Another Cameron lie exposed ?

[Canary42]

And the bad news that the Tories are hoping is kept off the front page by the Wedding......

National Health Service further cuts.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-13242722

Whatever happened to Cameron's pre-election pledge "I'll cut the deficit, not the NHS" ?

[classylady60]

Perhaps I'm missing something but I thought it was recommended by "Monitor" to make further cuts to the NHS? Is this anything to do with Cameron?

[sandyRoe]

Remember Kinnock's famous speech? 'I warn you not to fall ill, I warn you not to get old...'
Cameron and Thatcher are much of a muchness

[New Judge]

There's quite a difference between "cuts" and "efficiency savings".

The NHS is hugely inefficient and huge sums can be saved with little effect on services. The scandal is that the issue has remained unaddressed for so long.

[Sir Alec]

You expect a politician not to lie?

[welshlibranr]

Politicians don't know how to be truthful!............they just tell us what they think we want to hear!.................

[ABerrant]

Monitor is the independent regulator of NHS foundation trusts, established in January 2004 to authorise and regulate NHS foundation trusts, independent of central government and directly accountable to Parliament. Subject to Parliamentary approval, Monitor will become the economic regulator for health and adult social care around mid-2012.

Chair of the Board and Interim Chief Executive - Dr David Bennett, previously Chief Policy Advisor to Prime Minister Tony Blair.

http://www.monitor-nh...ut-monitor/what-we-do

[VHG]

There is a big difference between cutting funding and making an organization more efficient.

Or are you happy that under Labour they threw money at the NHS without making any attempt to make it more efficient.

Any idiot can keep throwing money at a problem, but there comes a point when you have to say you are too innefficient and wasting billions.

[WatTyler]

I hope none of you lot fall ill you will see what Tory cuts do.

[youngmafbog]

I see the usual lefty nonsense about dont fall ill,

My missus works for the NHS and she says money is lobbed around and wasted still, stall take no end of sick days and many are bone idle.

The NHS does not need money, it needs to be made to work. If we dont do something then it WILL fail.

So stop making rediculous claims that the tories will bring the NHS down. They wont.

[Sqad]

Canary.....as others have pointed out,there is a vast difference between "cuts" and "savings" as cuts invokes less allocated money, whereas "savings" suggests better use of the allocated money.

No Cameron lie so far.

In all departments of the NHS it has been recognized, for the past 40 years, that if one didn't spend the amount of money allocated, then there certainly would be a cut next financial year.Hence any monies outstanding, would be spent on non essentials just to make certain that you had the same allocation, the following year. Total nonsense and a waste of money which has been going on for decades.

However to give the bulk of NHS finance to the GP's to allocate is utter and total nonsense...in my opinion.

[modeller]

I know people who work for the NHS and the local council and they all tell me about their over staffed , underworked depts but naturally they don't want to lose their jobs.
I spent time in Russia ( 1970/80s ) where they didn't have any unemployment because there were 5 people doing a one man job. That's the sort of situation we have here, albeit on a smaller scale, in our public services. Whenever a government tries to make a public service more efficient it invariably means loss of jobs and more work for the remainder.

[CanisMajor]

Like most of the public sector the NHS has huge scope for efficiency improvemnts. Thes cuts are in those areas rather than frontline services.

[sandyRoe]

Are there really thousands of under employed people in the NHS sitting in back offices whiling away the day on AB?

[boxtops]

Canary, this is not new, this is not "further cuts". It depends which part of the NHS your wife works in, mafbob - my NHS employer had to make management cuts of 45% before 31 March this year. There is no money washing around in our part of it, and my team only had 2 or 3 sick days in the whole of last year. Those of us managing teams are all targeted with reducing sickness absence. It can't carry on like this, the NHS is so overspent, we have get back to a modicum of budgetary constraint. The NHS has been grossly overspent for years - if the Tories hadn't come in, Labour would still have had to to cut back funding, they were giving money they hadn't got. The hospitals are at the moment commissioned by the PCTs and once they become Foundation Trusts they will be responsible for their own budgets - but the services (as sqad says) will be commissioned by the GP Consortia. Trusts which don't perform or don't deliver may not get the contracts.

[boxtops]

No sandy - sites like AB are banned on our computers at work. And no, not in my experience, most of us work (unpaid) many more hours than we are paid to do, just to get through the workload.

[sandyRoe]

That's what I thought. So, where are these cuts going to fall?

[boxtops]

That may be up to the individual trusts to decide. There will be saving in one respect when the PCTs wind up in 2013, but inevitably those roles will move into the Commissioning Consortia or the national commissioning board - but Trusts are being asked to do things more leanly, not duplicate work, less wastage, more central procurements, etc. Our three PCTs have an umbrella cluster now to avoid duplication of director-level staff, that must be saving a few bob.

[New Judge]

Of course large amounts of the extra expenditure lavished by the previous government went on increasing GP’s salaries by 60-70%. Have the services they provide increased in quantity or quality by a similar amount? No, I don’t think so. GPs are essentially clearing houses for patients. “Try these pills. If the situation does not improve (or you do not die) by next week I’ll get you on a waiting list to see somebody who knows what they’re talking about” is about the strength of it.

The NHS needs a radical reform of the way its services are funded, managed and delivered. Successive governments have failed to achieve this and the last administration in particular equated spending funds with improving delivery. This government will fail as well because GPs, upon whom they are depending to achieve such reform, are not best equipped to implement those radical changes.

[Sqad]

New Judge.....exactly right...health care should be hospital centered,not GP centered but the radical reforms that is needed would not be accepted by the voters.........so it will never happen and we are stuck with an NHS that is hemorrhaging money.

[boxtops]

Sqad - the swing for the last year has been for the focus of patient care to move from hospital to community. Many services previously offered only in secondary care are now available either in general practice or in community hospitals. The Community Health services have broken away from the commissioning organisations and will become income generating Foundation Trusts. The future - at present - is in primary care.
Not all GPs will have to become commissioners, those who choose to do so will lead the new commissioning organisations on behalf of the others.
There is still no sign how large the eventual commissioning GP consortia will be - a minimum number of patients will undoubtedly be a requirement in order to have commissioning clout with the providers.