Miliband gets the better of Cameron on the NHS

toco

James you must have been sitting with Polly Toynbee!Cameron destroyed the hapless Red Ed on this subject on funding,effectiveness,Labour's hypocrisy and the experience in Wales to name but four matters raised.Even the BBC showed Cameron as the decisive winner!

Publius

Mr Forsyth, I really find all this games imagery such a goddam bore. Can't you lot extract yourself from the hothouse fantasy just for a moment?

Sergei Merepat

Ed must be really in a bad way when just getting a little blood on his nose counts as a 'win'.

telemachus'

The problem is that the Tories have the Republican Party philosophy that one should look after ones own destiny including health and sod the poor

Sergei Merepat

Telemachus - as opposed to; everyone should look after the 'poor' (please define) and sod the hard working!

telemachus'

Really good to see Milburn and Miliband trashing the Coalition on this issue.If the reasonable folk could just get together and coordinate the professionals we would be motoring

DavidDP

"The problem is that the Tories have the Republican Party philosophy that one should look after ones own destiny including health and sod the poor"

Since the Tories are committed to a universal healthcare system free at the point of use (to an extent not even embraced by those lovable continental social democrats), your comment comes across as particularly ill-informed.

tb

So a win for Labour is saying the coalition is as bad at managing the NHS as Labour...

Mark M

Telemachus, that’s a nice straw man you have there. Unfortunately your biggest mistake is to conflate support for the NHS with support for helping the poor with healthcare costs. I cannot stand our health system. I think it’s expensive and whenever I should have the misfortune to require its services I have to wait hours in A&E watching doctors and nurses stroll about like they have all the time in the world. If the NHS were a restaurant, everyone would leave for another play to eat before their starters arrived.

However, I do think there is a place for redistributive taxation in order to pay for the healthcare costs of those who cannot otherwise afford it. My preferred model would be an insurance model, with cash payments to the poor so that everyone can afford to buy insurance. Do you see how opposition to the NHS does not mean ‘screw the poor’?

stephen bennetts

One of the questions not answered by the Prime Minister today was why after promising there would be no more "top down " reforms of the NHS, he is forcing through these reforms. It appears to me that he can be accused of being devious,the reforms which are complex must have been planned well before the general election. Why should we trust anything he says in the future ? why should we believe him when he says he will protect the countryside for example? !

Herr Kartoffelkopf

telemachus' "and coordinate the professionals"

There, in four words, is a summary of all that's wrong with the approach of the left. Why on Earth do you think it is the place of politicians to coordinate the activity of professionals? What do the Milli's Burn and Band know about delivering parcels, let alone healthcare?

Russell

#telemachus'

I think you must have pressed the wrong button, this isn't CIF on leftie Guardian site, where vicious attacks on anything conservative/coalition government are cheered and all the failures of labour are denied.

Remember what labour did to the NHS over a 13 year period.
Labour privatised many NHS services (usually incompetently with contracts losing £millions).
Labour headed up an NHS which killed thousands of patients through out of control hospital aquired infections such as mrsa and cdiff.
Labour set up the management system at Stafford hospital which killed many patients with atrocious lack of healthcare.

The tories want the best outcomes for patients, not a ludicrous argument about public versus private.

Everyone has to pay for dental treatment and prescriptions aren't free, neither is the NHS.

How many phoney nurses who do no nursing does the taxpayer pay for? The 'Pilgrims' of the NHS, the trade union muppets.
Same as phoney 'front line policemen' i.e. police 'Pilgrims'.
Everu public sector workplace is infested with these people the taxpayer does not want to pay for, they are trade union and labour party workers and they should pay their wages.

Russell

The PMQ's I viewed had a competent Prime Minister in David Cameron, soundly trounce an opportunist bog-eyed stick insect called Ed.
Maybe there was another PMQ's on a different channel than bbc parliament Mr Forsyth

Fergus Pickering

Perhaps all Health Services are much the same. Is it better in France Is it worse in the USA? Do you know, I think it's all much the same. Hospital - you don't want to go there. It's full of disease.
Will this bill make much difference? No, not much, partly because a lot of the stuff has been done already. How do I know? Because my daughter, who works in the NHS, has told me so. The stuff about private patients is entirely beside the point. If it weren't for the private patients, all our best surgeons would bugger off sharpish to where the money is. Why? Because they want to maximise their incomes, like bankers and dustbin men, and pretty well everybody.

David Ossitt

Three have posted here in reply to ‘telemachus'’ as they have a perfect right to do.

However he/she/it is considered to be a troll and most who post are of the opinion that trolls should never be replied to, as this feeds and encourages them.

If you read telemachus''s posts you might notice that nearly all are written with the intention of raising the hackles of most of those who post on what is after all a right wing web site.

Just a thought.

ollie

Every time a weak Labour leader comes under pressure, like Wallace has, left wing bloggers and professional propagandists like Alastair Campbell sent complaints to the BBC for "biased" journalism.

The Beeb then spend the following weeks and months "rehabilitating" that leader.

They follow the same MO everytime - they did it with the "Brown Bounce" - now they have Andrew Neill salivating over possibly the worst Labour leader there has ever been.

The BBC still dances to the tune of the Labour party, no question about it.

Sacre Bleu

There would appear to be a multitude of different unions and pseudo unions in the NHS, and in the police forces also, so it is relatively simple for Milliband to quote half a dozen 'organisations' who are totally opposed to any government policy no matter what. I really don't think the unions got it wrong by getting Brother Ed as the leader, they knew he was as malleable as a dog turd and easily lead by the nose. Perhaps that was the cause of his nasal problem.

2trueblue

What were you listening to James? We know that the BBC are unable to report facts that do not suit them. Millipede had one good shot and missed. It is becoming clear that the NHS is struggling mostly because the debts that Liebore left it with are like the debts they littered all our public areas with are becoming clearer and clearer as the real cause of the countries inability to move forward.
If you set up PFI deals throughout your time in power it could be expected that you understood them...... Not so in Liebores case. They as usual sprayed our money about like drunks and were as usual totally financially incontinent.

Colin Cumner

The NHS was - is - a noble experiment conceived in times so very different to those currently obtaining. It does require reform but like all such 'sacred cows' there will always be those who wish to preserve the status quo. 2012 is a world away from 1948 (when the NHS came into operation) and we have to face the fact the scheme is not operating as efficiently as it once did. Surely anything that will reverse this situation is to be welcomed but as usual, Labour cannot differentiate between what is achievable and what is not. As for the BBC, well we all know which way they are slanted politically so we should not expect them to favour current Government policy now should we?