Out of Pod Experience

The first one they tried to shotgun through parliament was even worse.

I work in primary care, the prospect of GP's being given allocation responsibility is terrifying.

Privatisation of essential services - up to and including encouraging third party private concerns to cherry pick waiting lists is horrific. Sounds like Tories are heavily lobbied by our American friends who must be rubbing their hands at the prospect of privatised health care here.

The end of the NHS basically.

Now I've seen the best and the worst of the NHS and I know a few people in this game who work within all levels of it. Its a mixed bag of opinions regarding its viability in the modern age - but never let anyone tell you the NHS is not a good thing. The mis management and absurd levels of 'health tourism' (and mass migration et al) are what has crippled it. Target based management was just the nail in Beven's coffin.

For me the NHS represents humanism and humanist sentiment on a macro scale. Its one of the pillars of 'Britishness' that has been gradually eroded in the last four decades. I don't sincerely expect the NHS to be around in 50 years time. Sadly.

The new bill is worrying for sure, although I am confident that the Tories wont get away with this. The NHS was part of Clement Attlee's "new Jerusalem" and no government has ever dared to mess with it, even Thatcher left it alone when she savaged the economy. When the next election comes up they will either be voted out or the Tories will be so scared of losing the election they might throw Cameron under the bus and elect a new party leader.

Hopefully though enough people will be angered to get rid of the Tories altogether, all the public sector workers, police, fire brigade, the NHS staff and all the carers and social workers they have shafted might vote Labour now.

The Election might be a two horse race anyway, The Lib Dems have lost a lot of their support due to Cleggy failing to support key Lib Dem policies. The whole Conservative Democrats thing ignored Lib Dem opinion on tuition fees and Trident upgrades and many more, I wonder how that will effect the election, Lib Dems might be installing a new party leader to.

Torie support last year wasn't that great so all the things they have done to shaft people will hopefully erode it further.

Warning post may contain bias, poster is a Labour supporter and party member and trade unionist supporter

Observation:

Pay for anything people do, they will be bad at it. Pay for their housing, they will turn them into slums. Pay for their health - they won't be healthy. Many times I have seen people loading their 50,000 dollar SUVs at the supermarket with food that is basically garbage, the people doing the loading, right down to the kids - all fat. And not "rich" fat, more like "total metabolic crash" fat. But hey whether it's the state paying their medical bills or some insurance plan, they drop 20 bucks copay on the trip to the doctor and then off to the dealership to buy that truck.


Then this "privatising" business that pretends to get the government off the hook, and the taxpayers too. That's a bad solution by the same people who started a bad problem.

Oh well. Nobody listens to reason on this topic anyway. I continue to grow my own food, avoid the poison at the market, avoid the flu shots with the cancer-causing viruses in them that trigger with age, and laugh at sheep for fighting amongst themselves while the real criminals also laugh at them and rob them at the same time.

When people are ready to listen, then this entire topic will be moot. Until then, enjoy being under the control of criminals in lab coats.

How the hell did they manage that one?

Similar story in Aus...

We have a public health system that is like a shadow of the NHS, even though it gets alot of money it is not being effective.

Recently there has been a change in policy to allocate more funding to the PHS at a federal level. Previously, all the states and territories were soley responsible for their PHS. This new deal should see betetr management of funds.

We also have an integrated private health system. The government offers a 30% rebate for young people who take up health insurance. Over here 9as opposed to the US maybe?) health insurance gives everything needed to make ya better. It is hard for them to say no to you.

It works pretty well indeed, but with the new funding structure for the PHS, it will make that all the more effective.

The very worst things that happen though are private companies/contractors paid for by the government to do something. Usually it is double the price for half the quality of work. I really hate that.

And then watch the worlds infistructure drop to bits and the rule of law vanishes. Someone needs to run countries to make civilisation work.

Do you really need the government to wipe your nose for you? Take care of you, tell you what you can eat, what you can smoke, what you can say?

I would no more wish to have private sector health service than I would wish a private sector military.

As far as i am concerned we should have here in the UK state owned railways, power, water, roads, schools, medical care, defence and other essential bits of infastructure.

It is nothing short of a disgrace when bits of the UK are farmed out to companies, doubly so foreign companies, to run.

If the private companies can see how they can, for he same cost, make a profit then the infrastructure should be back under state control and any profits ploughed back in.

I don't know how many of you know about this ridiculous thing called PFI where the government gave grants to companies to run things. On paper it looks good as the companies get the subsidies from the government and the income that they raise. Little wonder that companies were falling over themselves to get a slice of the action. Ad the best bit is that due to some well crafted (i.e. downright dodgy) legislation that the costs don't appear on the Government books so that it seems that money s generated from nowhere.

There's a new high speed raillink being mooted/built to the Channel Tunnel. The lads on the Rhine want to run that. Now, if it is so attractive then why aren't we running it?

The whole infrastructure has, more or less, been sold off in the UK. One of the exceptions is, thankfuly, Welsh Water which is stil, strangely enough, a not for profit company. Perhaps this is why our water supply is better than most in the UK.

But going back to the NHS; the answer is simple. Get rid of most of the adminstrators and their company cars and let the medics run th show. Next time that you're in an NHS hospital take a detour through the administrative section and look at the push carpets, the fancy offices, the expensive trappings. Then go to the 'public area' about 30 feet away and wonder why the large hospital at Bangor has only one ultrasound scanner when these should be in every doctor's clinic up and down the country and not just half a dozen for whole of the Gwynedd County.

Which reminds me; I want to draft a Freedom of Information letter to the Welsh Assembly. I want to know how many managers in the health trust and those working for the Department of Health have private health care benefits. The way that I see it is that these problems will never go away until those at the top have to use the NHS for their, and their families', needs, state schools and normal rail travel. Like the rest of us.

Stupid double posting. Are you getting any closer to making these forums actually work CCP?

Since when are medical services and national defense the same thing? Because people want national defense, they also must want th government to wipe their nose as well?

As for schools, I see room for both government and private. The problems come when national government attempts to regulate and force payments. Governments hate competition. As for roads, they can be owned by local governments. Do you really need a national highway board to tell your town just what it needs to do?