The UK Politics and EU Referendum thread - merged

[The Camel]

I'm way more right wing than I was when I was twenty.

My twenty year old self would call me now a "capitalist tory piece of shit".

[neeko]

10% of NHS spending os on drugs so that is already "privatised", so is GP spending (10%) and they are self employed so arguably privatised as well.

[AlunB]

10% of NHS spending os on drugs so that is already "privatised", so is GP spending (10%) and they are self employed so arguably privatised as well.

That's a bit of a stretch. You expect the NHS to produce its own drugs?

GPs are technically self-employed, but not really. They are more like small businessmen funded entirely by grants.

[neeko]

10% of NHS spending os on drugs so that is already "privatised", so is GP spending (10%) and they are self employed so arguably privatised as well.

That's a bit of a stretch. You expect the NHS to produce its own drugs?

GPs are technically self-employed, but not really. They are more like small businessmen funded entirely by grants.

Drug companies are of course best private but, I just get annoyed at the crowd who say that privatisation of any tiny part of the NHS is terrible when they ignore big chunks of spending like this.

[AlunB]

10% of NHS spending os on drugs so that is already "privatised", so is GP spending (10%) and they are self employed so arguably privatised as well.

That's a bit of a stretch. You expect the NHS to produce its own drugs?

GPs are technically self-employed, but not really. They are more like small businessmen funded entirely by grants.

Drug companies are of course best private but, I just get annoyed at the crowd who say that privatisation of any tiny part of the NHS is terrible when they ignore big chunks of spending like this.

Fair point, but neither of those are examples of privatisation.

I do think we're probably not far off GPs moving towards a dentist-style model though.

[vegaslover]

Q from me


If the NHS is really facing a £30bn funding shortfall, would you rather a) pay £1000 more a year in tax or b) pay £1000 a year to a private healthcare supplier? Seems pretty likely that one of those (almost certainly the latter) will end up being the case

I'd want to understand more about the shortfall first.  As far as I know the NHS budget goes up every year, so a shortfall could be from any number of reasons:

1) Waste
2) Bloated salaries (in management for example)
3) They were underfunded to begin with
4) Population is growing and needs more funding to support it


Depending on what the primary driver is of the shortfall depends on how I'd prefer to pay my £1k.  If it's 3 or 4 then I'm much more open to paying extra tax rather than sorting myself out on my own.

If it's (4) then I want to understand why the increased population are not generating associated tax receipts to pay for the increased strain on services.

Services have been underfunded over the years, made worse by an increase in expected living age and growth in child numbers, in part due to immigration.
This has been made worse by poor management, rather than simply waste.
Tbh I take any notions of the NHS budget being protected and seeing real terms growth as govt propaganda. Ask anyone who works in the NHS, which includes me, you will be informed that frontline services have actually been cut, in part due to efficiency savings.Which is just a term used to cut staff numbers. My own service has seen at least a 30% reduction in staff/services the past few years.

Rising drug costs is also not true in many areas. A lot of drugs are now 'off licence' and been replaced by generic brands. There is also a lot of co-op buying of drugs by Trusts to gain greater wholesale prices

[TightEnd]

this chart made me think

[Woodsey]

this chart made me think

The US does not surprise me at all, everything is mega expensive in healthcare there. From personal experience I know that drug companies charge several times more for their gear in the US compared to just about everywhere else. Why? Because we can and can get away with it. The NHS for all its faults is actually pretty effective at controlling costs of stuff for the most part.

[DungBeetle]

Isn't the general approach to fatty food/sugary drinks pretty bad in US in general?  Seems to me if you have this it doesn't matter how much you spend on healthcare when it comes to live expectancy?

[DaveShoelace]

Question of the day

Should University education be free? Or should students pay back for their education afterwards?

[doubleup]

this chart made me think

hmmm not sure expectancy at birth is a great stat for spending comparison. 

[AlunB]

Question of the day

Should University education be free? Or should students pay back for their education afterwards?

The current university system can't possibly be free. You can't pay for half the country to go to university. If it was more selective then I would definitely favour a grant system coming back.

[AlunB]

Tories blocked another NHS bill today, this time one with cross party support looking to increase the availability of cheap off-patent drugs to cancer patients.

On the one side you had cancer charities, doctors, the Royal College of Physicians and a whole host of other people.

On the other side you had the government.

Such a sigh that this is what we're dealing with right now.

[Jon MW]

Question of the day

Should University education be free? Or should students pay back for their education afterwards?

The current university system can't possibly be free. You can't pay for half the country to go to university. If it was more selective then I would definitely favour a grant system coming back.

Graduates earn more money - so they should pay for some of the benefit they're going to get.
Graduates add value to the company they work for - so the company should pay for some of the benefit they're going to get.
Graduates add value to the economy - so the government/taxes should pay for some of the benefit they get.

i.e. I think the current system of funding is about right.

What's wrong is the government (and probably successive governments) have almost stated that their aim is to offload the entire cost onto students; so the rest of the country gets the benefit but only the graduates will pay for it. And obviously as Alun says the current system is broken as successive governments have taken the idea of graduates adding value to the economy and ignored that the reason is because they have something of intrinsic value.

If the funding stayed as it is - but only available to university students - and then changed all the faux universities back into polytechnics and higher education colleges that would probably fix it in one step.

[Longy]

Question of the day

Should University education be free? Or should students pay back for their education afterwards?

I think it is ridiculous we are sending 50% population to university, a lot of those people degrees are not helping get a job afterwards. As a country we simply do not need people academically educated to that point, it would lot more useful in a lot of cases to vocational train people to fill gaps in the workforce.

I would go back to sending 20% ish and then we could look at bringing back grants. Of course this is electoral suicide because the demographic of floating voters is often people with children who have been told they should now be aspirational to send their children to university, when they probably didn't have that opportunity.