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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » In “normal times” concern about the NHS reaching a 15 year hig
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » In “normal times” concern about the NHS reaching a 15 year high would point to a big problem for ministers
For the third Friday in a row I’m off to hospital this morning after being one of those who’ve added to this winter’s unprecedented demand on the NHS.
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Edit....fourth, like the Greens....
Could it be that voters have finally realised that the model of unlimited free treatment to everybody all the time is unsustainable? I remember a senior NHS person telling me last year that demand grows at 4% p.a. while the economy grows at 2%, so eventually we'll have to make choices, for instance about whether keeping people alive with only hours or days to live anyway is the best use of our resources. (Funnily enough, last week a GP expressed exactly the same opinion to me in different words.)
Or we could raise the economy's long term growth rate, but that would entail another set of hard choices, for instance building over some of the green belt, and introducing competition into sectors where it has been inadequate previously.
The fact this is actually a story on the BBC depresses me.
Since none of those things apply, and in fact voting Labour at the present time would probably mean even less cash for the NHS, such floating voters are going to begrudgingly support the Tories or kick the chair in frustration.
Handle problem best (Con lead vs Lab) (change vs -1wk)
NHS: -4 (+3)
Immigration: +25 (+3)
Laura Norder: +22 (-1)
Education: +3 (-)
Taxation: +9 (-1)
Unemployment: +7 (+2)
Economy: +22 (-)
Housing: -2 (+1)
Brexit: +20 (-1)
https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/z1elxz48n9/TimesResults_170228_VI_Trackers_W.pdf
Regrettably, I’ve had several occasions where my wife and I have ‘used’ the NHS in the last few months and, especially in emergencies like yours, I too, have found it excellent.
I suspect that voters are, though, beginning to see through the mantra that ‘it must be really local’. Excellence, even if a bit further away, is preferable.
And if, in an age when basic civilisational freedoms are under threat, the next generation of highly educated students is devoting its attention to complaining about whether their lunch is authentic enough, God help us all."
Problem is that all the DoH is based in London and usually staffed by rejects from other places (Hunt from DCMS, Wormald from Education, etc.) so they are too thick to understand that model doesn't work at a low population density and more flexibility is required. So we continue to have sad disasters like the loss of doctor-led maternity services at Aberystwyth (moved to Carmarthen) or the upcoming closure of Whitehaven A&E.
Best wishes for your treatment OGH. Get well soon.
Of course there are compromises that could be reached - A&E centres to stabilise urgent cases before transfer spring to mind - but there will always be problems with massive centres of excellence a long way from where they're needed.
Those of us with private health also rely on the NHS completely for many things. There is no separate complete Private Health Service. So this touches us all.
I've been giving this question a lot of thought (I'd been thinking about doing a thread header on it and had been put off only because I had come to absolutely no conclusions at all). Worry about the NHS is actually highest in Conservative strongholds, which makes the problem still more intriguing.
I think Mike's last paragraph is probably correct in both assertions.
Hope your recovery is coming all nicely, Mr. Smithson.
I wonder if this ties into migration. Whilst a stat I saw before the referendum indicated EU nationals had a percentage of NHS staff exactly corresponding to their proportion of the population (ie their presence makes effectively no difference to the NHS' effectiveness either way), many may feel that excessive migration is causing the burden on the NHS to increase too rapidly.
Not a view I'd take. A combination of not enough new staff being trained and, in particular, the demographic problem of the baby boomers getting old and sick seem likelier causes.
It'd be interesting to try and discover if sympathy for NHS staff has declined following their strikes of recent times.
The NHS is great if you're wheeled in to A&E with a broken leg, or you present with a serious condition such as yours.
It is less good at managing chronic conditions requiring MDT longer term care in particular for older people.
Striking how concern declined under Labour and then back up under Tories/coalition.
http://enormo-haddock.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/thoughts-on-first-pre-season-test.html
Second is 7-10 March.
Also, Fillon's Ladbrokes odds have lengthened again to 8.
I joined Labour a few months ago to vote against Corbyn and since then I've had regular emails.....Dear Roger....Best wishes, Jeremy Corbyn MP.
Yesterday for the first time I got one from John McDonnell....Dear Roger ...,Solidarity, John McDonnell.
An omen perhaps?
I haven't yet worked out how you un-join.
What is more surprising, as Mike points out, is how little effect it is having politically. I think that is largely because the repeated Tory mantra of you can't have a strong and well funded NHS without a strong economy has worked. No one seriously believes that Labour has either a plan or the competence to run the economy at the moment and the corollary is that they would not be able to finance the NHS either.
That's not to say people don't receive first class treatment and that the clinical staff aren't superb but the waste is obvious. The electorate understands that if Corbyn doesn't.
