fire officials see as a sign of the “stark” change due to the pandemic.
“A year ago – same time frame – we were seeing an average of 54-74 cardiac arrest calls per day, with 22-32 deaths,” the Fire Department said in a statement. “Now, in this pandemic, we are seeing more than 300 cardiac arrest calls each day, with well over 200 people dying each day.”...
... The overall number of excess deaths due to COVID remains unknown. That number reflects both people who die of COVID having never been diagnosed, and those who die of otherwise treatable illnesses due to a health care system overloaded by patients stricken by the virus.
The phenomenon appears to be global, however. One study found that in Italy’s virus-stricken northern regions, the overall mortality rate went up by six times – far more than official death tallies due to COVID showed.
Following Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, which decimated the island’s health care system, researchers were able to determine excess deaths by analyzing the spike in deaths compared to years prior.
The numbers provided by the FDNY suggest that a similar phenomenon exists in New York City....
When do we scrap the NHS and copy the German system?
May not be easy and possibly not even advisable to 'copy' the whole shebang, but it may be useful to look at certain issues and take some ideas away from that.
Like level of funding for example.
At the moment they are advertising for diversity and inclusion staff - salary over double that being paid nurses
Money is important, but so is a decent set of priorities
It's hardly surprising that an organisation with over 1.5m employees has some people dedicated to impriving diversity and inclusion.
Presumably you'd be fine with a properly funded NHS if they just dropped these roles?
I want them to have a proper set of priorities
Money goes further if spent on the most important things does it not?
I am not sure how much is spent on things you don't consider are priorities but I suspect for the example quoted it a miniscule proporton of the overall spend.
More importantly who decides what is a proper set of priorities? I doubt you and I would ever agree.
It is not just non jobs however, the nhs also does things like tattoo removal etc. Frankly as someone with tattoos I think if I want them gone it should be me paying for it not the tax payer
I agree. But none of this should be used as an excuse not to fund the NHS at German levels of funding if we want German levels of health care.
Would be crazy to spend at Germans levels without changing our system over to the German one and disbanding the NHS.
Why?
Why do assume the only reason it functioned better is money?
Would pumping twice as much money into british leyland have turned it into volkwagen I think we know the answer is no
But of course the NHS is actually tremendously efficient. We spend only 2/3rds of what Germany spends per person on health care and yet get overall outcomes that are much better than 2/3rds as good as Germany's.
But surely that is just proof that throwing money at the system is not necessarily the answer.
There are certainly a few easy wins we could learn from European health systems such as charging for GPs visits and then refunding for all but the very rich as long as they actually attend. Seems a very good way to cut down on missed appointments in a stroke.
The cost of the bureaucracy?
Well it seems to work very well in other countries with excellent health care systems.
Actually our whole GP system is rubbish
Can we agree on "could be better"?
I am actually of the view that, unlike almost any other part of the health service, the GP system is probably just unfit for purpose. Before all of this Covid stuff blew up if a Polish colleague wanted to have something sorted out urgently they would get on a plane and go back to Poland. One of the reasons for this is because the GPs system is not set up there as a gatekeeper to prevent people seeing specialists. Which is very much how it operates here.
As some of you may remember I had skin cancer a few years ago. I saw 4 different GPs at my local surgery 3 of whom refused to put me forward to a specialist and had me try various treatments at home. It was a year before I saw a specialist at Queens and she promptly scolded me for not having gone to see her sooner. Like I had any choice.
My Polish colleagues go home and pay privately to see Polish doctors - it's quick and they get really fast results / treatments. They have more doctors per head of population and it's relatively cheap because the state doesn't set prices, the market does. Is that better? I don't know.
Anything that removes the gatekeepers has to be a good idea. Though I am not a fan of paying for stuff at point of use except in the form of fines as I mentioned earlier for missed appointments. I think free at the point of use is vital. The rest is definitely up for debate and hopefully change.
Am I alone in thinking that the current use of video calls to GPs should be continued? Or that the relative quiet of GP surgeries suggests that we need a mechanism to reduce hypochondriacs attending surgeries?
I agree but it's hard to sell politically
Sticking people with things like suspected flu in the waiting rooms with everybody else has to end.
I agree. Having a problem and going to sit amongst ill people to have it looked at doesn't seem sensible but what can you do?
I agree. Having a problem and going to sit amongst ill people to have it looked at doesn't seem sensible but what can you do?
Well for one, why do we even have anybody sitting in waiting rooms? Can't we in this day and age have it do when the doctor is ready to see you, your phone gets beeped? I can get that in a restaurant or takeaway for my food order, surely we can do it for GPs.
Yes I know, not everybody has a phone, but that is becoming increasingly small number.
If there's no vaccine, then perhaps 60-70% are going to get this virus.
Given what we know about the disease, shouldn't the government be doing everything it can to try and get the overweight and obese on a diet (and exercising)?
Yes social distancing, but that's playing for time. If you're getting the disease, you want to be in the best shape you can be to beat it right?
I have the flu jab every year and, so far it's worked but I understand it has limited efficiency, I believe 60%. I'm sure Foxy will put me right. Pending Foxy's advice, I reckon cure is better than prevention.
Eh, the flu jab isn't a cure? And we don't have a vaccine at all for COVID and may never.
And if you go to all the trouble of getting into great shape and then they come up with a vaccine, well you'll be healthier and probably happier.
Flu jab efficacy varies from year to year as the manufacturers have to anticipate which strains are going to be a problem in 6 months time. Flu viruses mutate rather quicker than most.
