The Political Thread

[Jim_Campbell]

Did anyone else know the NHS has been subcontracted to the private sector already?

Yes. I've been banging on about it for years. The Tories laid all the groundwork they needed for it in 2012 with the Health & Social Care Act. People like 38 Degrees claimed victory when the Tories stripped out the most controversial stuff on private tendering and the government's statutory responsibility for national health provision, but in fact the Tories just stuffed it all into a Statutory Instrument (SI) which (being a 'regulation' and not a 'law') doesn't automatically require a full vote in the Commons and pushed it through on the quiet.

mind you, if/when I need an op I imagine the grub will be better in't private sector.

I doubt it. Catering services are largely contracted out to the private sector throughout the NHS already.

Cheers

Jim

[Leigh S]

To be fair Jim - privatisation has only failed the public and those organisations affected.  MPs and their cash grabbing mates have found it to be 100% successful in lining their pocjets with Public money.. one might almost all them... scroungers off the public purse?

[Professor Bear]

"Every photo of the candidates looks like the staff room of a failing comprehensive feigning amusement at being photobombed by the janitor."

[Old Tankie]

Nearly four months in to this evil government and I'm still not being charged on the door to see my doctor or consultant.

I don't care who treats me as long as I'm well looked after and the NHS pays for it.  Nice single en-suite room with wide screen TV and decent food in a private hospital, all paid for by the NHS, yes please.

It's even better when the University College London Hospitals puts you up in their own 4 star hotel, for no charge (oh! and the carer gets to stay for no charge as well). 

Yeah, the NHS is definitely going down the pan!

[Jim_Campbell]

Yeah, the NHS is definitely going down the pan!

The Conservative party is ideologically committed to ending the NHS as we know it, preferring it instead to be a state-branded form of insurance within a private market of competing healthcare companies, a market like they have in the US.

The tendering process which the NHS is now obliged to apply to every aspect of its service provision is already driving up the administrative/legal costs of running the service — it may produce an on-paper saving if the X-ray department in a hospital costs less to run when it's contracted out to Virgin or Circle, but elsewhere on the balance sheet is hugely expensive tendering process which, despite swallowing public money that would otherwise be spent on healthcare, is opaque to public scrutiny because it is protected by 'commercial confidentiality'.

I don't care who treats me as long as I'm well looked after and the NHS pays for it.  Nice single en-suite room with wide screen TV and decent food in a private hospital, all paid for by the NHS, yes please.

You know that's not free, right? Hospitals are running deficits on their budgets doing this sort of thing because under-funding means that they lack the capacity to provide the service directly to you. They have to do this, because the fines* imposed on them for missing targets are even greater than the cost of contracting out to the private sector, but the government then points to those deficits as proof that the NHS is in crisis.

(I know someone who held a very senior management post at one of the largest teaching hospitals in the country. I've had some eye-opening conversations with them.)

Jim

*"Fines?" you may ask. Yes, fines. Deductions from the money a hospital receives from government to punish them for... not having enough money in the first place.

[Richmond Clements]

http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2015/08/27/known-number-of-deaths-while-claiming-incapacity-benefits-nears-100000/

"Known number of deaths while claiming incapacity benefits nears 100,000."

There's your Tory government right there. Scum.

[Professor Bear]

And to think Tankie voted for UKIP because the Tories weren't right-wing enough.

To be fair, Richmond, those are the raw numbers.  The DWP's own figures reveal that only something like twenty thousand died as a direct result of sanctions.  In 2014.

[Jim_Campbell]

There's your Tory government right there. Scum.

Iain Duncan Smith, a man who I heard say, without a hint of irony, on the Today programme: "I believe that work sets you free". He'd not long returned from a visit to Auschwitz, and so cannot have been unaware of the resonances of the words Arbeit Macht Frei.

Jim

[Professor Bear]

It was when we walked into Auschwitz through the gate with its infamous statement, Arbeit Macht Frei, that I realised how little I really knew about this place of cruelty and death

[Old Tankie]

Hi Richmond, I'd take that link more seriously if there weren't factual errors in it.  It says the work-related group are expected to recover from their illnesses within a year and in that group there should be no deaths at all barring accidents.  What nonsense, you can be in the work-related group and get another illness or your current illness gets worse and you can die.  Also you can claim work-related activity group ESA for longer than a year.

What were the winters like over the years that are being compared?  Far more sick people die in a bad winter.

People die in the support group?  Surely that's not a surprise!

[Richmond Clements]

I don't really care of you take it seriously or not.

[Old Tankie]

Oh!  That's mature!  I thought you were joining in the debate, shame you couldn't post something factual.

[Professor Bear]

I was going to recommend the ignore function, Richmond, but then I realised that as a moderator you have to read everyone's posts.  I want to laugh at your predicament, but pity prevents me from doing so.

[Old Tankie]

No, but you can ignore me, if you wish.  Please do!

[Grugz]

who said that?

seems ages since we had one of those! cheers tankie me old mate