The NHS is Our National Shame
Delivering his budget address yesterday, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt told the Commons that “the NHS is, rightly, the biggest reason most of us are proud to be British”. What extraordinary nonsense, says James Bartholomew in the Telegraph.
Anyone who has seriously studied the performance of the NHS knows otherwise. It is among the worst providers of healthcare in the advanced world. One of the key tests of performance is the proportion of people still alive five years after being diagnosed with cancer. The European rankings vary over time but consistently, for at least 25 years, those living in Britain have been more likely to die after diagnosis than those living in Belgium, France or other advanced European countries.
Professor Sikora once calculated how many people died here who would not have died in an average European country. The terrifying figure was 10,000 people in a single year.
Meanwhile, the waiting list for operations has now reached a staggering 7.6 million people. Doctors have been on strike which would have been unthinkable in pre-NHS days. People in many places can’t get to see their GP so they go to Accident and Emergency. But the waits in A&E are often horrendous. Nearly 400,000 people waited 24 hours or more in an emergency department in England in 2022-23.
There are many more such horrifying statistics about the NHS. It is absurd to be proud of it. Some people admire the ‘ideals’ of the NHS. But imagine that one of the premature and unnecessary deaths that take place here each year was your grandmother. Would the idea that the NHS ‘meant well’ be sufficient comfort for you?
The fact that the NHS still exists reveals that, as a country, we have shown moral cowardice – an unwillingness to admit that a failed system should be changed.
“European nations, along with Singapore and Australia, have better systems,” Bartholomew adds. “Most of them are based on social insurance and varied, smaller suppliers of healthcare. It is possible to make the change. The Netherlands did it. Why not us?”
Worth reading in full.
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My recent experience of the NHS is not good. My mother is being ‘treated’ for cancer. She is 81 years old. She has been plied with expensive drugs, has had numerous tests and is once again currently in hospital. They are treating the illness rather than my mother. The oncologist has never met her and will only arrange video calls. Her quality of life has diminished since this started. The only winners I can see are the drug companies. My mother has not benefited and neither have the tax payers 🥲
I am sorry to hear your sad story.
In order to bring in a social insurance backed healthcare system like France or Ireland you have to count the population and issue ID cards to identify those who would still be entitled to free care.
Then these statistics have to be applied to risk etc to formulate the insurance costs.
There lies the rub as I suspect the real population numbers would be horrific and very difficult to sustain with an insurance model.
I have seen it suggested that it could be as high as 100 million…
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/for-services-to-wrecking-britain-the-covid-conmen-landing-top-jobs/
A powerful and thorough slam-dunking of some miserable, treacherous, evil turds such as Farrar, Van Tam, Valance etc.
“To return to our starting point, the lauding of these government scientific advisers, why would such abject failures have been promoted to such elevated positions unless there is a much more corrupt, sinister and power-hungry agenda behind it?”
Indeed.
Socialised medicine costs so much money that you cannot have a Mercedes. All you can have is a second hand Polo. ——The NHS apparently already eats up 40% of GDP. If we want to have any chance of a Mercedes (even a second hand one) then the socialised medicine system must go. ——But our addiction to something that we perceive as free prevents us doing that. ——-It is NOT free. We pay an arm and leg for it.
The same for ‘free education’, absolute nonsense. It costs the average UK family about 6k/yr in taxes (for an awful education system, where your children share a classroom with Jadon and Mohammed, and they’re force-fed leftist nonsense by their LGBT teacher).
And ‘free healthcare’? It costs the average UK family double that, at about 12k/yr in taxes (for an awful health system). BUPA health insurance annual cost? About 2k/yr!
BUPA health insurance annual cost? About 2k/yr!
How old are you? What does that cover? Try getting total health insurance when you are in your 70s.
And hasn’t this already deploring state of affairs worsened under 12 years of the fake Conservative Party.
The NHS apparently already eats up 40% of GDP
2023 NHS England expenditure was about £170 billion. Scotland and Wales were about £20 billion each. So total of £210 billion.
UK GDP 2023 £2,274 billion.
So NHS uses about 9% of GDP.
Our total expenditure on healthcare (it is not all NHS) is about 11.3% of GDP which is similar to comparable countries such as France, Germany and Canada and much less than the USA.
Having double checked it seems my 40% number related to staff costs for the NHS. ie the cost of staff is 40 of the overall NHS budget. Thanks for pointing out my mistake which I made from memory.—-I am always happy to admit errors unlike some people who will simply put a red thumbs down.— The rest of my comment I stand by. Plus I could add that the number of hospital beds available has halved over the last 30 years. People do notice unacceptable waiting times that you don’t have with private care although the aftercare won’t be so extensive, and they also notice that trying to see a doctor is more difficult than before with much of appointments going to Nurse Practitioners, but I can tell you that my wife was one of those and she conceded that she does not have the diagnostic skills of a doctor and has only done some extra training regarding dishing out prescriptions.——-There are many ways to skin a cat. If you are happy with your healthcare then that is up to you.
