Should the public (the taxpayer) support the NHS rally's and marches across the country?

Question

With record amounts of money going into the NHS over the last five years (increases in your national insurance,etc) , should we the loyal taxpayers still support the nhs even though it can't manage it's own finanical affairs very well. Should we keep on pouring pound after pound into the service and not get value for money. Having been a user of the service and a supporter in the past, is the general public starting to get tired of the lame excuses year after year of financial problems and poor service?

Answer 1

The rallies and the marches are to protest against the closures of essential services in local areas, and certainly should be supported by the general public, since the disappearance of these services will not only put lives at risk but will also entail impossible conditions for families and relatives.
The money spent is a different matter and seems to go to too many administrators, hence the problems on the work-face, closures of wards, not enough nurses or specialist technicians, and insufficient up to date equipment: it is not a matter of money but of how it is spent by people who do not know how to prioritise.
This government seems more intent in getting kudos in war abroad than to fix problems at home.
Yes, the general public is tired of lame excuses etc.. but they have been foolish enough to give a third term office to a government that has failed in most respects and excels at spin and hollow promises. We are "told" the money has been allocated but there is little evidence of it at the other end.
In the region where we live the specialist surgeons and doctors have risen to bear witness that lives are being lost due to the lack of equipment and staff. For instance the treatment of cancer whereby patients who should have radiation shortly after their operations to ensure no cancer cells survive, find themselves on a three months waiting list whereby when they get the treatment it is too late and the cancer has taken hold again and they die.
Doctors on call are so short staffed and have so many requests that they turn patients away telling them to go to A and E, which necessitates use of ambulances and long waits on arrival, when it would have been so much faster for one person to deal with the problem on the spot. The whole of the NHS has been turned topsy turvy and the ethics of medecine seem to have gone by the board due to all the paperwork and tortuous procedures now involved. Even when you call the NHS hepline they are more concerned in asking you your date of birth, and all sort of irrelevant info rather than saying "It sounds like a heart attack, call an ambulance immediately". It is crazy!
However the hands of the general public are tied and what can be done other than protest, short of a total revolution?

Answer 2

This is hard to answer. The money that has been poured into the NHS doesn't even get close to the nurses on the front line and they i think they deserve every penny they get and more for the job they do.

But i also agree that the amount of money going to the nhs is out of proportion for the service that we receive. Basically it is being spent in the wrong place and that's what needs looking into.

I support the nurses and if they strike i will support their action but the NHS needs to be investigated thoroughly as to where all the money is going and who exactly is benefiting

Answer 3

Yes. It needs route and branch reform before it gets another penny. I object to it doing IVF work, and I object to it lecturing me re smoking etc. It needs de-politicising, de-unionising, de-bureaucratising, and privatising as much as possible. Also, nurses should stop being trained in universities, because they are obsessed with social engineering and too much emphasis on the academic side rather than hands on training.

I most definitely don't think that we should be supporting any rallies. By the way, the sick leave in the public sector, including the NHS, is considerably high than the private sector. Moreover, headline pay rises only tell part of the story, because they also get incremental rises automatically according to how long they have worked in the NHS. This is too big a subject to do exhaustively.

Answer 4

i give up on this blood y country.. politics politics. red tape. job wanna be's. bloody doctors are worked to the bone. no respect for doctors no more,, nurses are two a penny.. for what care my dad got in hospital, i never seen no nursing. treated the patients with contempt, most of the visitors did the nursing and not for just their own family's but for other patients too, big mistake by the health service, doing away with all these big open wards were you had all hands on,, now there shut away from eyes view, and all nurses are sitting at desk filling in their paper work, tell me did nurses 40/50 years ago ,, need to do all this paper work. i think paper work is getting in the way of proper nursing

Answer 5

I worked in the service and can tell you where the money went. I worked with a fair number of people who could only be charcterised as: malevolent, self-serving (they basically ran their own businesses on NHS time and were making loads of money on the side), hadn't a clue on how to work as a team, and compared to other health systems I worked in, were a bunch of drunken shambolic stress cases working in a flith pit. But the politicians are also to blame as well as the managers.

Answer 6

Vote for another party at election time.
That's probably the best way to sort things out.
Labour have an uncanny nack to screw things up.
Like NHS funding.
However, to answer your question, I don't think you should support NHS if they can't manage themselves.
Would you hire an alcoholic plumber?