However, although initially there were concerns, no-one I know who has been treated there, even emergencies, has anything but praise for the way it’s all worked.
I’ve spent a long time on outpatients appointments where someone has tried ‘to do something’ about my life long asthma. As I rather expected no-one is much further forward. I’m stabilised much s I was before, but on different medication.
It’s always worth trying, though!
On the NHS: perhaps it's a case of "the boy who cried wolf". Labour have used banged on about upcoming disasters in the NHS under the Conservatives for decades (e.g. "seven days to save the NHS"), and yet the NHS is still there and functioning.
When the real crisis comes, they won't be believed. Stafford, Furness etc, which happened on their watch and had cut-through amongst the public, doesn't help them. Burnham's attitude makes it clear that it's the NHS as an institution that matters, not patients.
"The question is increasingly not so much whether it is sustainable to spend more – after all, many countries already manage that and have done for decades. Rather, it is whether it is sustainable for our spending to remain so comparatively low, given the improvements in the quality of care and outcomes we want and expect from our health services."
https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/blog/2016/01/how-does-nhs-spending-compare-health-spending-internationally
I would not, therefore, expect many comments from me in the next few weeks.
There are now 910K people on zero hours contracts, up from 100K in 2005. The question here is not whether the economy is doing well or badly but whether it is acceptable that more and more people are excluded from the benefits of growth. Those with zero hour contracts will find it much harder to get loans or mortgages, much harder to plan, impossible to make provision for their retirement. They exist instead of living and are excluded from our prosperity.
Why is this happening? Classically, as we near full employment conditions should improve as the competition for labour forces employers to improve their offer. This has not happened because the supply of labour has become excessively elastic as a result of uncontrolled immigration. Those at the bottom of the heap suffer the most and the number so suffering continues to rise.
No one can seriously dispute that immigration has allowed our economy to grow more rapidly in the last couple of decades. It has helped to control inflation by reducing any wage pressure for those that have to compete with immigrants. It has meant businesses have been free to grow without capacity restraints. But the price paid by the bottom 1/3 of our population (in terms of skills and earning capacity) has been severe and it continues to grow. I think this is morally unacceptable. Even lower growth where the profits of that growth are shared more evenly would be better.
the problem if this happens if the likes of Soubry get her way in the commons is the EU will then give us a bad deal just to keep us in. to have a successful negotiation you have to have a nuclear button, which the Lords want us to ditch
I think it's a mark of the deep hole that Labour finds itself that despite massive media coverage recently on the NHS and the extensive use of the issue in Copeland that the party lost the seat and finds itself approaching mid-term streets behind the Conservatives.
If Corbyn is the answer for Labour then the question asked is which Labour leader will propel the party to its worst general election defeat since 1935 and possibly even 1931.
Effectively Corbyn's pitiful "leadership" of the Labour Party nullifies the NHS as an issue.
First, best wishes to you, Mike, for a full and speedy recovery.
It's hard to argue with the thrust of this - it's perfectly possible to have a positive experience of a service and still be concerned about it. One could make a similar argument about public transport.
I'd like the NHS to be better - simply "doing enough" isn't enough. It functions as a national sickness service and the promotion of good public health tends to be the first place the financial axe falls yet with a growing population, it is vital high public health standards are maintained.
Unfortunately, there are many people who have to work even when they are ill because they have no sick pay or similar - that means apart from being unproductive themselves, they go around potentially infecting others and increasing the "cost" of their illness but they cannot afford to lose a day's pay (and that to me speaks volumes).
I've talked about the social care aspect on many occasions - doubtless Hammond will reef up a financial sticking plaster to save David Hodge's bacon next week - but we need to break out of the "crisis, cash, repeat" cycle. As others have mentioned, look at the huge increase in attacks on prison officers and our jails are the next problem.
The whole profile of "public spending" needs a radical re-think. Areas where there are potential savings are left untouched - other areas are continuously trimmed and we spend more on debt interest than we do on protecting ourselves. For obvious reasons, the Conservative Government gets a free pass on this but that doesn't mean there isn't a debate to be had about spending priorities.
I'm not sure they do...
By contrast... Tory voters really do care about the NHS.
Hence the vote to Leave.
http://news.sky.com/story/zero-hours-contract-workers-more-satisfied-10337242
Never had a Nintendo myself, but I hope the company keeps going well. Need more, rather than fewer, firms in the business.
Frustrating, I know, but there’s an old adage ‘It’ll never get better if you pick it!”
Especially as one gets older, the body as a whole takes longer to get back to the best it can be.
