The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away

[Pearcey3]

The tough question for die hard socialist ,would they. would they support charges for minor GP visits/care fort those who can afford it , charges at A&E for drunken injuries , to ease the burden, stop child benefit for the £100k per annum families , stand up to pointless greedy strikes, like train drivers , instead of saying nothing , all radical but in another direction ,for me to keep voting Labour I'd like new ideas that carry some pain , and risk , its too easy to say nationalise this , let more people in we have plenty , tax the rich,its so old hat ?

I don't see why not as long as it isn't the start something sinister. Any legislation would need to make clear that the NHS would otherwise remain free at the point of delivery. Labour have been lacking ideas for well over a decade. They desperately need to come up with ideas to regenerate working class areas where their core vote is slowly but surely ebbing away.

[Eric Cartman]

The tough question for die hard socialist ,would they. would they support charges for minor GP visits/care fort those who can afford it , charges at A&E for drunken injuries , to ease the burden, stop child benefit for the £100k per annum families , stand up to pointless greedy strikes, like train drivers , instead of saying nothing , all radical but in another direction ,for me to keep voting Labour I'd like new ideas that carry some pain , and risk , its too easy to say nationalise this , let more people in we have plenty , tax the rich,its so old hat ?

Why not just fund it properly in the first place? The idea of a progressive taxation system is that rich people pay a bit more for the same service.

The striking thing is a myth. Someone on here at Christmas said 'striking is for middle/high earners now, I would support strikes if they were by low earners' - that week there were 3 massive strikes by groups earning minimum wage. They chose not to see them because they had made their mind up about strikes already

I would like to stop train drivers striking. But I value the right to strike more than that. In the same way that I would like to tape Nigel Farage's mouth shut but I wouldn't want to live in a country where he couldn't say whatever nonsense he was thinking. The Southern strikes have been billed as 'Drivers don't want to open and close the doors' but really they are about taking responsibility away from the guards so that they can pay them minimum wage.

[Eric Cartman]

Eric - the reasoning behind the NHS in the first place was that keeping the workforce healthy would be cheaper than having to treat the sick. Every year each Govt spends more on the NHS, I think in region of 4% or thereabouts - the demand on the NHS increases by about 5-6%. This year didnt the NHS get an additional 6 billion - when the NHS requested an extra 4 billion.

You will never satisfy the appetite for the need. Added on top of that - if each year as a country we spend 70 odd Billion more than we tax in tax (deficit) - then what would you do ?.

Re Train drivers - I was on the tube last week - I dont recall seeing any conductors, what is the difference between the tube system and the railway ?

Personally I would tax more. The people quite clearly want a properly funded NHS, politicians eulogise over it but we never quite reach the crux of the problem which is that it is quite significantly underfunded compared to the majority of western countries health systems. The challenge is making sure the extra money incoming is spent well. I would also prefer a more transparent system where top-rate tax payers on PAYE aren't the fools propping everyone above and below them up.

I would properly fund science and technology and stop this phoney fascination with people who simply start a businesses. They are heralded as some kind of job-creating superman but they tend not to add any value or trigger any advancements, they are just fighting for a little piece of the pie.

Re: the tube, I would guess technology plays a big part there. Tube gets everything first, I live quite close to London and we are covered by Oyster now which makes travelling so much easier. There is no doubt that the unions would choose to hang on to jobs long after they were actually necessary but there is also no doubt that train firms looking to maximise profit will push the boundary between cost and safety/service.

[jon1959]

Eric - the reasoning behind the NHS in the first place was that keeping the workforce healthy would be cheaper than having to treat the sick. Every year each Govt spends more on the NHS, I think in region of 4% or thereabouts - the demand on the NHS increases by about 5-6%. This year didnt the NHS get an additional 6 billion - when the NHS requested an extra 4 billion.

You will never satisfy the appetite for the need. Added on top of that - if each year as a country we spend 70 odd Billion more than we tax in tax (deficit) - then what would you do ?.