Thanks. Do the various vaccines have very different efficacies?
There's a massive amount of research on this, and the variation in efficacy year by year is staggering - a lot depends on how well-matched the vaccines are against the strains that turn out to circulate that year (because the vaccines take a long time to prepare, the eggheads essentially have to guess which strains will be the main ones that require protection against this season - the WHO do this twice a year, once for the Northern and then once for Southern Hemisphere flu seasons).
The first link here is very readable indeed and strongly recommend reading it.
Note that vaccination against pandemic flu (eg the 2009 swine flu) is easier in the sense that at least you know exactly what you're aiming for, whereas for seasonal flu there will be multiple strains in circulation and you're trying to prioritise which you want to protect against. The effectiveness of vaccines against the 2009 pandemic flu was pretty high particularly compared to the seasonal flu vaccines above!
The data show that starting on March 16, the fire department began to experience a huge surge in so-called “cardiac calls,” which fire officials see as a sign of the “stark” change due to the pandemic.
“A year ago – same time frame – we were seeing an average of 54-74 cardiac arrest calls per day, with 22-32 deaths,” the Fire Department said in a statement. “Now, in this pandemic, we are seeing more than 300 cardiac arrest calls each day, with well over 200 people dying each day.”...
... The overall number of excess deaths due to COVID remains unknown. That number reflects both people who die of COVID having never been diagnosed, and those who die of otherwise treatable illnesses due to a health care system overloaded by patients stricken by the virus.
The phenomenon appears to be global, however. One study found that in Italy’s virus-stricken northern regions, the overall mortality rate went up by six times – far more than official death tallies due to COVID showed.
Following Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, which decimated the island’s health care system, researchers were able to determine excess deaths by analyzing the spike in deaths compared to years prior.
The numbers provided by the FDNY suggest that a similar phenomenon exists in New York City....
The data is fresh and IMO can only be properly analysed with hindsight. Not helpful for now but better than a dog chasing its tail.
When do we scrap the NHS and copy the German system?
May not be easy and possibly not even advisable to 'copy' the whole shebang, but it may be useful to look at certain issues and take some ideas away from that.
Like level of funding for example.
At the moment they are advertising for diversity and inclusion staff - salary over double that being paid nurses
Money is important, but so is a decent set of priorities
It's hardly surprising that an organisation with over 1.5m employees has some people dedicated to impriving diversity and inclusion.
Presumably you'd be fine with a properly funded NHS if they just dropped these roles?
I want them to have a proper set of priorities
Money goes further if spent on the most important things does it not?
I am not sure how much is spent on things you don't consider are priorities but I suspect for the example quoted it a miniscule proporton of the overall spend.
More importantly who decides what is a proper set of priorities? I doubt you and I would ever agree.
It is not just non jobs however, the nhs also does things like tattoo removal etc. Frankly as someone with tattoos I think if I want them gone it should be me paying for it not the tax payer
I agree. But none of this should be used as an excuse not to fund the NHS at German levels of funding if we want German levels of health care.
Would be crazy to spend at Germans levels without changing our system over to the German one and disbanding the NHS.
Why?
Why do assume the only reason it functioned better is money?
Would pumping twice as much money into british leyland have turned it into volkwagen I think we know the answer is no
But of course the NHS is actually tremendously efficient. We spend only 2/3rds of what Germany spends per person on health care and yet get overall outcomes that are much better than 2/3rds as good as Germany's.
So, slow hand clap for destroying your own argument
Only if you're happy with a health service 'not quite as good as Germany's'.
Personally I'd like our health service to be the best in the world... which it could be for a lot less per person than many other country's. But the government have for too long tried to do it on the cheap.
Anyway, I don't know why I bother arguing with you. The argument is over, you've lost. The NHS is not going to be dismantled; it's going to be funded much better going forward. Covid-19 will see to that.
So we will persist with a sub-standard health service just because.
No, it's going to be better funded going forward.
I believe most of the shortcomings in service are caused or exacerbated by inadequate funding.
I guess you think it's an inate feature of a state run service?
As I thought, the answer is always more money.
Finally, you've got it! Well done.
So if the answer is always money then why is the US system so rubbish? And no comments about private vs public etc. You have just said the answer is always more money.
The NHS is a very effective way to provide health care. It is delivering quite good care very cheaply, relative to our developed country peers. IT could deliver excellent health care if it weren't forever cash-starved.
Oh, and by the way, this argument is now won - Covid-19 has seen to that.
Oh and your 'effective provider' is 10th out of 11 first world countries in the very basic measure of keeping people alive. The only country with worse clinical outcomes than the UK is the one that spends more than any other country on earth on its health care - the USA.
re COVID-19 wonder-cures, personally have theory that ingestion of massive amounts of cannabis can help ward off the virus.
Am currently seeking grants from WHO, CDC, POTUS, FLOTUS, HMG, RN, USMC, RCAF, UCLA, PRC, FDR, TVW, KGB, SNCF, SPQR, PDQ, etc, etc.
Of course PBers are most welcome to contribute! Please note that yours truly can guarantee the brothern - and sistern - that your own odds of survival will be enhanced from the positive karma ye shall receive by helping to subsidize Seattle's struggling pot shops.
PLUS you can monitor the progress of my research by the quality of my comments!
When do we scrap the NHS and copy the German system?
May not be easy and possibly not even advisable to 'copy' the whole shebang, but it may be useful to look at certain issues and take some ideas away from that.
