Apologies if this is something that has already been widely seen in the UK (or even discussed elsewhere on the forum), sometimes these things take a little longer to reach us expats.
It may be a forlorn hope for me to start a thread on this subject and hope it doesn't descend into a political argument, but I thought this was a fantastic speech on why the NHS is something the common man and woman should be fighting for, given by a man whose life experience makes him worth listening to, wherever you fall on the political spectrum.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZK7g2uDl8w 
Comments
If you want to see what today's Labour party would do to the NHS if elected in the UK, look what they have done in Wales - the Welsh NHS costs 10% more per capita to run than in Tory-controlled England yet standards are far, far worse, with up to 50 times more people waiting 6 weeks or more for time-critical tests and treatments. Next time he stands in front of an audience and tries to warn people about a failing NHS, he should do it in front of a banner comparing standards between the English (Tory) and Welsh (Labour) NHSs, and see if people either clap for him or laugh at him.
Maybe the Labour party conference is no longer the best place for putting out his message but, putting his Labour affiliations to one side, his message is still a powerful reminder of why the NHS matters and is something we should not have come to take for granted and grow a bit apathetic about, as we maybe have done. There aren't many people left who can remember what is was like before the NHS and that's why I shared the video, not to make a party political point.
I am a lefty, but I've never voted Labour as Blair was already in power by the time I was old enough to vote, but personally I find it hard to trust any politician with something as precious as the NHS, regardless of their political affiliation.
If you paid for it at the time of delivery, you wouldn't accept it, its largely sentimentality that keeps the NHS alive as it is today, combined with the fear that any kind of insurance system (such as the one that makes France the best health service in the world) will draw parralels with the rampant capitalist and horrible USA system.
Fear and sentimentality... Not a great reason to hold on to something in my opinion.
Whatever the politics or the merits of PFI - and it's easy to ignore now the physical state of hospitals like the Brook by the mid-1990s - it seems unreasonable to claim that Burnham was one of the main people responsible for the scheme, which was scaled back dramatically after the financial crisis began in 2007. At that point the major focus was on schools (which were also falling down).
PFI was initially introduced by John Major's Tory government and taken up by the incoming Labour government in 1997. Burnham wasn't elected to parliament until 2001. In my own experience PFI built the new leisure centres in Bexley (a Tory plan adopted by the incoming Labour council) and rebuilt Welling School (where I was a governor), the state of which was also a disgrace.
I wouldn't defend PFI as a concept, but it can't be blamed entirely on one party, still less laid heavily at the door of one minister who was appointed at the fag end of the Brown government. Neither is it the case that the country could continue with schools and hospitals in the condition they were.
If you're prepared to forego that right, and are happy to be treated awfully on point of principle because you feel you are already paying for the NHS, like some kind of medical martyr, again that's your decision alone.
I'm sure everyone has had an appointment that's cancelled at the last minute or is delayed, why? Surely some good organisation and its solved.
Also consultants should either work for the NHS or private not both. Again you're offered an appointment for six months time to see a consultant but if you want to pay then he's free tomorrow.
The surgery itself was fantastic and my girlfriend has made a full and complete recovery with two tumours, one three inches, one two inches taken off her spinal cord. The consultant could not have been better, it seems like some parts of the NHS truly let the other parts down.
She has also had a tumour (not cancerous) on her leg. They have now operated twice on her leg and declared the operation a success both times, both times a follow up scan has revealed they just took a fatty lipoma out of her leg, twice. (This consultant,not so good).
If she had been permenantly disabled due to the delays in the procedure on her spine that would have been completely unexcusable in my opinion, and as for the surgery on her leg that is just embarrassing.
My personal issues with the NHS are nothing in comparison, merely being treated with utter contempt by my local GP to the extent I just don't bother going (I luckily now have private health care as part of my job and am very impressed)
The NHS doesn't work for everyone.
Oh I should also point out that at first when the benign tumours on her leg were found a consultant informed her she had cancer which was terminal in 85% of cases, which she believed she had for 6 months.
And having gone to the doctor with the initial back pain (the two tumours) she was told after an x ray (needed an MRI) that she, a 17 year old girl at the time had chronic arthritis.
Still, its "free" so mustn't grumble!
To get an appointment you can either wait a month, or book on line and get one quicker. You go on-line to book, pick your time and date from those available and then 10 seconds later get an e-mail telling you that time and date are not available. When you go back in, they are still showing as available...
I agree entirely about the top heavy management .