Which (a) suggests that while migrants may cause problems such as increased time to see GPs, they aren't the biggest burden on it. And (b) indicates we can cut health spending on half and just all agree to live six months less.
Your last two sentences, though, epitomise what has happened to ‘retail’ pharmacy, where wages have been forced down by one or two big employers actively recruiting Spanish and Eastern European pharmacists.
One of them was telling me that the managers had to treat the staff with 'kid gloves'.
Otherwise they would just walk out and immediately get a job with the company across the road.
The Tories need to be very careful over health and social care. At the moment the voters are not listening to Labour because of Corbyn. All the doorstep reports I've read say same thing - he is utterly toxic to the vast majority of voters. When he is gone (and I reckon next year now) - then they will start to listen.
In the end the mortality rate is 100%. We can not defeat death and illness we can only ever mitigate and postpone it. The more successful we are at doing so the more demand we create from old age related concerns.
That led to increasing competition for wages and the whole inflationary spiral got going and by 1990 we were back to double digit inflation under a Conservative Government.
This time, the growth has been of a different nature and the huge supply of cheap labour from the EU and elsewhere has kept the inflationary pressures down.
On a complete aside, I see Trump is going back to the failed old economic policies of the madhouse. Huge amounts of infrastructure and defence spending combined with tax cuts - that will do wonders for American Government debt and presumably interest rates and inflation. No wonder the stock market loved it - it was like Christmas had come early.
I can't help but feel we will all suffer when all this comes crashing down around Trump's ears and he has to explain to his friends in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania why their jobs haven't come back and indeed why more jobs have been lost.
Edit: 140, actually. I forgot some.
Dry stone walls and fluffy baa lambs aren't in the hills all by themselves.
"If we were to close this gap solely by increasing NHS spending (and assuming that health spending in other UK countries was in line with the 2015 Spending Review plans for England), by 2020/21 it would take an increase of 30 per cent – £43 billion – in real terms to match the EU-15 weighted average spend in 2013, taking total NHS spending to £185 billion"
The public need to be given the facts on this. The gap is staggering. Are they willing to see that kind of level of tax increase to cover the additional £43billion? If not, then we need to rethink NHS funding in 21st century.
1% increase in NI raises about £5billion according to IFS.
The problem the US has is that the great flyover has been decimated by competition from overseas, private equity firms, automation, and poor education.
Combining economic stimulus with protectionism seems almost guaranteed to cause pretty severe inflation. If prices rise, but jobs don't come back, then Trump will be rightly out on his ear.
I don't know what the answer to the problems of the Great Flyover are. They probably involve subsidies to businesses to set up in towns away from the coast, more federally funded education (rather than the current system where local counties cut education spending in response to diminished tax revenues, worsening the cycle), and better infrastructure.
If another party wants to show their "caring" credentials they will have to say where that extra 2% per year, 4% next year, 6% the year after etc, is going to come from. The divergence over a decade is going to amount to 10's of billions of pounds, which there will be no realistic way of raising... all political parties are going to have to come up with their own versions of the "hard choices".
Perhaps they were getting a higher number of constituents raising the issue.
every NHS question in PMQs is met with 'Labour would wreck the economy so no money for NHS' - a message we'll keep hearing no doubt:"
Though I don't deny the force of that argument, when it's a response to a query about a specific problem, it becomes quite irritating. Another few years of that, and it will start to get very annoying indeed. And if there is an economic downturn, electorally costly.
We are 1% ahead on defense spending, thats the starter for ten. How does our welfare and pension spending compare ?
Also USA, Japan, New Zealand....
Bear in mind of course the UK spends much less private money on health than many countries also - that's a function of the system we have chosen.
Secondly, with regard to political resonance, it’s perhaps more informative to see how many people regard the NHS as the most important issue, as opposed to an important issue. It is just 18%.
Then look at who the 18% are. The Welsh (run by Labour), public sector workers and older folk seem to be the main people.
It also shouldn’t be assumed that mentioning the NHS equates to agreeing with Labourite descriptions of it’s problems nor their proposed solutions.
It seems to me that just as many people are likely to describe the issues with the NHS as over-bloated as underfunded, over-used as under resourced and over committed rather than not reaching far enough.
I’m firmly of the view that if someone started with a blank of sheet of paper, and a mindset to use the best of modern technology, data storage and telecommunications, combined with the most efficient business structures and economies of scale, they would not design the NHS in it’s present form.
They certainly wouldn't design the GP point of entry as it is and that has repercussions down/up the line.
@LOS_Fisher
Lucy Fisher Retweeted Neil Henderson
Excl: Labour has lost nearly 26,000 members since last summer, according to leaked party data. Snr party figures say tide turning on Corbyn