Like level of funding for example.
At the moment they are advertising for diversity and inclusion staff - salary over double that being paid nurses
Money is important, but so is a decent set of priorities
It's hardly surprising that an organisation with over 1.5m employees has some people dedicated to impriving diversity and inclusion.
Presumably you'd be fine with a properly funded NHS if they just dropped these roles?
I want them to have a proper set of priorities
Money goes further if spent on the most important things does it not?
I am not sure how much is spent on things you don't consider are priorities but I suspect for the example quoted it a miniscule proporton of the overall spend.
More importantly who decides what is a proper set of priorities? I doubt you and I would ever agree.
It is not just non jobs however, the nhs also does things like tattoo removal etc. Frankly as someone with tattoos I think if I want them gone it should be me paying for it not the tax payer
I agree. But none of this should be used as an excuse not to fund the NHS at German levels of funding if we want German levels of health care.
Would be crazy to spend at Germans levels without changing our system over to the German one and disbanding the NHS.
Why?
Why do assume the only reason it functioned better is money?
Would pumping twice as much money into british leyland have turned it into volkwagen I think we know the answer is no
But of course the NHS is actually tremendously efficient. We spend only 2/3rds of what Germany spends per person on health care and yet get overall outcomes that are much better than 2/3rds as good as Germany's.
The financing of the German healthcare non-system is an absolute nightmare.
The best approach would surely be an NHS (with its monolithic organisation and economies of scale) with German level funding!
Germany funds its healthcare via public insurance and not income tax
I agree. Having a problem and going to sit amongst ill people to have it looked at doesn't seem sensible but what can you do?
Well for one, why do we even have anybody sitting in waiting rooms? Can't we in this day and age have it do when the doctor is ready to see you, your phone gets beeped? I can get that in a restaurant or takeaway for my food order, surely we can do it for GPs.
Yes I know, not everybody has a phone, but that is becoming increasingly small number.
Where do you wait for the phone call? My GP surgery is very parked up and, even if you could get patients to use the system, appointment times would stretch out and people would complain that they couldn't get appointments.
I agree. Having a problem and going to sit amongst ill people to have it looked at doesn't seem sensible but what can you do?
Well for one, why do we even have anybody sitting in waiting rooms? Can't we in this day and age have it do when the doctor is ready to see you, your phone gets beeped? I can get that in a restaurant or takeaway for my food order, surely we can do it for GPs.
Yes I know, not everybody has a phone, but that is becoming increasingly small number.
Not to mention the increasing take up of smart watches which can continuously monitor pulse rate and temperature (and probably in due course blood pressure and oxygen levels). Pretty good way, for example, to track the prevalence of fevers in real time.
It might just be cost effective for the NHS to provide them for free, or heavily subsidised.
The data show that starting on March 16, the fire department began to experience a huge surge in so-called “cardiac calls,” which fire officials see as a sign of the “stark” change due to the pandemic.
“A year ago – same time frame – we were seeing an average of 54-74 cardiac arrest calls per day, with 22-32 deaths,” the Fire Department said in a statement. “Now, in this pandemic, we are seeing more than 300 cardiac arrest calls each day, with well over 200 people dying each day.”...
... The overall number of excess deaths due to COVID remains unknown. That number reflects both people who die of COVID having never been diagnosed, and those who die of otherwise treatable illnesses due to a health care system overloaded by patients stricken by the virus.
The phenomenon appears to be global, however. One study found that in Italy’s virus-stricken northern regions, the overall mortality rate went up by six times – far more than official death tallies due to COVID showed.
Following Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, which decimated the island’s health care system, researchers were able to determine excess deaths by analyzing the spike in deaths compared to years prior.
The numbers provided by the FDNY suggest that a similar phenomenon exists in New York City....
That is strange, because yesterday the New York Times ran an article by a doctor asking what had happened to all the people who usually came to hospital having a heart attack.
If there's no vaccine, then perhaps 60-70% are going to get this virus.
Given what we know about the disease, shouldn't the government be doing everything it can to try and get the overweight and obese on a diet (and exercising)?
Yes social distancing, but that's playing for time. If you're getting the disease, you want to be in the best shape you can be to beat it right?
I have the flu jab every year and, so far it's worked but I understand it has limited efficiency, I believe 60%. I'm sure Foxy will put me right. Pending Foxy's advice, I reckon cure is better than prevention.
Eh, the flu jab isn't a cure? And we don't have a vaccine at all for COVID and may never.
And if you go to all the trouble of getting into great shape and then they come up with a vaccine, well you'll be healthier and probably happier.
Flu jab efficacy varies from year to year as the manufacturers have to anticipate which strains are going to be a problem in 6 months time. Flu viruses mutate rather quicker than most.
Thanks. Do the various vaccines have very different efficacies?
There's a massive amount of research on this, and the variation in efficacy year by year is staggering - a lot depends on how well-matched the vaccines are against the strains that turn out to circulate that year (because the vaccines take a long time to prepare, the eggheads essentially have to guess which strains will be the main ones that require protection against this season - the WHO do this twice a year, once for the Northern and then once for Southern Hemisphere flu seasons).
The first link here is very readable indeed and strongly recommend reading it.
Note that vaccination against pandemic flu (eg the 2009 swine flu) is easier in the sense that at least you know exactly what you're aiming for, whereas for seasonal flu there will be multiple strains in circulation and you're trying to prioritise which you want to protect against. The effectiveness of vaccines against the 2009 pandemic flu was pretty high particularly compared to the seasonal flu vaccines above!