I understand (I might be wrong) that you can change your GP?
How would paying for any of this have prevented poor consultants or ambulances picking up drunks?
Then again you could offer someone an NHS that is privately run, which costs 10% less and delivers a 10% better outcome but people would still be completely against it on principal.
People lose all sense of reason when the NHS is brought into conversation. I'm not saying that it should all be privatised but please let's not worship it as if it's run to faultless standards.
The workers do their best no doubt about that but the way it is run (and that's down to management) is pitiful.
On topic, NHS Wales is coming under some huge fire today (she is Welsh) and it looks like the police will be investigating criminal negligence in some of their health trusts.
I don't think that this is sickening at all.
I believe the original poster was referring to the a merits of the NHS as organisation which are many.
Whilst we are being political; if whoever is in charge of the NHS after next May continues down the current route and style of privatisation (started by Labour and accelerated by the Coalition) then this beloved institution will be no more within five to ten years.
That isn't scaremongering either - I have worked in an around the NHS for my adult life, most of my friends and family work, or did work for the NHS and my daughter has just qualified as a midwife. Ask any one who works in the NHS what they think and they will say the same with very few exceptions.
That said it's medicine we are dealing with not finite, precisely measurable "facts". With the benefit of hindsight it's entirely understandable you are looking to point fingers at those responsible for the misdiagnosis and unacceptable delays. And it may well be that she had a crappy doctor, there's good, bad and indifferent in every profession I've ever dealt with that's for sure.
But I don't see why you think it's the systems "fault" and that privatisation is the only cure. People will still phone for ambulances when they don't need one or because their GP's booked up for weeks. And beds will still be blocked due to the reductions in local authority care. How is the fact it says London Ambulance Ltd on the side going to make the situation better?
If someone suggested that doctors were to be privatised there would be wailing and gnashing of teeth, except doctors are already privatised and always have been since 1948. They were bought-off in 1948 by being allowed to retain their self employed status and were bought-off again by the Labour government in order to implement the disastrous reforms to abolish NHS Primary Care Trusts and hand over power to GPs. People who say doctors shouldn't be allowed to do private work as well as NHS work simply lack any understanding of the relationship between doctors and the NHS, right from the birth of the NHS.
Instead of saying let's protect the NHS as it is at all costs, what most people really mean is let's protect the principle of free access to health care at all costs. As long as essential services and care is accessible to any citizen, and free at the point of delivery, and of good quality, what is the significance of whether the staff involved are employed by the State or a private employer. The NHS was not against private services, it was against private services not being available to the poor. If private services are replaced by better public services fine, but the idea that public services are uniquely able to provide care needs is claimed mainly by NHS workers, their Unions and political sympathisers.
My sister in law at 26 with two young children was admitted to the Brook with undiagnosed symptoms on a Friday. Most of the senior staff took off for the weekend leaving my sister-in-law in the care of untrained, unqualified, junior doctors. Sunday evening she was dead from a blood clot in her leg that shifted to her brain. She was diagnosed after she was dead, pity they were closed for the weekend and couldn't do it any earlier.
My daughter suffered a multiple fracture of her collar bone and went to A&E. In great pain, an East European doctor who we later learned had only appeared that day, said there was nothing to do and she could go home, it would sort itself out. On collapsing in the corridor the Sister told us to get a second opinion but because there wasn't another doctor available she was put into observation over night. Observation was a small darkened room, with beds separated by a single side screen, full of mostly men, some drunk, where a nurse occasionally appeared. We tried to get a nurse to make our daughter comfortable and ended up running around the hospital looking for a nurse to ask for some pillows. Had to interrupt two having a chat in the corridor who seemed a bit put out at our request.
First thing next day we got her transferred to the private section of the hospital, a different world. She needed an operation to insert two metal plates. We had no initial desire to go private but am not in the least guilty for having done so.
So some of us don't have the sentimental dewy eyed image of the NHS that others have, it's all based on personal experience. I don't have confidence in the management of the NHS - period. I make sure my family are covered by private health insurance so that we can get half decent care outside the NHS.
There is waste where if it was run by a Corporate head, would be cut instantly, which is what is needed to be honest.
Whenever I have needed to go in an emergency situation I have been looked after well enough and although it may have taken a while, I can appreciate i'm not the only one needing treatment and am not in as much a critical state as others.
I can totally appreciate people have had bad experiences and that is not acceptable, there should be better systems in place for complaints etc. But I'm not defending it, but the cuts leading to staff shortage and closed services, is going to have a negative effect on the outcome.
