Re: Millions to be affected by NHS plan to ration 34 everyday tests and treatments
 

If you read the quote in the article it sums it up well.

'These figures show that councils are topping up their reserves where they can, reflecting the absence of a long-term funding settlement for the sector, continued uncertainty around the spending review and Fair Funding Review and an expectation that the long hard winter of austerity is set to continue,’

In other words - councils need to keep money aside because of the uncertainty of how much they will be given in future years.

The amount set aside would barely cover local government spending for three months. As the article also states - some of it is ring fenced so local authorities couldn't even spend it if they wanted to.

Re: Millions to be affected by NHS plan to ration 34 everyday tests and treatments
 

If it was all about tax cuts and revenues, how come it was going on under Labour when they very good revenues and were borrowing massively on top of that?


The example I gave was simply one that I knew of from years back, The others may also have similar studies backing up these decisions.


The problem wasn't tax revenues, it was the various spending splurges, eg tax credit system. Local Housing Allowance(housing benefit).

Re: Millions to be affected by NHS plan to ration 34 everyday tests and treatments
 

And equally they may not. I’d prefer to hear from medical professionals and not armchair Conservatives.

Various spending not supported by tax revenue is exactly what I’m describing. The decision of what to, or not to, fund. Tax credits to support employers paying low wages and housing benefit to support the rental housing market are equally things I disagree with and part of the deception by politicians for 40 years that have left us £2 trillion in debt despite the windfalls of privatisation. New Labour are just as complicit as the Conservatives in this sleight of hand.

A fair living wage and building council houses is a much better approach.

Re: Millions to be affected by NHS plan to ration 34 everyday tests and treatments
 

343 councils in the UK, and if you take out the GLA, their reserves are £1.1 billion, which works out (on average) as £3.2 million per council - not such a huge reserve (which they use to pay for stuff whilst waiting for Central Government money to arrive).

For instance, my local councile (Leeds, population of around 750k)

They have to have some reserves, because, as we have found recently with floods, etc., "stuff happens"...

Re: Millions to be affected by NHS plan to ration 34 everyday tests and treatments
 

And this is on top of the recent cutbacks of medication available on prescription. I now have to buy two of my medications myself.

---------- Post added at 17:21 ---------- Previous post was at 17:13 ----------

Isn't the NHS now primarily run by GP's? The same GP's who I am led to believe start on £1,000 a week, rising to at least £2,000 a week with many earning much more.

Yes, they do an essential job and have studied/worked hard to get where they are, but it sticks in my throat a bit to have these people on this sort of money telling me (and those much less able to afford it) that due to austerity they now have to purchase some of their own medicine.

I suspect them taking a 1% pay cut (small change to them after paying less tax/NI) would negate the need for these further cuts, but that's not going to happen is it.

Re: Millions to be affected by NHS plan to ration 34 everyday tests and treatments
 

Dcotors work very hard Richard and most have huge workloads as don't think its a bed of roses being a GP as it is far from that.

On the possible plans to ration services these are made by quite a few NHS bodies.


https://www.theguardian.com/society/...and-treatments

Re: Millions to be affected by NHS plan to ration 34 everyday tests and treatments
 

You heard it here first:

GPs to blame for austerity and if only they took a 1% pay cut we could solve it all.

There are around 33,000 GPs in England. A 1% pay cut would be less than £33,000,000. As you rightly point out, we claw back much of that in tax anyway.

Re: Millions to be affected by NHS plan to ration 34 everyday tests and treatments
 

It's pretty arrogant of you to suggest that people don't understand the issues. You are assuming that most of the electorate are a bunch of retards who can't make sensible decisions on what they want.

What is very clear is that most people do want tax cuts. They also want good quality services, and they expect the government to provide these efficiently. It is the latter that is causing the problems - too much bureaucracy and outdated, inefficient systems.

The fact that this seems to come as a surprise to you is telling.

---------- Post added at 18:13 ---------- Previous post was at 18:08 ----------

I think it is perfectly reasonable for our electorate to demand efficiency before pushing ever increased shedloads of money into an expanding black hole.