Thank you. I hadn't realised the issue was so complicated but I guess that's the nature of layman analysis of specialised areas. You should keep posting this every 12 hours. I'd put 8 but that seems bit cheeky.
re COVID-19 wonder-cures, personally have theory that ingestion of massive amounts of cannabis can help ward off the virus.
Am currently seeking grants from WHO, CDC, POTUS, FLOTUS, HMG, RN, USMC, RCAF, UCLA, PRC, FDR, TVW, KGB, SNCF, SPQR, PDQ, etc, etc.
Of course PBers are most welcome to contribute! Please note that yours truly can guarantee the brothern - and sistern - that your own odds of survival will be enhanced from the positive karma ye shall receive by helping to subsidize Seattle's struggling pot shops.
PLUS you can monitor the progress of my research by the quality of my comments!
Sticking people with things like suspected flu in the waiting rooms with everybody else has to end.
I agree. Having a problem and going to sit amongst ill people to have it looked at doesn't seem sensible but what can you do?
In my neighborhood about two weeks ago, just as crisis was starting to take hold here, a man had a seizure of some sort while walking on the sidewalk, collapsed and hit his head on the curb. Several people rushed to his assistance, and ambulance was on the scene within about ten mnutes.
Even though the guy had passed out and cut himself pretty severely, he refused to go the hospital. Think he should almost certainly should have.
BUT I understand his decision. Because hospital is about the LAST place I'd want to be right now. UNLESS alternative was early appointment with Grim Reaper, at odds of +50%
In my neighborhood about two weeks ago, just as crisis was starting to take hold here, a man had a seizure of some sort while walking on the sidewalk, collapsed and hit his head on the curb. Several people rushed to his assistance, and ambulance was on the scene within about ten mnutes.
Even though the guy had passed out and cut himself pretty severely, he refused to go the hospital. Think he should almost certainly should have.
BUT I understand his decision. Because hospital is about the LAST place I'd want to be right now. UNLESS alternative was early appointment with Grim Reaper, at odds of +50%
It is a hard choice. If you’re under 65, and have no underlying health conditions, then your chances of dying if infected are pretty low. But of course if you need to go to hospital you do have that underlying condition.
I agree. Having a problem and going to sit amongst ill people to have it looked at doesn't seem sensible but what can you do?
Well for one, why do we even have anybody sitting in waiting rooms? Can't we in this day and age have it do when the doctor is ready to see you, your phone gets beeped? I can get that in a restaurant or takeaway for my food order, surely we can do it for GPs.
Yes I know, not everybody has a phone, but that is becoming increasingly small number.
Not to mention the increasing take up of smart watches which can continuously monitor pulse rate and temperature (and probably in due course blood pressure and oxygen levels). Pretty good way, for example, to track the prevalence of fevers in real time.
It might just be cost effective for the NHS to provide them for free, or heavily subsidised.
I track my primary health functions, blood sugars, blood pressure, pulse, blood oxygenation, weight. It's an arse but better than popping your clogs unnecessarily. It's not expensive and much of the kit is funded.
If there's no vaccine, then perhaps 60-70% are going to get this virus.
Given what we know about the disease, shouldn't the government be doing everything it can to try and get the overweight and obese on a diet (and exercising)?
Yes social distancing, but that's playing for time. If you're getting the disease, you want to be in the best shape you can be to beat it right?
Well... it is worth remembering that people with type-O blood are significantly less likely to catch the disease, while type-A blood are more likely.
Early on this, makes little difference to the spread of the virus.
But later on, more of the uninfected people are type-O. It becomes harder for the virus to find new carriers because the type-O people are less likely to catch it.
Interestingly, in the UK almost half of people are O, while in China it's only a third.
So, my wild guess is that (left rampant) the disease might well top out at 45-55% of the population.
Au contraire, alterego. Pot is political. IF you don't think so, then check out how Trumpsky and GOPers are gonna make out this year in states that have legalized recreational marijuana.
AK (most problematic for Dems), CA, CO, IL, MA, MI, OR, NV, VT, WA
Not enough to win the election by themselves but a still an impressive check of electoral change.
PLUS inebriated ranking is part of the proud heritage of PB!
The data show that starting on March 16, the fire department began to experience a huge surge in so-called “cardiac calls,” which fire officials see as a sign of the “stark” change due to the pandemic.
“A year ago – same time frame – we were seeing an average of 54-74 cardiac arrest calls per day, with 22-32 deaths,” the Fire Department said in a statement. “Now, in this pandemic, we are seeing more than 300 cardiac arrest calls each day, with well over 200 people dying each day.”...
... The overall number of excess deaths due to COVID remains unknown. That number reflects both people who die of COVID having never been diagnosed, and those who die of otherwise treatable illnesses due to a health care system overloaded by patients stricken by the virus.
The phenomenon appears to be global, however. One study found that in Italy’s virus-stricken northern regions, the overall mortality rate went up by six times – far more than official death tallies due to COVID showed.
Following Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, which decimated the island’s health care system, researchers were able to determine excess deaths by analyzing the spike in deaths compared to years prior.
The numbers provided by the FDNY suggest that a similar phenomenon exists in New York City....
That is strange, because yesterday the New York Times ran an article by a doctor asking what had happened to all the people who usually came to hospital having a heart attack.
The figures in the article I posted are from the Fire Department. As your article says, The most concerning possible explanation is that people stay home and suffer rather than risk coming to the hospital and getting infected with coronavirus.... It sounds as though that might be the case, and those people are dying before they reach hospital.