Anyone requesting it should be made private and that we should be put on some insurance plan etc can already do so, but a majority don't, why is that? Surely sampling some of the private health care is better before being adament it would be best for a whole country?
Anyone who doubts the effectiveness of the NHS really needs to see it from both sides. I work in a mental health Trust and the work the staff here do is amazing, the work they put in for really vulnerable people is something you can't imagine unless you saw it. I was proud to see the club promote mental health, but unless you or someone you know is affected by it, is hard to grasp the importance.
The man's sentiments however did seem genuine, which is why I found it sickening that it was being used as a platform to launch a nakedly political attack, as well as sickening that Andy Burnham dared to shake the man's hand when his hands have the blood of NHS patients on them after his multiple and deliberate failings in office.
There's not a shred of evidence that the NHS will fail to remain free at the point-of-use in the next 50 years - the scaremongering produced by Labour astroturfs such as '24 hours to save the NHS' are merely attempting to generate funds for the 2015 election campaign and they are using the NHS as a political tool to achieve this.
I'm afraid the route that we are heading down, supported more or less by all parties, is one of increasing private care for the well off and very variable care for everyone else. Both main parties' front benches are stuffed full of people on the board of private health companies. The private companies want to cherry pick the easy parts (and as a quick perusal of Private Eye would show, regularly **ck those up as well). That leaves the difficult stuff, A&E and expensive treatments for poor people that we are not yet callous enough as a society to advise to just die.
Anyone who imagines that the magical solution of "more cuts" will solve anything has not been paying attention. "more cuts" got us to the situation where Labour had to ramp up PFI. And anyone who believes in the magic of "private sector management" has no experience of them in outsourced services; where any savings to the public authority get eaten up in costs of managing the contract (read: getting the contractor to do what they said they would) and the contractor then does pretty much what they like, walking away scot-free if they don't fancy doing it anymore (eg Fujitsu in NHS IT).
I don't trust any of them on this. At heart there are a number of problems, including money, but not just money. Forcing the NHS into an internal market will result in enormous costs. And once the public provision has gone the private providers will hold the country to ransom. We are probably only a year or two away from a major wave of hospital bankruptcies and after the legal route was gone down by Lewisham Hospital, the next one to be merged because of a neighbour in PFI difficulties will not be able to fight it off. And the PFI bills mean even if say, QEH went bust, it would still be paid for for 30 odd years.
The idea of merging health with social care is a good one. But social care has already been largely privatised and shows what happens when you encourage the race to the bottom that some of you seem to want. (care home scandals, not enough people working, in real terms workers earn less than they did 20 years ago, workers not paid for travelling time between visits, the whole sector relying on exploiting cheap migrant labour, etc).
But as a regular reading of Private Eye (whose health coverage is very good IMO) will also show, the other major issue is transparency. To give the govt credit on this, I do think they've been trying, but it remains an issue that whistle blowers in the NHS get persecuted, even where they are motivated by concerns about patient safety. There needs to be a principle in law that overrides any compromise agreements used to shut people up. (And again, this would be as bad, if not worse, in the private sector where "commercial confidentiality" exempts private companies from FoI requests).
With healthcare, it is slightly different if you're lucky enough to be able to go private because you're able to shop around for better care - failing private health providers will exit the market as the more successful ones take their custom, and if you are unable to afford private health cover the Government provides a comprehensive taxpayer-funded healthcare plan that is, yes, worse quality than one people pay for. Of course some private health providers are also pretty terrible but are allowed to fail and exit the market.
As far as I can see, no one is arguing for the full privatisation of the NHS or do not support health services remaining free at the point of use for everyone. What a lot of people agree with, however, is the idea that the government and politicians continuously meddling in the NHS has only led to cock-ups, tragedy and disaster.
The NHS has become a political football where NHS principles are second to the posturing of politicians and public sector workers. I think Jeremy Hunt is doing his best too make positive changes given the crap he has been handed.
In terms of what the public sector provides and what the private sector provides, the reality is that they do different things well. A&E, and state of the art facilities for surgeons to use, is bound to be best done through public services. The wide range of ancillary services are best done by whatever system works, I don't think it should be a political matter and if cherry picking means public money paying for private services they do better, so what? The fear of the profit motive in the private sector, for me, is balanced by the absence of accountability in the public sector. And I am suspicious that the most noise against the private sector is from public sector workers and unions claiming to want to protect our interests when, in reality, it is all about protecting their own interests.