Plus I could add that the number of hospital beds available has halved over the last 30 years. That is similar to most comparable countries and it more to do with different approaches to treatment than lack of funding. If it weren’t for bed blocking we could manage with even less. People do notice unacceptable waiting times that you don’t have with private care although the aftercare won’t be so extensive, True – although there are cases of unacceptable waiting times in private care (remember it is frequently the same doctors and often shared facilities). and they also notice that trying to see a doctor is more difficult than before with much of appointments going to Nurse Practitioners, but I can tell you that my wife was one of those and she conceded that she does not have the diagnostic skills of a doctor and has only done some extra training regarding dishing out prescriptions I don’t have much of a problem with seeing nurse practitioners. When I was last in for a stem cell transplant a doctor came round with the nurse practitioner every day – after the round was completed the np would often come back and do… Read more »
My last tax bill says £12.000 paid in taxes by my phobic-racist-anti-moron-nutbar-freak show-denier-supremacist- self just to the NHS. £12.000….every single god damn year.
WTF is free about?
We have private insurance and don’t use the National Death Service.
What happened to the 30.000 murdered by the NDS during Rona with midazolam etc? Nothing of course. My local Church had a mass in their honour last year, for their ‘heroic work’ during the scamdemic. I did not attend.
My last tax bill says £12.000 paid in taxes by my phobic-racist-anti-moron-nutbar-freak show-denier-supremacist- self just to the NHS.
About 20% of tax revenue goes on the NHS. So you pay £60K a year in tax? You are seriously well paid.
Your paying for a Mercedes but getting a Trablant. We have the same problem in Canada with a monopoly socialist medical system. There are 2 characteristics the same, no accountability and no choice.
Its the Gas lighting thing again, just like “Its the best country in the world”, The only people who care about the NHS are the Politicians, the people who work in it, and the Pharma and associate industries who make bunce off it. Its an absolute failure, badly run, dirty, incompetant, woke, inhumane. It should be sold off, and the market freed up, we each should have a State backed medical plan we all contribute too, and which we can add more, or less too depending on the service we require. This would allow for a basic service for all, with strong oversite the providers should be prevented from becoming greedy such as in America. Unfortunately all Parties in thehouse at present are cowards, they are afraid to tackle radical islam, they are afraid of migrants and those who promote them, they are afraid of criminals, and they are afraid of the NHS, because so many are employed by it, they need their votes. Oh for a true leader with principles and a vision who would have the moral courage to do the difficult things. Sadly there is no one and no Party who will do that at present, and… Read more »
What use is “free at the point of use” healthcare, if you can’t get it when you need it?
But if your goal is population reduction, then a deified, self-serving exuse for a health service is exactly what you want..
I have posted many times that depopulation is part of official (hidden) policy and a rapidly collapsing health service has its part to play in that scenario.
The NHS is preventing this country from defending itself or its borders (NHS 1950 3.5% gdp, defence 5%, NHS 2023 circa 11% gdp, defence circa 2.3%) and is, comparatively, not great at its core function: ‘….if Bevan’s plan had failed (and its success was by no means guaranteed), the NHS would not have been created at a later stage, and we would certainly not create it today. The well-worn cliché about the NHS being ‘the envy of the world’ raises the question why ‘the world’ refuses to move closer to the system it supposedly envies. Most of the developed world has gone for mixed private–public systems, with some combination of political direction and market forces. In countries which have not created national health services, even socialist and communist parties are not calling for their creation today. And there is a good reason for that: it is simply not a particularly successful model.’ We know what to do: ‘The healthcare debate remains insular and inward-looking, blighted by a counterproductive tendency to pretend that the only conceivable alternative to the NHS is the American system. It would be far more insightful to benchmark the NHS against social health insurance (SHI) systems, the… Read more »
https://thenewconservative.co.uk/islam-needs-taking-in-hand/
Apparently the NHS is our national shame. Add in bloody Islam and our shame is unbounded.
Frank Haviland resurrecting a piece he wrote ten years ago. As valid now as it was then.
“In terms of what Britain must do more readily, there must be a healthy reassertion of Britishness and British values. Traditions, festivals and the like must never be foregone under the pretext of not wishing to offend minorities. Immigrants need to integrate to the UK, not the other way around. That means learning English, and if not practicing English customs, then at least not complaining as they continue.