The data show that starting on March 16, the fire department began to experience a huge surge in so-called “cardiac calls,” which fire officials see as a sign of the “stark” change due to the pandemic.
“A year ago – same time frame – we were seeing an average of 54-74 cardiac arrest calls per day, with 22-32 deaths,” the Fire Department said in a statement. “Now, in this pandemic, we are seeing more than 300 cardiac arrest calls each day, with well over 200 people dying each day.”...
... The overall number of excess deaths due to COVID remains unknown. That number reflects both people who die of COVID having never been diagnosed, and those who die of otherwise treatable illnesses due to a health care system overloaded by patients stricken by the virus.
The phenomenon appears to be global, however. One study found that in Italy’s virus-stricken northern regions, the overall mortality rate went up by six times – far more than official death tallies due to COVID showed.
Following Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, which decimated the island’s health care system, researchers were able to determine excess deaths by analyzing the spike in deaths compared to years prior.
The numbers provided by the FDNY suggest that a similar phenomenon exists in New York City....
The data is fresh and IMO can only be properly analysed with hindsight. Not helpful for now but better than a dog chasing its tail.
A couple of days back, Covid became the leading daily cause of death in the US.
The data show that starting on March 16, the fire department began to experience a huge surge in so-called “cardiac calls,” which fire officials see as a sign of the “stark” change due to the pandemic.
“A year ago – same time frame – we were seeing an average of 54-74 cardiac arrest calls per day, with 22-32 deaths,” the Fire Department said in a statement. “Now, in this pandemic, we are seeing more than 300 cardiac arrest calls each day, with well over 200 people dying each day.”...
... The overall number of excess deaths due to COVID remains unknown. That number reflects both people who die of COVID having never been diagnosed, and those who die of otherwise treatable illnesses due to a health care system overloaded by patients stricken by the virus.
The phenomenon appears to be global, however. One study found that in Italy’s virus-stricken northern regions, the overall mortality rate went up by six times – far more than official death tallies due to COVID showed.
Following Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, which decimated the island’s health care system, researchers were able to determine excess deaths by analyzing the spike in deaths compared to years prior.
The numbers provided by the FDNY suggest that a similar phenomenon exists in New York City....
That is strange, because yesterday the New York Times ran an article by a doctor asking what had happened to all the people who usually came to hospital having a heart attack.
The figures in the article I posted are from the Fire Department. As your article says, The most concerning possible explanation is that people stay home and suffer rather than risk coming to the hospital and getting infected with coronavirus.... It sounds as though that might be the case, and those people are dying before they reach hospital.
So people are calling the fire dept rather than hospitals? They’ve got to be going somewhere, people don’t just stop having heart attacks
The data show that starting on March 16, the fire department began to experience a huge surge in so-called “cardiac calls,” which fire officials see as a sign of the “stark” change due to the pandemic.
“A year ago – same time frame – we were seeing an average of 54-74 cardiac arrest calls per day, with 22-32 deaths,” the Fire Department said in a statement. “Now, in this pandemic, we are seeing more than 300 cardiac arrest calls each day, with well over 200 people dying each day.”...
... The overall number of excess deaths due to COVID remains unknown. That number reflects both people who die of COVID having never been diagnosed, and those who die of otherwise treatable illnesses due to a health care system overloaded by patients stricken by the virus.
The phenomenon appears to be global, however. One study found that in Italy’s virus-stricken northern regions, the overall mortality rate went up by six times – far more than official death tallies due to COVID showed.
Following Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, which decimated the island’s health care system, researchers were able to determine excess deaths by analyzing the spike in deaths compared to years prior.
The numbers provided by the FDNY suggest that a similar phenomenon exists in New York City....
That is strange, because yesterday the New York Times ran an article by a doctor asking what had happened to all the people who usually came to hospital having a heart attack.
The figures in the article I posted are from the Fire Department. As your article says, The most concerning possible explanation is that people stay home and suffer rather than risk coming to the hospital and getting infected with coronavirus.... It sounds as though that might be the case, and those people are dying before they reach hospital.
So people are calling the fire dept rather than hospitals? They’ve got to be going somewhere, people don’t just stop having heart attacks
If those figures are correct, they’re dying at home, with the Fire Service as first responder.
The data show that starting on March 16, the fire department began to experience a huge surge in so-called “cardiac calls,” which fire officials see as a sign of the “stark” change due to the pandemic.
“A year ago – same time frame – we were seeing an average of 54-74 cardiac arrest calls per day, with 22-32 deaths,” the Fire Department said in a statement. “Now, in this pandemic, we are seeing more than 300 cardiac arrest calls each day, with well over 200 people dying each day.”...
... The overall number of excess deaths due to COVID remains unknown. That number reflects both people who die of COVID having never been diagnosed, and those who die of otherwise treatable illnesses due to a health care system overloaded by patients stricken by the virus.
The phenomenon appears to be global, however. One study found that in Italy’s virus-stricken northern regions, the overall mortality rate went up by six times – far more than official death tallies due to COVID showed.
Following Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, which decimated the island’s health care system, researchers were able to determine excess deaths by analyzing the spike in deaths compared to years prior.
The numbers provided by the FDNY suggest that a similar phenomenon exists in New York City....
That is strange, because yesterday the New York Times ran an article by a doctor asking what had happened to all the people who usually came to hospital having a heart attack.
