I think the fundamental problem for the NHS is that it continues to aim for the founding principle from 1947/48 of providing health care to all as needed. In the ensuing 75 years all kinds of expensive new treatments have developed, and life expectancy has increased by many years - largely because of better health care. Only today, a new gene-editing procedure was announced costing £2.8 million, available on the NHS, admittedly only rarely called for, but that is a microcosm of 75 years' advances in the NHS.

The difficulty is persuading everyone that these new things cannot be afforded on relatively cheap taxation. Today's hospitals have to have all kinds of expensive equipment and expensively-trained people to operate it (and manage it :-( )

Edited by Andrew-T on 15/02/2023 at 10:09

In fairness, I rather suspect the 'idle and feckless' deeply resent having to pay half of their income to you in rent so that you can sit in the sun complaining about them and wondering why they don't also have tans.

It is a good job that there are in this country a lot of private landlords and companies offering property to rent. The sell off of former council houses has left a big hole in the flats/ houses available for the less well off. There again you have people earning a very good wage living in council houses.

Getting back to private health care, a lot of good employers are offering family private health care as park of their work package. This helps ensure that their employees can get back to work more promptly than waiting for the NHS. As far as treatment is concerned you cannot fault the NHS. It is a great pity that the waiting lists can be so long. For years the NHS as spent billions on so called management consultants with little return. Whatever government is in charge they are afraid to rock the boat in carrying out reforms in both the NHS and the civil service

The main issue that we have is that the NHS is hugely underfunded and collapsing under its own weight. It cannot be simply shut down because there isn't enough capacity in the private sector and the political ramifications would be huge. So, it is being allowed to die a slow death whilst we transition to a private, or paid for, model. That means that there is no infrastructure in either the private or public sector that currently functions as full coverage health service. Eventually. The transition will end, we will pay for treatment and the vulnerable will be c******d or dead.

Its complete nonsense to say that the NHS is 'hugely underfunded'. It receives huge amounts of taxpayer's money - around £3k per annum for every man, woman and child in the country. This is comparable to other European countries. Throwing more money at the NHS will not improve the service.

As regards me paying for my healthcare, well its about priorities and values isn't it? I paid £24k for an operation in 2008. I was able to choose who I felt was the most capable surgeon and use the best hospital. I prioritise my health. Of course I could have used the NHS and blown the money on a new car instead.

The cheap shot about me being a landlord is also to be expected. I got into property 25 years ago because I could see where the country was heading (rocketing population and not much housebuilding). When others were predicting a crash, I was buying. I keep my properties well maintained and am choosy about who I have as tenants. I provide a public service. Far too many younger people have no financial discipline and will never own their own property for that reason. They blow their money on must-have things like a new leased car, the latest iPhone, gym membership, beer at £6 a bottle....

""Eh? Who do you think bought up all the Council houses, trebled the rent and put them back on the rental market? And all that lovely rent comes out of the benefits bill because there's no affordable housing left after Thatcher sold it all off for buttons."""

I think that you will find that the council houses were sold off in the first instance to the sitting tenants at a good discount on their market value. A lot of councils have formed management companies to run their current stocks of houses.

"""But, yes, health insurance. I have both a cash plan (pays for optical, dental etc) and insurance (pays for operations etc). The problem is that neither gives you face to face access to a GP. You can have a five minute video call with one when they're on their lunch break but nothing else. You might be able to get a referral from them, but your scan then gets sent back to your GP and overloads them even more.

With private heath WITHOUT insurance you can get a face to face GP consultation for about £60 if you wish. You can also pay for scans and be referred to a consultant without going through your GP. Your own GP gets a kick back for referring patients to go private.

NHS is well funded but badly managed. I have several friends who are NHS doctors. They all agree that

1. Too many managers in NHS who are not adding value and costing a lot.

2. Old age care takes lot of resource.

3. Skill shortage (while doctors are paid extremely well not everyone is well paid) because not enough in country students studying medicine and NHS need to bring professionals from overseas. Doctors earn even more from locums.

4. Private medical workload is less and pay is better.

Private medical is a going to be a problem.

Firstly, not everyone can afford private insurance.

Secondly, they have T&C with lots of exclusions. Lot of people would discover they are not covered only during claim time e.g. something linked to pre-existing condition etc. Insurers will check past history only during claim - not during enrolment process.

Thirdly, once a trend sets to take up private medical, the government would have no incentive to fix NHS. This means NHS will worsen further over time. Once a critical mass moves into private scheme (I don't know what % of population that needs to be) it will be all downhill for NHS.

Insurers won't take old people. They won't refuse but will ask sky high premium which OAPs can't pay. So, insurers will get good health good earners most of whom would be covered via company plan. These people are least likely to claim too.

On contrary, if privatization is banned (won't happen, but let's assume) then rich and powerful people would be forced to use NHS and they would push the law makers to improve the services - thus leading to overall service standard uplift.

""Can you give us some numbers and a timeframe for the bolded bit?

It is common knowledge that the NHS and in this context I mean individual health authorities through out the UK employ their own MCs, There is no joined up thinking. Each authority is run as its own entity where as most of the medical side must have the common purpose within the NHS. With the NHS authorities paying its managers astronomical salaries to run their hospitals why do they need consultants and what have they achieved. If they where so good over say the last 20 years why is the NHS in terminal decline. Any private business would never have got in this mess given the money available

Who do you think bought up all the Council houses, trebled the rent and put them back on the rental market?

When the Right to Buy Act was brought in by Maggie in the early 80's only sitting tenants could buy the properties. There was a discount from the market value that depended on the time people had been renting (not necessarily that particular house - years in other properties counted), the top discount was 50%. A vast majority of those in this area are still privately owned, easy to spot, the council ones look drab in comparison.

It would have worked better if the Local Authorities had been allowed to spend the receipts from the sales building new houses but Maggie's government would not allow that and in any case a vast majority of the receipts went to central government to pay for the huge bill for Unemployment Benefit which of course resulted form Maggie's policies.

When the Coal Industry was privatised the British Coal houses that had not been bought by the sitting tenants were put into packages that organisations could bid for. A majority of those organisations (or their successors) still let out the properties.

In this area most of the "buy to let" properties are old, run down terraced type that private buyers no longer have any interest in, normally go for £30,000 or less. Its created ghettos in certain areas, visit at your peril.

I'm sure a lot of Germans thought much the same in the early 1930s or former Soviet citizens did when their dictators took over, and look what happened to them.

And proof you need it that no matter what question you pose the Nazis will end up mentioned at some point.

Not worth the effort replying to Andy as you won't ever get an answer, unless you want a lot of waffle and conspiracy theories. I prefer to eat my waffles :-)

Probably because you and your ken can't (without destroying your narrative) rather than don't want to. Too many 'big words' for you as well, I presume? Or maybe that you have had your pills yet?

I prefer porridge - the eating kind. ;-)

No, I do mean I don't want to - it's not worth my time when you won't reply to questions or give any links to facts.

As opposed to yours that 'do'? Works both ways.