The Lansley commitment

Susan Hill

Meanwhile, the donkey-jacketed new Health Sec. little Andy Burnham, says 'waiting lists are a thing of the past' thanks to NuLab. Tell that to the lady in my village who is now 5 months into her wait for a hip op and told it will be at least another 2.

Ray

This is another hostage to fortune left over from the era when the Conservatives lived in terror of being dubbed 'the nasty party'. It simply has to be dropped.

James S

Given the last time money was thrown at the NHS the result was a collapse in productivity, one wonders why it would be any different this time. Clearly what is needed is to see where reform would provide better outputs, it is the reforms, not more cash which is the priority. Brown’s mistake (one of many) was to spend billions and hope reform somehow came through the system. Why we insist on repeating Brown’s mistakes is something of a mystery.

If the NHS felt it were not being given the cash its position as a national icon entitled it to receive, a radical move might be to allow efficiency savings to be kept within department budgets, thus allowing for change and encouraging the sorts of restructuring behaviour which is commonplace in the private sector, but depressingly absent in the public sector.

Feste

The Tories have to break cover on the issue of NHS spending - it is widely accepted that we are not getting value for money and, thanks to the economic chaos created by this government, we can no longer afford to subsidise inefficiency. By giving hospitals more independence, answerable to the communities they serve rather than to Whitehall bureaucrats, it should be possible to cut the total cost of the NHS whilst strengthening front-line delivery. A zero-based approach sounds to me like the right way to go about this.

jennifer

Personally I am horrified by the idea that we will not be frank with the public.

In the current anti-politics mood it cant be right to say that the tories are better keeping their real plans hidden. This is the fastest way to turn the public away.

DW

Waiting lists...

Despite being referred by the GP, the hospital will not book my son an appointment with the consultant. They say the list is full and they won't make any appointments for beyond three weeks ahead.
Every time we phone, the list is still full. No one will extend the waiting list to four weeks, or five, or six which would at least give patients a date.
Yet, we still get regular letters from the NHS every two weeks telling us to hurry up and book.
Left hand, right hand??
Even the Soviet Union could not have been worse.

RayD

How is one supposed to understand the phrase "NHS resources have trebled since Labour came to power but productivity has declined"?

My understanding is that productivity is a measure of efficiency, unit output per unit input, and thus bears no connection to the size of the input.

On the face of it, this phrase merely means input has trebled but output has not quite, which is hardly surprising.

Yet one gets the impression that one should read 'productivity' as 'production', and thus the phrase means input has trebled while output has declined.

Which is correct?

Verity

Why should British hearts thrill to the news that more billions of the money that they get up in the morning and go to work to earn (or who work the night shift because it means a slight increase in earnings) will be poured down the ever-gaping maw of Africa?

Africa is the richest nation in the world in terms of natural resources, like minerals and arable land. Even though they don't have a technological frame of mind themselves, they've had free technological education and assistance for 60 years. And they neede more??? In these dire financial times, David Cameron thinks we're not giving away enough of our resources to a rich, non-productive productive area?

Meanwhile, it gives me no small pleasure to note that the Chinese have now discovered Africa, and they are not there to help. My guess, little by little they will begin, perforce, to administer various pockets of Africa, and those pockets will prosper.

To Ray 12:30, I heartily concur. When did the formerly stout-hearted British decide they want governance by "feelings"?

John Page

Tony Wright also said on Newsnight last night that waiting lists had been abolished. Seems to be the new lie to take.

John Page

Turning to the public spending debate, the Tories seem to be unable to explain succinctly why state spending cuts will be essential in view of the fiscal iceberg we're approaching - the numbers above are relevant.

They never explain why ever rising state spending is (a) bad and (b) impossible.

An Opposition leader should be able to boil this down to two sentences and keep repeating it.

luke

Susan Hill, you should contact your MP on her behalf. Noone should now be waiting more than 18 weeks from GP to operation and for most hospitals that's true. If her local hospital is doing badly she could maybe go somewhere else.

luke

RayD, its the first of your descriptions. Input has trebled and measurable output has increased but not by quite as much. We do more than double the number of operations for example, but not 3 times as many.

Nicholas

Cameron should sack Lansley. He is a lightweight and prone to put his foot in his mouth. Regardless of the rights or wrongs of the truth they just cannot afford such risks.

PayDirt

I've just filled in two-pages of questions prior to a NHS visit. They print it in colour, the only colour question being ethnic origin, see overleaf. Overleaf is list of possible ethnic origin in abbreviated code, you must answer the question twice, back and front. Expense of specially printed colour forms? Why all this bureaucrat nonsense about details such as "are you entitled to NHS", where have you lived for the last 12 months (on the moon), why don't they just ask ONE simple question: what is your National Insurance number? Surely all the details such as current address, doctors name, etc should be there without endlessly having to repeat the stuff for someone to file away. You should see the poor nurses limping around carrying armloads of files. Where is the modern health service? Why are more than 50% of people seen in hospital not white British? Why does the form ask me if I need an interpreter. Does anyone care if I say I've lived on the moon for the past 11.5 months, you lunatic you. Do they follow these things up? OK so there's a dynamic here. We get lots of doctors of overseas origin (good, except why can't we teach Britishers?) they bring skill, but they also bring their mums and dads and aunts in for treatment, cost? I mean REAL cost?

Verity

John Page asks why we can't teach British doctors. We do. We have lots of bright graduates, but the NHS reserves the jobs for people from "overseas". "Overseas", of course, not meaning Canada or New Zealand or even Latin America which shares a common Christian heritage with us, but "other". I find this especially egregious because people are able to read their own folk, and a British nurse or doctor could spot an anxiety, a depression, an uncertainty in a patient lying helplessly in a bed that someone from "overseas" could not, because they don't share the same cultural sensitivities that we all absorb from childhood.

I feel that packing NHS hospitals with foreign medical personnel is another studied insult.

In addition to which, our own doctors have to leave the land of their birth and move overseas to get employment.

TGF UKIP

Yet more evidence,as if any were needed, that no common sense conservative should contemplate, even for one second, voting for the Cameron Social Democratic Green Party.

JohnAnt

Judging by his words over the past two years, Lansley is not a genuine Tory. Is that the reason Dave keeps him as Shadow Health Spokes-Parson?
I don't care how 'grateful' Dave is to the NHS. My 60-year experience of the NHS leads me to the inexorable conclusion that it must be binned. It has sapped the moral will and self-responsibility of the British people - let it go.
A saner, personally financed/insured system can replace it, with a belt-and-braces option for the very poor or extremely thick.

Andy

"Do you need an interpreter?" Now there's an area where savings could be made. Interpreters are well paid (I should know, I used to do it). Why are we paying for interpreting and translation? Everybody should be functional in English, even if it isn't their first language.

A. Doctor-Irritated-by-Gaming

DW's experience is simple fraud on the part of Choose & Book, headquartered in Milton Keynes and with branches here and there, or the local Trust running the hospital, or both.

Tackle this via your MP, your local paper, perhaps, and the NHS COujnter-Fraud unit in Torquay.

Please.