The two accounts actually support each other. The doctor is worried that people are avoiding hospitals and therefore dying in the outside world instead, and the FDNY report suggests that this is precisely what is happening.
When do we scrap the NHS and copy the German system?
May not be easy and possibly not even advisable to 'copy' the whole shebang, but it may be useful to look at certain issues and take some ideas away from that.
Like level of funding for example.
At the moment they are advertising for diversity and inclusion staff - salary over double that being paid nurses
Money is important, but so is a decent set of priorities
It's hardly surprising that an organisation with over 1.5m employees has some people dedicated to impriving diversity and inclusion.
Presumably you'd be fine with a properly funded NHS if they just dropped these roles?
I want them to have a proper set of priorities
Money goes further if spent on the most important things does it not?
I am not sure how much is spent on things you don't consider are priorities but I suspect for the example quoted it a miniscule proporton of the overall spend.
More importantly who decides what is a proper set of priorities? I doubt you and I would ever agree.
It is not just non jobs however, the nhs also does things like tattoo removal etc. Frankly as someone with tattoos I think if I want them gone it should be me paying for it not the tax payer
I agree. But none of this should be used as an excuse not to fund the NHS at German levels of funding if we want German levels of health care.
Would be crazy to spend at Germans levels without changing our system over to the German one and disbanding the NHS.
Why?
Why do assume the only reason it functioned better is money?
Would pumping twice as much money into british leyland have turned it into volkwagen I think we know the answer is no
But of course the NHS is actually tremendously efficient. We spend only 2/3rds of what Germany spends per person on health care and yet get overall outcomes that are much better than 2/3rds as good as Germany's.
But surely that is just proof that throwing money at the system is not necessarily the answer.
There are certainly a few easy wins we could learn from European health systems such as charging for GPs visits and then refunding for all but the very rich as long as they actually attend. Seems a very good way to cut down on missed appointments in a stroke.
The cost of the bureaucracy?
Well it seems to work very well in other countries with excellent health care systems.
Actually our whole GP system is rubbish
Can we agree on "could be better"?
I am actually of the view that, unlike almost any other part of the health service, the GP system is probably just unfit for purpose. Before all of this Covid stuff blew up if a Polish colleague wanted to have something sorted out urgently they would get on a plane and go back to Poland. One of the reasons for this is because the GPs system is not set up there as a gatekeeper to prevent people seeing specialists. Which is very much how it operates here.
As some of you may remember I had skin cancer a few years ago. I saw 4 different GPs at my local surgery 3 of whom refused to put me forward to a specialist and had me try various treatments at home. It was a year before I saw a specialist at Queens and she promptly scolded me for not having gone to see her sooner. Like I had any choice.
I think that's a fair point. The GP system is indeed a gatekeeper, hence why anyone who has a serious health worry knows the best thing to do is walk into A&E in a good teaching hospital despite being officially discouraged to do so. The NHS is superb in many ways, but the GP system – "call at exactly 8am then hope you get referred" – isn't one of them.
If there's no vaccine, then perhaps 60-70% are going to get this virus.
Given what we know about the disease, shouldn't the government be doing everything it can to try and get the overweight and obese on a diet (and exercising)?
Yes social distancing, but that's playing for time. If you're getting the disease, you want to be in the best shape you can be to beat it right?
Well... it is worth remembering that people with type-O blood are significantly less likely to catch the disease, while type-A blood are more likely.
Early on this, makes little difference to the spread of the virus.
But later on, more of the uninfected people are type-O. It becomes harder for the virus to find new carriers because the type-O people are less likely to catch it.
Interestingly, in the UK almost half of people are O, while in China it's only a third.
So, my wild guess is that (left rampant) the disease might well top out at 45-55% of the population.
I used to put some score on the fact I was judged A+ on at least one test. My blood test.
The Telegraph splashes the Jenrick story, casting doubt on the Minister's claim this is his main home (HMG having banned travel to secondary homes). It may be he is saved by the absence of the Prime Minister.
Money goes further if spent on the most important things does it not?
Would be crazy to spend at Germans levels without changing our system over to the German one and disbanding the NHS.
Why?
Why do assume the only reason it functioned better is money?
Would pumping twice as much money into british leyland have turned it into volkwagen I think we know the answer is no
But of course the NHS is actually tremendously efficient. We spend only 2/3rds of what Germany spends per person on health care and yet get overall outcomes that are much better than 2/3rds as good as Germany's.
So, slow hand clap for destroying your own argument
Only if you're happy with a health service 'not quite as good as Germany's'.
Personally I'd like our health service to be the best in the world... which it could be for a lot less per person than many other country's. But the government have for too long tried to do it on the cheap.
Anyway, I don't know why I bother arguing with you. The argument is over, you've lost. The NHS is not going to be dismantled; it's going to be funded much better going forward. Covid-19 will see to that.
Agreed - and you will still be on here asking for more when all the extra cash has been frittered away without result. The problem is not just money. The biggest problem is the absurd 'religion' which has built up about 'our NHS'. This makes it immune to constructive criticism and development. Nowhere else do I see this other than in the UK. Until the NHS gets smart with , yes, the extra resources it needs, the nonsense will continue.
The latest on the inane drivel now masquerading as news .
Johnson is now well enough to do sudoku puzzles and watch the odd film. In tomorrow’s update we hear whether he went for the fish or meat main course !
So his higher brain functions are working and he can maintain focus for an extended period.
If there's no vaccine, then perhaps 60-70% are going to get this virus.
