jonattonyeah

OK I’ve finished eating and washing up so I can respond to this now lol. Irrespective of whether a service is already paid for or not, it still has a cost associated with it. I work in higher education and always have the argument made to me from academics “why should I cost my time into research proposals when ‘the University’ already pays my salary?” Often for multimillion / billion pound industrial companies

The reality is that the University is not paying for their time at all. It is essentially overseas student tuition fees subsidising the activity. Why should an overseas student be paying £25k of tuition fees a year so academic x can do research at a loss for a company like Google / Microsoft / Facebook/ GlaxoSmithKline who don’t want to pay the going rate based on a calculation of the time the academic is spending on their research? I’ll tell you something for nothing, the students aren’t getting the time they are paying for.

So back to the NHS. Why should the organisation not recover the cost of treating citizens from other countries in line with the reciprocal international agreements the countries have signed up to. Yes the service is already paid for by the UK taxpayer, but if you are paying out for the healthcare costs of your own citizens when they go abroad, surely it’s fucking madness not to be recovering your costs in the same way?

If we had a healthcare system where there were no waiting lists, an abundance of hospitals, beds, trained professionals to cope with the everyday needs of the country then sure. But not recovering hundreds of millions of pounds which could be used for new hospitals/ more staff / better equipment etc. is completely insane, no?

      According to ONS figures, healthcare spending as a % of GDP has risen quite steadily in recent years. 10% now compared to 6.9% in 1997. Planned spending for the Department of Health and Social Care in England was £201.7 billion in 2020/21, up from £148.8 billion in 2019/20. It’s a myth that the May and Johnson governments have been starving the NHS.

      https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/healthcaresystem/bulletins/ukhealthaccounts/2018

        It would be great living an existance such as Wally’s without any degree of self-awareness. I actually admire how clueless he is

          Old-Dutch This is all a quite interesting discussion. I don’t think we need this, or Wally’s ’you’re all mongoloids on here’ (yet I read and post on the board pretty much every day). Or CJ calling people uneducated and ignorant.

              Old-Dutch So back to the NHS. Why should the organisation not recover the cost of treating citizens from other countries in line with the reciprocal international agreements the countries have signed up to. Yes the service is already paid for by the UK taxpayer, but if you are paying out for the healthcare costs of your own citizens when they go abroad, surely it’s fucking madness not to be recovering your costs in the same way?

              If we had a healthcare system where there were no waiting lists, an abundance of hospitals, beds, trained professionals to cope with the everyday needs of the country then sure. But not recovering hundreds of millions of pounds which could be used for new hospitals/ more staff / better equipment etc. is completely insane, no?

              Think you’re wasting your time here, the point you were making has been well and truly fucking missed

                bosstrabs

                True and a fair point. I will grow up and stop. Just grates when you get pretty much called a racist for making a point about an organisation and its ineptitude. For the record the NHS and majority of the staff who work there are fucking brilliant. The problem is the structure/ inefficiency and it’s too easy to just say the Government should give them more money all the time - they have a responsibility to run themselves properly.

                Now I realise I had (and I had thought pretty obviously jokingly calling Wally a racist in the football thread) for which I apologise.

                  The only thing I hate more than taxes is stupid fucking Geordies and lazy Scouse wasters. Fuck them all off to Bulgaria imo.

                  I’m actually from London so you might want to add Liverpool fans from London to that. If I recall correctly Dave was calling my kind a cunt in the footy thread earlier so it’s already been boxed off

                    Old-Dutch If I recall correctly Dave was calling my kind a cunt in the footy thread earlier so it’s already been boxed off

                    Yeah, sorry about that. But there are two things: 1. Whenever someone is on the phone-ins with some absolutely fruitcake opinion about Liverpool, it’s always someone from the south or the West Midlands. They were the ones chunnering on about ‘Get rid of Benitez, get a British manager in!’ (see: Strudders) 2. I just don’t really get why people support teams from different areas. Except, for example, a Northern Irish lad I knew at uni who became a massive Cov City fan, that I can understand because it has to be better than Glentoran/Linfield or involving yourself in the Glasgow sectarian football fuckfest.

                      Lol no need to apologise mate I fully accept I am a cunt for supporting Liverpool. Even moreso at the moment

                        Old-Dutch I fully accept I am a cunt for supporting Liverpool.

                        Gets a thumbs up from me, hopefully provokes some soul searching from the rest of the Liverpool fans!

                            Mad_Cyril No choice here, whole family were Liverpool on one side, the other side from Altrincham but didn’t care about footy.

                              Likewise - Irish father and older brother fans before me. My younger brother too.

                              I’ve passed on the hereditary illness to my kids too. Joking aside we’ve had it fucking good for the last few years so can’t complain

                              My folks both from Liverpool but neither had any real interest in football so me Man U and my brother Liverpool. They didn’t like the Beatles either.

                                Mad_Cyril it was either those 2, Everton or occasionally Chester City in the wilds of West Cheshire…I think it came down to a scratchy handmedown Man U top from one of my mum’s friends in the end.

                                    alistair You cannot compare the last two years spending when the 60 billion increase was to deal with covid. Click on the link I posted that shows the split between the actual budget and the covid allocation for more realistic figures:

                                    https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/projects/nhs-in-a-nutshell/nhs-budget

                                    Concerning spending as a percentage of GDP:

                                    https://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/chart/nhs-spending-as-a-percentage-of-gdp-1950-2020

                                    States that spending as a percentage of GDP has come steadily down since 2010.

                                    I’d also be dubious of using percentages of anything as a figure too - if GDP comes down 50% (an extreme example to illustrate the point), then an increase of, say, 10% percent is still a gigantic pay cut in real terms. Brexit is going to have a bad effect on GDP and this will feed through to the NHS financing.

                                    As CJ points out, costs are also going up due to a longer living population so unless the rate of increase matches the rising in costs, it’s again, a pay cut in literal pound value.

                                    • C_J replied to this.

                                        Another area which needs reform is the culture / power within the organsiation wielded by senior consultants. I know of a case where a consultant on a 50% contract was deliberately blocking the appointment of another consultant to help clear the massive backlog of operations piling up because there was insufficient allocation of resource to the area for a number of years. The operation waiting lists were such a disgrace that the trust was having to pay the consultant to do the work as a private consultant on his private rates - all while he continuously blocked the Trust making appointments to cope with the backlog of operations.

                                        I would like to think that situations like this are very rare and this example is an exception to the rule, but any system that tolerates shit like this needs to change.

                                        alistair Do you think NHS workers, teachers and the police get fair salaries for the jobs they do, Alistair?

                                        The spectre of inflation? Fucking LOL