General Chat

- George Orwell (1984)

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/aug/26/nhs-plans-radical-cuts-to-fight-growing-deficit-in-health-budget

now what was the NHS slogan ithat the brexiters painted on the red battle bus ?

If people continued to believe that as the campaign progressed, then they were delusional. The 'equivalent of' might have been more realistic.

So let's look behind the suggestion to close some hospitals. The immediate thought is that more people will die uneccasarily, reducing the population numbers & the cost of future treatment.

What suggestions could we make?
Shave 10-15% off the Trust executive's salary

Remove 'Golden handshakes' from their contracts. After all, a shop manager wouldn't get a bonus if he resigned or wasn't able to cope with the responsibilities.

Stop re-employing redundant admin staff, on contract, to take on invented 'projects'. They've been given a redundancy payment & are then paid more than their previous rate

Charge-back the cost of medical treatment for visitors to their insurance or countries of residence. Do UK hospitals actually claim back from EU countries if the patient hasn't 'paid in' to the NHS? They could easily afford 2 admin assistants per hospital out of the savings on the Executives pay and still have some left.

No doubt we could sort out the budget deficit between us
;-)

what a load of cods wallop

What would you suggest then? :-D

the measures you propose (lifted from the daily snail etc ) would not even scratch the financial needs of the NHS.

The UK has fallen into a mindset on many many things not much different from that of a small child who gets into a tantrum when denied

one of these mindsets is that the UK is entitled to a high quality health service on the cheap - dream on.

The NHS as it is now is impossible and will fail big time.
As in any other country it will have to be replaced with an insurance based model with realistic deductions from the pay packet and employer NI contributions. The NHS is not a provider of social services yet this takes a sig. chunk of its budget.

another UK delusion is that top grade managers for businesses, banks, the NHS, the BBC, the railways can be found on the cheap for say £ 150K pa and that the salary savings will of themselves sort any financial problems

if you want a full list just scan the daily express or the scratchings of Norman Tebbit and Sarah Vine.

Here are some ideas for saving serious money from the govt budget:

can Hinckley Point, buy off the shelf small size atomic reactors from Japan
cancel HS2 - who needs a railway from a suburban station in N London to a location of desolation in Aston?
shift London airport expansion to Gatwick
cancel Trident - with a fraction of the money we could have a proper Navy, Air force and properly equipped army
terminate offshore banking fiddles in the BVI and so on
stop using the London property market as a tax dodge and place to hide hot money
stop all PFI schemes and buy those outstanding back in at 25p in the £
drop the insanity of Brexit which will cost UKGov at least 10% of tax revenue - Berlin and Paris are not of a mind for a user friendly deal, far from it

if you don't like these then I have others

FYI - 'Projects' is personal knowledge
' golden handshakes' etc from local news regarding a main hospital which was put into the NHS equivalent of 'Special Measures'. The CEO was forced to resign but walked away with a large payout.

What does the TV jingle say? Every little helps :-D

You've made some interesting suggestions, but would the money saved actually go to the NHS?