Given what we know about the disease, shouldn't the government be doing everything it can to try and get the overweight and obese on a diet (and exercising)?
Yes social distancing, but that's playing for time. If you're getting the disease, you want to be in the best shape you can be to beat it right?
Well... it is worth remembering that people with type-O blood are significantly less likely to catch the disease, while type-A blood are more likely.
Early on this, makes little difference to the spread of the virus.
But later on, more of the uninfected people are type-O. It becomes harder for the virus to find new carriers because the type-O people are less likely to catch it.
Interestingly, in the UK almost half of people are O, while in China it's only a third.
So, my wild guess is that (left rampant) the disease might well top out at 45-55% of the population.
“Significantly” in a statistical sense. But the difference wasn’t actually that great.
If there's no vaccine, then perhaps 60-70% are going to get this virus.
Given what we know about the disease, shouldn't the government be doing everything it can to try and get the overweight and obese on a diet (and exercising)?
Yes social distancing, but that's playing for time. If you're getting the disease, you want to be in the best shape you can be to beat it right?
Well... it is worth remembering that people with type-O blood are significantly less likely to catch the disease, while type-A blood are more likely.
Early on this, makes little difference to the spread of the virus.
But later on, more of the uninfected people are type-O. It becomes harder for the virus to find new carriers because the type-O people are less likely to catch it.
Interestingly, in the UK almost half of people are O, while in China it's only a third.
So, my wild guess is that (left rampant) the disease might well top out at 45-55% of the population.
“Significantly” in a statistical sense. But the difference wasn’t actually that great.
I am AB - . I'd be interested to hear if - people are more or less likely to catch it.
Comments
And if you go to all the trouble of getting into great shape and then they come up with a vaccine, well you'll be healthier and probably happier.
As some of you may remember I had skin cancer a few years ago. I saw 4 different GPs at my local surgery 3 of whom refused to put me forward to a specialist and had me try various treatments at home. It was a year before I saw a specialist at Queens and she promptly scolded me for not having gone to see her sooner. Like I had any choice.
I went to intermittent fasting about 3 years ago and find that works well for me as I have very specific eating window. I don't know if I buy into all the supposed extra health benefits of IF that some gurus try to push, but it definitely helps limits your calorie intake.
But we could ban advertising of alcohol. We could use free advertising to pump out public health messaging.
One more time for the heard of learning:
The NHS is a very effective way to provide health care. It is delivering quite good care very cheaply, relative to our developed country peers. IT could deliver excellent health care if it weren't forever cash-starved.
Oh, and by the way, this argument is now won - Covid-19 has seen to that.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/03/22/alcohol-obesity-and-smoking-do-not-cost-health-care-systems-money/#1cb5115e64aa
links in the article to the science
The lifetime costs were in Euros:
Healthy: 281,000
Obese: 250,000
Smokers: 220,000
and thats before the savings in pensions
https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html
It's 28.7% here.
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn03336/
And the other end of the spectrum, they go really big on the healthy living and exercise regimes.
I am still to this day shocked by the difference of produce available in leading supermarkets. You go to a good neighbourhood and there will be 10 different grocery stores where you can literally get every non-GM vegan friendly low fat, no sugar, gluten free yadda yadda yadda stuff under the sun.
Then you go to a say a small poor town, and it will be one Walmart and a Dollar General, will very limited selection of fresh produce. I remember going to one where it was a single Walmart, no fresh items and this town was a good hour drive from the next one.
We have nothing like that extreme in the UK. Even at the low end, Aldi and Lidl stock lots of fresh and healthy items at reasonable prices.
The QT Interval in Patients with SARS-CoV-2 Infection Treated with Hydroxychloroquine/Azithromycin
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.02.20047050v1
We report the change in the QT interval in 84 adult patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection treated with Hydroxychloroquine/Azithromycin combination. QTc prolonged maximally from baseline between days 3 and 4. in 30% of patients QTc increased by greater than 40ms. In 11% of patients QTc increased to >500 ms, representing high risk group for arrhythmia. The development of acute renal failure but not baseline QTc was a strong predictor of extreme QTc prolongation.
https://www.fiercepharma.com/vaccines/china-s-cansino-bio-advances-covid-19-vaccine-into-phase-2-preliminary-safety-data
CanSino and its collaborators at the Academy of Military Medical Sciences’ Institute of Biotechnology plan to move their adenovirus type-5 vector-based recombinant COVID-19 vaccine, Ad5-nCoV, into phase 2 clinical trial in China “soon,” the company said in a disclosure (PDF) to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Thursday.
The company said the partnership made the decision “[b]ased on the preliminary safety data of the phase 1 clinical trial,” detailed results of which have not been shared.
In fact, virtual enrollment of the phase 2 study where interested individuals can sign up via a QR code has already started, putting CanSino ahead of all the others on a long list of COVID-19 vaccine developers.
It was only in mid-March when CanSino kicked off the first-in-human trial of Ad5-nCoV in healthy volunteers in the city of Wuhan, then the epicenter of the outbreak. Moving a vaccine from phase 1 into phase 2 in just three weeks is super fast, if not unprecedented, even with all the urgency around an ongoing pandemic, making the process look more like a phase 1/2 paradigm.
Per the phase 1 trial design, 108 subjects are supposed to be followed for up to six months for analyses of safety as well as T-cell and antibody responses. The study’s primary endpoint was set to look at adverse reactions seven days post injection, data CanSino likely already have.