The answer to absolutely anyone who does not approve of this should be a firm handshake, and an unbarred path to the door, as it would be in any quintessentially British pub when a drunk has had one too many. The landlord would respectfully refuse to serve them. Islam has had a skinful; appeasement has not worked. A firm attitude is the one we now must start cultivating.”
I’ve had very good service and very bad service from the basket case NHS. It has left me wondering whether any job that I apply for has private cover as part of the package.
One of the most important questions is not about the delivery model, but at what age and stage of infirmity we cease spending money on health care for the elderly, and switch to providing as much comfort to them as possible in their last years.
This is done currently of course, but probably the switch occurs much later than is reasonable. I acknowledge that there is a grey area between providing comfort and treating the condition. For example, it would be unreasonable not to treat a 90 year old for a broken arm; you can’t just ply them with morphine. However, that might be reasonable for a 90 year old with terminal (but slowly progressing) cancer.
Indeed. “Covid” was the opposite- blight millions of young lives to “save” a few grannies (except no grannies were saved).
I tried to explain QALYs to most of my colleagues and acquaintances who were Covidians – was compared to Hitler. They are like children- if you point out brutal realities they stamp their feet and put their fingers in their ears.
But no “grannies” ever wanted the young lives to be blighted by lockdowns.
It was just forced upon everyone. I remember one Gloucestershire grannie was nearly arrested for having tea in her garden with some other grannies.
“A pensioner was given a police warning after she had a socially distanced cup of tea with her neighbours in their communal garden.
Officers turned up at the 82-year-old’s sheltered housing complex home at 9.45pm to question her about the incident – after she’d settled into bed to watch television.
They told her she had been reported for drinking tea outside with her neighbours, in breach of coronavirus lockdown restrictions.”
Police give grandmother, 82, a warning after she enjoyed a cup of TEA with a neighbour | Daily Mail Online
Yup my mother in law who was a granny thought the whole thing was bollocks
I really don’t like it when someone tells me what I’m supposed to think.
Maybe I have other and much better reasons for being “proud” of being British.
Maybe my experience with the NHS has been very poor and I don’t see anything to be proud of.
Hunt’s statement reveals little about the NHS, even less about what it means to be British but hell of a lot about the despotic mind of the odious individual making the statement.
Chunt is just pushing the long-standing myth that workers in the NHS / ‘health’ care – are angels. Sigh. There are some very good, hardworking people employed but they are let down, as are the patients, service and public, by the tosspots who are lazy, many forever off sick and who take grave offence and cite grievances when called out for their poor behaviour.
The NHS needs to be officially certified as dead, its rotting corpse replaced with something that is fit for service and that the uk can be justifiably proud of.
Exactly my experience. Yes there are some exceptional, dedicated and hardworking staff who are taken for granted by ineffective and inept managers and colleagues, effectively dumping on them, when they can’t be bothered to care for patients, let alone their colleagues. I have given my all for the NHS but now I can’t defend it when asked. Junior colleagues sadly, do not seem to have the same work ethic we oldies have, and whilst we may have not managed the ‘work-life’ balance particularly well, they seem to have taken it to a new level, with their vision of full-time amounting to a few days a week. There are of course exceptions to this, and I am still encouraged to see such colleagues operate with the same caring attitude that brought me in to healthcare in the first place, but this sadly in my experience is no longer the majority view, or maybe I am just unlucky where I live?
The NHS worked very well when it was the NATIONAL Health Service for the BRITISH TAXPAYERS who paid into it all their lives. It was the envy of the world.
But since the Communist “Cloward-Piven Strategy” started operating in Britain (encouraging Mass Third World Invasion to overwhelm and collapse all infrastructure in the West), the National Health Service turned into the World Free Health Service, paid for only by British Taxpayers.
So of course it is collapsing, as planned by the Globalists. The evil Frances Fox Piven, born in Canada of Russian Jewish immigrants, is still gloating about the success of their strategy, even in her old age.
Ask not what the NHS can do for you but what you can do for the NHS – banging pots & pans on your doorstep!
The NHS is the only Nationalised industry left in public ownership. Why did it never come under the microscope like British Gas, British Telecom, etc etc, we would have a far better system if it had been ‘sold off’.
My 75 year old husband was in hospital for four weeks last autumn, and in that time lost 10kg in weight, he was only 73kg to start with, the what passes for nursing these days was appalling, they’d rather gab all day and see their patients as a nuisance, the Drs suspected he had Lymphoma, 6 months on, and 3 months after a botched biopsy he’s no further forward, just suffering. It’s a heartbreaking situation to be in.
One horrendous statistic that you will never see is the one that tells you how dangerous is the trip to an hospital for you. One in ten patients have a serious health incident resulting in severe injury or death due to unintended health incidents due to mismanagement or malpractice.