NHS reforms

[wjfox]

If you agree that the government should rethink its plans, then click here to email your MP:

http://www.38degrees.org.uk/NHS-email-MP

And please share the link with your friends/family. Thanks!

[Alan Medic]

I thought this room was for debate?

[Loz]

And if you don't, click here to send a 'Keep Calm and Carry On' email to your MP.

www.franklyIcouldntgiveatoss.com

[wjfox]

Alan Medic Wrote:

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> I thought this room was for debate?

Feel free to debate the NHS reforms.

[Marmora Man]

NHS Reforms - some basic propositions for discussion:

Stop regarding the NHS, a system created 70 years ago to serve a very different country and population, as a sacred cow that cannot be changed, developed or improved.

1. Reduce bureaucracy and get rid of SHAs and PCTs - saving approximately ?10bn a year.

2. Hand over the decisions about what treatments are required, where they are carried out and when they are carried out to primary care professionals that meet patients every day.

NOTE: Additional management and transactions costs of 2. approximately ?5bn a year. Net saving from 1 & 2 = ?5bn a year.

3. Give most NHS managers a spinal stiffener to enable them to confront and weed out the lazy, incompetent and dangerous staff they all know are in the system.

4. Keep the NHS free at the point of delivery and tax funded - but allow top ups (for example to purchase drugs on trial and not yet NICE approved, or to move to a side rooms, or to purchase food from the restaurant across the road rather than suffer warmed up "cook/chill" slop).

5. Allow the primary care professionals to purchase care from whoever and wherever they find most effective, efficient, safe and price sensitive.

6. Support private healthcare - every person that is treated at their personal(or insurer's) cost represents money that doesn't have to be spent by the NHS - so its funding goes further toward treating those that cannot afford private healthcare. WARNING ANECDOTE: In Cambridge, with a large liberal left / academic population, approximately 12.5% of the population have private health insurance - much provided by the University to its lecturers and dons. Yet overall up to 50% of those insured do not use their insurance - preferring to quote "support their local NHS". This is very shortsighted thinking.

7. Politicians and government should treat the public like grown ups and not pretend, for the sake of votes, that it is possible to have a hospital on every street corner and a 24/7 GP service in every home.

[Huguenot]

Do a Singapore (very similar to the MM proposition).

[Marmora Man]

Bump - given today's speech by David Cameron does anyone wish to debate NHS reforms?