According to the phase 2 protocol CanSino’s partner posted Friday on China’s clinical trial registry, the new study will again be conducted in Wuhan and will enroll 500 healthy participants. It’s worth noting that the investigators have abandoned the highest dose used in the phase 1 trial. This time, 250 people will get the middle dose, and the remaining 250 will be split up to receive either the low dose or placebo.
The randomized study has three primary endpoints, which will examine adverse reactions within the first 14 days of vaccination as well as serum levels of anti-SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing antibody and antibody against the coronavirus’s spike protein at day 28. Again, all participants will be followed for up to six months....
OR is DR more like Pence - he's having his moment in the sun BUT he will play for it IF Fearless Leader gets his way . . .
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/fdny-sees-huge-uptick-in-doa-ambulance-cases-as-covid-ravages-city
Deaths at home and on the street soared in New York City as the city began to grapple with the COVID pandemic, newly released data from the city’s Fire Department show.
The data show that starting on March 16, the fire department began to experience a huge surge in so-called “cardiac calls,” which fire officials see as a sign of the “stark” change due to the pandemic.
“A year ago – same time frame – we were seeing an average of 54-74 cardiac arrest calls per day, with 22-32 deaths,” the Fire Department said in a statement. “Now, in this pandemic, we are seeing more than 300 cardiac arrest calls each day, with well over 200 people dying each day.”...
... The overall number of excess deaths due to COVID remains unknown. That number reflects both people who die of COVID having never been diagnosed, and those who die of otherwise treatable illnesses due to a health care system overloaded by patients stricken by the virus.
The phenomenon appears to be global, however. One study found that in Italy’s virus-stricken northern regions, the overall mortality rate went up by six times – far more than official death tallies due to COVID showed.
Following Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, which decimated the island’s health care system, researchers were able to determine excess deaths by analyzing the spike in deaths compared to years prior.
The numbers provided by the FDNY suggest that a similar phenomenon exists in New York City....
Yes I know, not everybody has a phone, but that is becoming increasingly small number.
The first link here is very readable indeed and strongly recommend reading it.
https://publichealthmatters.blog.gov.uk/2019/10/04/flu-vaccination-the-main-things-to-know-about-the-2019-programme/
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/influenza-vaccine-effectiveness-seasonal-estimates
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/vaccines-work/past-seasons-estimates.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_vaccine
Here are the figures for the efficacy of the US seasonal flu vaccine over the last decade and a bit:
2004 10%
2005 21%
2006 52%
2007 37%
2008 41%
2009 56%
2010 60%
2011 47%
2012 49%
2013 52%
2014 19%
2015 48%
2016 40%
2017 38%
2018 29%
2019 45% est
Note that vaccination against pandemic flu (eg the 2009 swine flu) is easier in the sense that at least you know exactly what you're aiming for, whereas for seasonal flu there will be multiple strains in circulation and you're trying to prioritise which you want to protect against. The effectiveness of vaccines against the 2009 pandemic flu was pretty high particularly compared to the seasonal flu vaccines above!
Am currently seeking grants from WHO, CDC, POTUS, FLOTUS, HMG, RN, USMC, RCAF, UCLA, PRC, FDR, TVW, KGB, SNCF, SPQR, PDQ, etc, etc.
Of course PBers are most welcome to contribute! Please note that yours truly can guarantee the brothern - and sistern - that your own odds of survival will be enhanced from the positive karma ye shall receive by helping to subsidize Seattle's struggling pot shops.
PLUS you can monitor the progress of my research by the quality of my comments!
Pretty good way, for example, to track the prevalence of fevers in real time.
It might just be cost effective for the NHS to provide them for free, or heavily subsidised.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/well/live/coronavirus-doctors-hospitals-emergency-care-heart-attack-stroke.html?referringSource=articleShare
Sticking people with things like suspected flu in the waiting rooms with everybody else has to end.
I agree. Having a problem and going to sit amongst ill people to have it looked at doesn't seem sensible but what can you do?
In my neighborhood about two weeks ago, just as crisis was starting to take hold here, a man had a seizure of some sort while walking on the sidewalk, collapsed and hit his head on the curb. Several people rushed to his assistance, and ambulance was on the scene within about ten mnutes.
Even though the guy had passed out and cut himself pretty severely, he refused to go the hospital. Think he should almost certainly should have.
BUT I understand his decision. Because hospital is about the LAST place I'd want to be right now. UNLESS alternative was early appointment with Grim Reaper, at odds of +50%
If you’re under 65, and have no underlying health conditions, then your chances of dying if infected are pretty low. But of course if you need to go to hospital you do have that underlying condition.
Early on this, makes little difference to the spread of the virus.
But later on, more of the uninfected people are type-O. It becomes harder for the virus to find new carriers because the type-O people are less likely to catch it.
Interestingly, in the UK almost half of people are O, while in China it's only a third.
So, my wild guess is that (left rampant) the disease might well top out at 45-55% of the population.
AK (most problematic for Dems), CA, CO, IL, MA, MI, OR, NV, VT, WA
Not enough to win the election by themselves but a still an impressive check of electoral change.
PLUS inebriated ranking is part of the proud heritage of PB!
As your article says, The most concerning possible explanation is that people stay home and suffer rather than risk coming to the hospital and getting infected with coronavirus....
It sounds as though that might be the case, and those people are dying before they reach hospital.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/british-academics-sharing-coronavirus-conspiracy-theories-online-v8nn99zmv
https://twitter.com/tnewtondunn/status/1248721449755566081?s=19
That information is carefully selected