No Money For Our Hospitals

[bazwillrun]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/healthcare-network/2013/jan/22/lewisham-hospital-closure-worrying-precedent-nhs

dont worry though we've always got plenty to throw at foreign causes.

[Gromit]

I thought you right wingers were all for bringing in market forces to the NHS. This NHS Trust has been badly run and has run out of money. If a business does that, it goes out of business. And so has this NHS Trust.

[pdq1]

Don't you think the Tories are trying to point out that immigration is too high and cannot be sustained at current levels. Only yesterday the Mail, who else, published a diagrammic map showing areas of the country that are inundated with births to recent immigrant mothers. Just shut a few more A&Es and maternity services and show what a mess the NHS is becoming.

[New Judge]

A similar problem exists with the NHS as exists with State pensions - there are far too many people drawing extensive benefits without having made much (if any) contribution. In a proper market facilities provided by an organisation would only be available for those who make the necessary contributions. Successive governments have failed to recognise the changing imbalance between money in and services out, making NHS facilities available to virtually anybody of any nationality who turns up to use them.

In addition the outrageous PFI initiatives signed of during the Blair/Brown years have left some NHS Trusts with unsustainable debts which were accrued to keep the cost of capital projects off the government’s books.

The matter has progressed beyond childish party politics and now poses a serious threat to health services in the UK.

[bazwillrun]

@Gromit

you need to use the joke section !

so if your car breaks down you chuck away the car do you and go without....or do you maybe see if it just needs a few replacement parts.

maybe they should have got rid of the useless numpties running the place and replaced them with people that had proper business skills rather than the jumped up careeer administrators they tend to use in the NHS, who tend to be of the same calibre and ilk of person that councils use as CEO's

[emmie]

NJ, absolutely right, too many trying to access services they are not entitled and it's about time someone actually said this, that the NHS can't be a free for all venture. Too much money over the years has been pumped into the NHS and much waste. for all those people who say it's wonderful, free and so forth perhaps haven't been in any hospital in recent days. The whole NHS has been run like personal fiefdoms, and quite frankly that should stop. Throwing money at something doesn't always make it better, it can just mean more money down the drain.

[youngmafbog]

The problem is that it requires an across party strategy. Playing politics with health (which all parties are guilty) is simply not acceptable.

We do need to start with immigration and health tourism, but the problem goes much deeper. As pointed out the NHS is run by people of the same ilk, usually Guardian reader types, who dont have a clue about business. It needs someone like Richard Branson or Mr Rose (except he is of to OCADA) to be tempted in (And given carte blanche in the hiring and firing).

[naomi24]

The management has no idea of business - and there's too much abuse of the system. I like youngmafbog's suggestion of recruiting someone like Richard Branson.

[emmie]

Naomi, as do i, but the left wing fraternity will just say it's another example of privatising the NHS

[naomi24]

Em, no doubt. Perhaps they find closures preferable.

[emmie]

no they want their wretched cake and eat it. Some can't grasp the matter of economics, when figures just don't add up, something has to go.

[Gromit]

If you run the NHS as a free market you cannot bleat when there are casualties.
Of course it does not have to be that way. We could run it as a service, where people are treated when they are sick not when there is any money available.

How you lot can be so hypocrital that you demand the NHS should be run as a business, and then cry when the free marketeers f*ck it up.

[emmie]

so if no money to pay for it, how do you propose to pay the doctors, nurses, consultants, staff, equipment, buildings, rent, and the thousand and one things that go into our sterling NHS.

[boxtops]

This isn't the first time this sort of thing's happened, to public outcry. A few years back the A&E at Canterbury was to close, as the Trust couldn't practically afford to keep three fully staffed A&Es open (the others being Margate and Ashford in this area). It's just not economic to keep failing services open, they have to be "rationalised". The NHS still has to make shedloads of savings.

You can switch money from defence to health, it doesn't work like than, and throwing money at an individual failing service doesn't make it better.

[boxtops]

^ can't switch

[naomi24]

Gromit, but it is a business - not one intended to make a profit, granted, but a business nevertheless - and that's how it should be run. Sadly it isn't because it's not managed by people with any sense of business - and that's why it's in the mess it's in.

[emmie]

indeed, as we see with so many of our public bodies, throw money at it until we bleed, it won't necessarily make them better, just more expensive and wasteful. One of our biggest local hospitals made such a hash, widely reported, on the PFI, the interest alone would make your eyeballs fall out, and quite honestly it's all well to say let's treat everyone, but that is the point we can't.

[modeller]

Gromit #Of course it does not have to be that way. We could run it as a service, where people are treated when they are sick not when there is any money available.#
Oh yes and how are you going to that ? If there isn't any money ?