Re Train drivers - I was on the tube last week - I dont recall seeing any conductors, what is the difference between the tube system and the railway ?

No it wasn't.

The reasoning behind the formation of the NHS - and to slay the "five giants" identified by Beveridge (want, disease, squalor, ignorance, idleness) - was based on idealism and disgust at the way the private health system worked. It wasn't the result of cynicism and chasing a more efficient way of exploiting labour.

There was also an opportunity that wasn't there before the Second World War:

- The emergence of a view that health care was a right, not something bestowed erratically by charity
- Bipartisan agreement that the existing services were in a mess and had to be sorted out
- Financial difficulties for the voluntary hospitals
- The Second World War that ensured the creation of an emergency medical service as part of the war effort
- The cataclysmic effects of the war that made it possible to have a massive change of system, rather than incremental modification
- An increasing view among the younger members of the medical profession that there was a better way of doing things

And a small contribution by A J Cronin through his very influential novel The Citadel - about a doctor in a small Welsh mining village - that exposed the evils of private health care to those who had never experienced it in poverty.

[life on mars]

No it wasn't.

The reasoning behind the formation of the NHS - and to slay the "five giants" identified by Beveridge (want, disease, squalor, ignorance, idleness) - was based on idealism and disgust at the way the private health system worked. It wasn't the result of cynicism and chasing a more efficient way of exploiting labour.

There was also an opportunity that wasn't there before the Second World War:

- The emergence of a view that health care was a right, not something bestowed erratically by charity
- Bipartisan agreement that the existing services were in a mess and had to be sorted out
- Financial difficulties for the voluntary hospitals
- The Second World War that ensured the creation of an emergency medical service as part of the war effort
- The cataclysmic effects of the war that made it possible to have a massive change of system, rather than incremental modification
- An increasing view among the younger members of the medical profession that there was a better way of doing things

And a small contribution by A J Cronin through his very influential novel The Citadel - about a doctor in a small Welsh mining village - that exposed the evils of private health care to those who had never experienced it in poverty.

Let's be bluntly honest we cannot afford it , its the fifth largest organisation in the world, that should stimulate thoughts of how difficult that is to fund from the public purse , never mind the drugs, equipment, building estates costs.
Madness , we have moved on from Beveridge / Bevan , I'd like to hear thier viewpoint now.

[Eric Cartman]

Let's be bluntly honest we cannot afford it , its the fifth largest organisation in the world, that should stimulate thoughts of how difficult that is to fund from the public purse , never mind the drugs, equipment, building estates costs.
Madness , we have moved on from Beveridge / Bevan , I'd like to hear thier viewpoint now.

What is the alternative?

[the other bob wilson]

Let's be bluntly honest we cannot afford it , its the fifth largest organisation in the world, that should stimulate thoughts of how difficult that is to fund from the public purse , never mind the drugs, equipment, building estates costs.
Madness , we have moved on from Beveridge / Bevan , I'd like to hear thier viewpoint now.

Jon was dealing with, very well I thought, a sweeping generalisation from Feedback about what and why the NHS was set up for.

You're right in saying that the NHS offers a much different, and more difficult, set of challenges than it did in Beveridge and Bevan's day, but I'd like to think that both gentleman would be able to offer more than "oh, it's too expensive, so let's wrap the whole thing up and let the private sector deal with it" if they were around now. For a start, one of them may think what has become the unthinkable in this day and age and propose that the taxes we pay should go up a bit to help finance what I for one still think of as a national treasure.

[Bluebird since 1948]

The Labour party may "save" the NHS but the NHS will not save Labour.

Prattling on about the NHS being in crisis all the time is so one dimensional and the voters are seeing through it. Throughout my lifetime the NHS has always been in crisis, it's how it cons more money out of government.

[Pearcey3]

Yep Jon eloquently dealt with Mr Feedback. It hss taken me too long to notice Feedback had returned.