---------- Post added at 18:15 ---------- Previous post was at 18:13 ----------

We are paying an absolute fortune into the NHS but service levels keep going down. Strange, that.

---------- Post added at 18:16 ---------- Previous post was at 18:15 ----------

Pity the last Labour government didn't note that, jfman.

Re: Millions to be affected by NHS plan to ration 34 everyday tests and treatments
 

I didn’t call anyone retards so there’s no need for such emotive terminology to be deployed.

I think it’s rather arrogant of anyone to claim they do understand all of the various issues in an election and I find it inherently improbable that the vast majority of people look beyond 2 or 3 issues. These could be local issues, constitutional issues, social issues.

People do indeed want tax cuts. People do indeed want public services. Nobody has been honest for the last 40 years that you can’t have both.

Bureaucracy, outdated inefficient systems, is straightforward terminology deployed by those who want to privatise everything in the absence of any evidence that such inefficiency exists. If you compare, for example, administrative costs in the NHS as a proportion of all costs to the privatised US healthcare sector you will find the NHS spends a far lower proportion on administration.

The NHS can also use it’s purchasing power to drive down the price of drugs in a manner that smaller private companies cannot. As can be seen from the “concerns” the USA plan on bringing to the table in any future trade discussions.

Telling of what exactly?

A statement in the absence of any evidence at all.

Probably the profits being creamed out of it from PFI initiatives, etc. People living longer. There’s no magic wand to that.

Neither did their predecessors. 40 years of failure has led to £2 trillion of debt. Every year we have to shell out £40bn a year in interest payments on this debt. That strikes me as a fairly inefficient use of funds for the fifth richest country in the world.

£40bn of course that could go into the NHS, for example.

Re: Millions to be affected by NHS plan to ration 34 everyday tests and treatments
 

To have that sort of income, they must have an overload of patients on their books per GP, which also means longer hours to get through the workload. GP income covers all the outgoings of a practice as well.

Only 10% of the population of England actually have to pay for prescriptions, maybe this needs looking at, particularly where cheap OTC medicines are concerned.

Re: Millions to be affected by NHS plan to ration 34 everyday tests and treatments
 

If that is an excuse you have made up to excuse Labour for its gross overspending and failure to establish safe reserves of money or gold which led us into a situation where the UK had no money to offset the ravages of the global financial crisis, you are fooling no-one.

Re: Millions to be affected by NHS plan to ration 34 everyday tests and treatments
 

You can count on one hand the number of times any Government has ran a budget surplus since 1979, and as a result the total debt has largely risen year on year in that time, outstripping inflation over that time.

It’s an outright, albeit convenient for you, lie to claim that this countries problems started with the 2008 financial crisis. The gold reserves, or lack of, are a complete red herring - the country was already heavily in debt and running a deficit. As it has been since 1979.

I note you didn’t address any of the other points I made in my fairly lengthy post instead focusing on a single sentence for a sound bite.

A poor response even by your own standards, Old Boy.

For information: the gold Brown sold was for $3.5bn, in 2007 it’d have been worth double. An absolute drop in the ocean compared to the £500bn rescue package the banks got for their failed ventures in capitalism.

Re: Millions to be affected by NHS plan to ration 34 everyday tests and treatments
 

Just heard today on Radio Kent that the Medway area has the highest patient to Doctor ratio in the country (2900) to my Northern, Welsh, Scottish and N. Ireland friends this is supposed to be the affluent South that I come and live in....:shocked:

Re: Millions to be affected by NHS plan to ration 34 everyday tests and treatments
 

So affluent even a Doctor can't afford to live there, and they're loaded!;)

Re: Millions to be affected by NHS plan to ration 34 everyday tests and treatments
 

Thing is, BoJo and millionaire inherited wealth chums can just buy their healthcare. The NHS is for the plebs as far as they are concerned. As Dominic Cummings admitted Tory MPs don't give a toss for the NHS or the poor.