British NHS, RIP?

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It's been obvious for a good few years now that the UK's National Health Service has been struggling, for example regular annual crises every winter during flu epidemics with not nearly enough beds available. Long waits in Accident & Emergency departments, often up to 8 hours and sometimes much longer. Difficulties in being able to get an appointment with a General Practitioner or to get NHS dental treatment.

All of this is old hat, but ever since the pandemic, things seem to have spiralled down to new lows. Many people are now waiting well over a year to see a specialist and get tests. Some of these people will have serious conditions and will die as a result of late diagnosis or no diagnosis. Some critics say the NHS is heading for collapse, but others say this has already happened, and I'm beginning to think the latter group may be right.

Over eighteen months ago, my dentist referred me to a local NHS hospital for a wisdom tooth extraction. A few weeks ago, I got a letter informing me that an appointment had been made with a specialist at North Manchester General Hospital, and this morning I made my way there in the expectation of finally getting the procedure carried out. However, it turned out that this was just a 'consultation' and the doctor informed me that I would have to wait at least another year.

This is the UK in the third decade of the 21st Century, a supposedly advanced Western European country with the fifth largest economy in the world. Words fail me. Any other UK residents here with interesting views or experiences with the NHS? Or any views from other parts of the world?

You might not guess it, but I actually believe in the principle of taxpayer-owned socialised medicine, as opposed to systems run on private insurance models, but the situation in this country is beginning to scare me more than a little.

Last edited by DeepHour on 28 May 2023, 1:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.

During the pandemic people working for the NHS put their lives on the line to save many lives of others, yet this is what the government thinks of the NHS: "everyone in this country is rich or should be rich, we don't need the NHS, poor (working class) people can die for all we care".

Hopefully the NHS would hang on for just another year until labour gets voted back in, then it may be saved. Although labour leans towards the left, it does support the working man (and woman) more than the Tories, and I think it would be more in favour of supporting the NHS. That's why I vote labour every time. After all, it was labour who brought the NHS in.

^ I hope you're right. I did notice some improvement in the NHS after Blair's Labour government came to power in the late 1990s, but I wonder whether they'll be up to the job next time round, or whether it'll be too late. You hear a lot a scary stories about British junior doctors in NHS hospitals quitting their jobs and moving abroad.

Yep the nhs is defo on its last legs. I've had to
(begrudgingly) go private for a dentist. £15 a month. I mean even with an NHS dentist you still have to pay a certain amount for treatment anyway. It sucks.

I actually wouldn't mind going private but when you pay contributions towards it anyway then why should you. It's a f*****g stitch up.

To be fair though I have been pretty fortunate to get a good neurosurgeon for my tumour etc on the NHS so I can't complain about that.

Also its gonna be a long time before labour will be able to sort the situation out, if ever. So if you're a right wing supporter (Joe90) and you're just looking for an easier ride from a more left wing party then I'd think twice about turning your cloak too quickly.

We all want the NHS (unless we're stinking rich), and as a working class citizen almost near the poverty line there are a lot of things I agree on with the left.

Political beliefs don't have to be black or white. There's a mixture of the two that I can relate or agree to. We're all entitled our own political opinions and I stand by mine.

So you're just right of the centre with a tendency to lean to the left. A lot people are centre right or centre left in the UK and that includes politicians.

Believe it or not there are plenty of people who are also on the poverty line who would be more than happy to see the back of the nhs just because of their political beliefs.

That's the same issue in the US. Beyond the negative impact on people using the NHS, I'm afraid that if it isn't fixed that we'll never get universal care.

So, it's hardly just a UK thing. People voting against their interests in individual issues are everywhere that had voting. It's a shame that more places don't have a mechanism to address that.

Yes, I think the Capital class' goal is to dismantle the public sector. First the budget cuts come, then pay cuts/stagnation for public sector workers, then people leave/don't enter that sector of the economy, after a while that public good becomes so dysfunctional no one has the time to mourn it when it's gone. This was done to British Railways, free university education (which Blair's gov't killed), Welfare (AFDC) in the States. Labour won't save the NHS, only mass movements will.

