What can we do to change the minds of decision makers and people in general to actually do something about preparing for the forthcoming economic/energy crises (the ones after this one!)?
Jeremy Hunt raises doubts about long-term future of free NHS
Jeremy Hunt has raised doubts about the NHS remaining an entirely taxpayer-funded service in the long term, days after a fellow health minister also warned that soaring demand for patient care could force a rethink on where its money comes from.
The health secretary expressed doubts about the future sustainability of the funding system that has existed since the service’s creation in 1948 after delivering a speech setting out his “25-year vision for the NHS” in London on Thursday.
His comments come days after David Prior, the ex-Conservative MP and hospital trust chairman who recently became a health minister in the Lords, warned that the premise of a tax-funded model would have to be questioned if patient demand for care outstripped economic growth.
When Milliband said "the service will not exist in its current form after five more years of Tory governance", Cameron replied "The NHS is safe in my hands".
I'll now be surprised if it takes five years. The Tories have been saving it for their corporate friends.
I experience pleasure and pains, and pursue goals in service of them, so I cannot reasonably deny the right of other sentient agents to do the same - Steven Pinker
As a key part of the EU-US trade deal currently being fleshed out, the Conservatives are making good on a decades old fantasy of theirs - breaking up the NHS and opening it to global business.
There should be substantial new investment in the NHS in England, according to two think tanks.
A report from the Health Foundation and the King's Fund sets out a "transformation fund" that will need at least £1.5bn a year on top of £8bn the government has promised by 2020.
TTIP is still some distance off from being agreed (if at all - there is a lot of resistance in the USA as well as the EU). It excludes the health service.
The Conservatives are a good argument for dispensing with the TTIP, because they don't need it. They bow to corporate greed anyway. And while they're in charge, the NHS will be dismantled. Replace them with Labour in five years, and they'll carry on the process.
I experience pleasure and pains, and pursue goals in service of them, so I cannot reasonably deny the right of other sentient agents to do the same - Steven Pinker
Jeremy Hunt’s U-turn on social care ‘cost taxpayer £100m’
The health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, faces a growing backlash after quietly shelving a key Tory manifesto commitment to cap care costs for the elderly, as experts claimed that the policy fiasco has cost taxpayers up to £100m.
Hunt has announced that the plan to limit care bills from next year to £72,000 for the over-65s and for younger adults with disabilities has been delayed until 2020 – despite the fact it was trumpeted by the Conservatives in the runup to the general election.
I experience pleasure and pains, and pursue goals in service of them, so I cannot reasonably deny the right of other sentient agents to do the same - Steven Pinker
NHS told to fill vacancies 'only where essential' due to looming funding crisis
Health service regulator Monitor warns of ‘unprecedented financial challenge’, as Labour attacks evidence of deteriorating NHS finances.
Drip ... drip ... drip
As someone who has
A) Worked for the NHS on a temporary contract and
B) been unexpectedly admitted to hospital with a blood clot on the brain that led to a mini stroke episode - both in the past three months I feel that I am slightly better versed than most on this board about this.
WRT recruitment - that is a very sick joke. For a job in West Sussex applicants from anywhere in said county had to travel to where the recruitment agency is based - which is in Guildford, Surrey!
There were supposed to be "an army" of helpers - I'm not quite sure how one person fits the definition of "an army" but there you go.
As for seeing it from being a patient's view - well the sense of frustration was palpable and there were complaints that vital duties were not being carried out. A fellow patient, who had been transferred from another hospital, said that the one he had come from was badly run and that had permeated its way down to the staff. Cause of the problem: excessive cost cutting and a pig-headed management who are driving a privatization agenda at all costs
A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools - Douglas Adams.
The bottom line for the NHS is the demographic bulge. Too many older people needing more and more health care with fewer working age tax payers to fund it. Also, the continuous drift to ever more expensive high tech medicine and drugs, as the emphasis is on ever more patching up of the old and very sick (and a long term increase in diseases of affluence and industrial society - poor diet, lack of exercise, dementia, cancer etc.)
Prevention is almost always better than cure when it comes to health, but the NHS today is a dramatically better service than it was when I was young in 1970s.
That said, ideological political interference always makes matters worse.
We are all going to die. As a society we find it hard to be open about this and to be rational about how much of the GDP we want to spend keeping the old and sick alive. By far the largest percentage of NHS funds are spent on people who vote Tory, so I think total expense on NHS is not going to fall in the near future.
Cameron of course will try to siphon off some cash to his buddies.
PS_RalphW wrote:The bottom line for the NHS is the demographic bulge.
Partially. So it has to be dealt with, monetarily and otherwise.
Cutting defence expenditure is part of the answer. Education about diet and lifestyle habits is another. Subsidies to nuclear and fossil fuel industries is another. Collecting evaded tax another. Making sure QE goes in at the bottom, rather than the top, would be another part, by creating jobs and lessening dependency on welfare. Tackling inequality by making taxes less regressive is another.
Adding a layer of profit to the NHS is definitely not any part of the answer.
I experience pleasure and pains, and pursue goals in service of them, so I cannot reasonably deny the right of other sentient agents to do the same - Steven Pinker
PS_RalphW wrote:The bottom line for the NHS is the demographic bulge.
Partially. So it has to be dealt with, monetarily and otherwise.
Cutting defence expenditure is part of the answer. Education about diet and lifestyle habits is another. Subsidies to nuclear and fossil fuel industries is another. Collecting evaded tax another. Making sure QE goes in at the bottom, rather than the top, would be another part, by creating jobs and lessening dependency on welfare. Tackling inequality by making taxes less regressive is another.
Adding a layer of profit to the NHS is definitely not any part of the answer.
Succinctly put EM.
One thing I would add to your list would be a new set of draconian rules to drastically reduce the amount of sugar, fat and salt in processed foods.
It's time that the food and drinks industry were held to account for the irreparable damage to health they are causing.
If the sheeple won't change their unhealthy and life threatening habits voluntarily, perhaps a few well placed fines on the food producers will do the trick.
PS_RalphW wrote:The bottom line for the NHS is the demographic bulge.
Partially. So it has to be dealt with, monetarily and otherwise.
Cutting defence expenditure is part of the answer. Education about diet and lifestyle habits is another. Subsidies to nuclear and fossil fuel industries is another. Collecting evaded tax another. Making sure QE goes in at the bottom, rather than the top, would be another part, by creating jobs and lessening dependency on welfare. Tackling inequality by making taxes less regressive is another.
Adding a layer of profit to the NHS is definitely not any part of the answer.
Succinctly put EM.
One thing I would add to your list would be a new set of draconian rules to drastically reduce the amount of sugar, fat and salt in processed foods.
It's time that the food and drinks industry were held to account for the irreparable damage to health they are causing.
If the sheeple won't change their unhealthy and life threatening habits voluntarily, perhaps a few well placed fines on the food producers will do the trick.
Yeah, add that to the diet education section.
I experience pleasure and pains, and pursue goals in service of them, so I cannot reasonably deny the right of other sentient agents to do the same - Steven Pinker