I'm so scared about the NHS. We're poor enough as it is, without having to pay thousands whenever we get ill. Is it down to greed on the government's part or is it more than that? Don't our taxes go towards the NHS?

It's because the tories would rather everything be privatised. Plus the nhs was first implemented by the labour party back in the 1940s.

Tories are all about people taking responsibility for themselves and therefore they would rather see people pay for private health care and Labour are more about everyone looking after each other and so they would raise taxes (I think), and give more support to the welfare state and to the nhs.

That's really a simplified way of putting things. But I'm cooking tea and I'm just a normal person, not a professor.

Well I think that after the pandemic more people have realised that the lower/underpaid people were a lot more useful than what they are stereotyped as. Nurses and cleaners are two examples of key workers that had to risk their and their families' lives leaving their homes to work without even a day of furlough, among other positions too that I can't think of right now. But the busiest and most stressful places to work during the pandemic were hospitals of course, and more people relied on the NHS to save lives (they even used some private hospitals to treat covid patients but on the NHS). Even the government was praising the NHS up at the time. Now it seems to have all been forgotten. But the general public haven't forgotten, and I've heard that more people are going to be voting labour for the next election.

I suppose Boris Johnson was the prime minister during the pandemic, and although he deceived everyone by disobeying the lockdown rules, he's still OK for a Tory. I prefer him to David Cameron and Liz Truss.

Anyway I think that if the NHS was to collapse then I'd commit suicide.

No tory politician is ever OK IMO. They do nothing for me and I can't relate to anything they say or any policy no matter how they try to spin it.

If it was upto the likes of Johnson we (the normal people in this country) would literally be living off scraps and we would be made to feel grateful for them and we would also be working ourselves into an early grave on the bare minimal of wages. The Tory party is only interested in money because it's the rich people in the UK who fund them. They don't care about what little you pay in your taxes.

I don't like any Tories but I think I'd choose Boris over any of the other Tories if I had to. Otherwise, given the choice, I'd have labour in.

It's just the last time there was a general election it was pasted all over social media that Jeremy Corbyn was supporting terrorism. I'm not sure if that's true or if it was just Tory supporters wanting to put everyone off of voting labour, so I ended up voting Lib Dems, because never am I ever going to vote for the Tories.
But this time I'm just going to vote labour.

Both my dad and my boyfriend always vote Tories. But it's their choice and I don't hold anything against it. I've been brought up never to hate people because of their political beliefs (unless they're in favour of extremes like Nazis but I'm just talking about general political beliefs. The only people I'd be all for killing are murderers who have 100% evidence that they deliberately killed, otherwise I am strongly against innocent humans or animals being killed. Well, I'm against innocent humans being killed but I'm against both innocent and 'guilty' animals being killed because it's usually their nature to kill and they don't know any better. Yes, I even get upset when dogs are put down for harming a human).

Yeah I also wouldn't hold it against a person for not voting for who I vote for.

Ive worked in the NHS for 45 years and have seen it go through many changes.

One aspect of politically driven policy that was introduced in the 80's by the Conservative party was the principal of general management. Presented as an opportunity to make the service more efficient and bring proven private sector management practices to bear the immediate impact was the creation of many additional layers of management and an influx of 'professional managers' with no clinical or care experience.

The impact of this in relation to reduced moral and an erosion of a true sense of public service was felt immediately and persists to this day.

I am of the view that politicians on the right and center left would like to see the NHS fail and disintegrate and that the process of stealthy privatisation that has been going on for the past 35 years can accelerate so that they dont have to hold the kind of accountability for the service that they do now.

As I look at it now it seems broken - and it can only survive if some real commitment and leadership is show by the political ruling class. Locked as we are into the short term electoral cycle and powerful vested interests controlling Westminster then I am pessimistic about this happening.

Considering this with everything else that is going on in UK Ltd at the moment I am of the view that the time for a recallobration of our values and institutions with a significant injection of real socialist ideals is long overdue.

Other views are available of course.