This fella speaks a lot of sense about privatisation of the NHS, he says we shouldn’t go down the road of the USA model, just manage the NHS better, you need a Facebook account to watch it.
https://fb.watch/iWDxkBwrDf/

why is the usa always used when private health care is mentioned. surely across europe there are other countries providing good health care better than us even if you have to pay for it. ours is not free and never has been as its paid for my NI contributions and taxes.

It’s free if you’re not paying NI or tax….or overseas visitors who the gullible NHS should be charging…..especially the trend of flying in to have your baby or babies for free…we really are a dumb country at times.
I’m voting for the Common Sense Party….pity it doesn’t actually exist.

the guardian will tell us though that they all pay if they do fly in even if only one does. bet those who live in other countries thing the UK is a total piss take. Common Sense, that will be removed from the dictionary any day soon fear it catches on.

Problem with the NHS is very simple: too many people use it, too few people pay for it. The result is the service is suffering because it cant keep up with demand because it simply does not have enough resources. This trend will continue until a tipping point is reached. No government has the courage to deal with the problem.

governments are frightened to up taxes to pay for it and equally as frightened to scrap it even if they introduced the worlds best private system. its a sacred cow that you criticise at your peril but someone needs to do something sooner than lateras the current situation aint helping anybody.

Yep, various governments inject a few billion now and again but its a sticking plaster on a fatal wound. The current way of funding is no longer sustainable because it relies on the people who use it being the people who pay for it which is no longer the case.

As I have mentioned before many GP Surgeries are owned by an American company, people don’t fly in for free treatment, the first point of treatment is free but chargeable after that.

Chargeable? The NHS tourists simply plead poverty or bugger off overseas before they can be charged. In the news there was a woman from the Philipines who came to visit her sister and oddly found out she suddenly required expensive heart surgery. Turns out she'd had the condition for some time but it was too expensive to get the necessary treatment in the Phillipines. Good ol UK tax payer picks up the bill. There was the woman from Nigeria who'd had fertility treatment. She first went to the USA but quickly came to the UK to have six premature babies at tax payers' expense. I think the total cost was over a million quid. Do you think she paid? Both of these were in BBC documentaries. The NHS like other state provisions is being exploited by people who have no right to it. We just let them.

As far I was aware the NHS only provide in the event of an emergency, no idea how these procedures could have been carried out ?

Why do we always look to the USA for solutions surely our European friends have good models of healthcare we could learn from?

These examples were in a BBC documentary programme broadcast last year although possibly year before, it was on BBC 2. The woman who had the six babies turned up at the hospital in labour and as I recall the babies were born via ceasarian section. All six were in intensive care for quite some time, hence the huge cost. No prospect of emergency care only: the hospital couldn't allow the babies to die could they? The Phillipino woman presented at hospital while having a heart attack. Again, there was no option to give emergency treatment only.

The NHS don’t bother to charge them, apparently it’s beneath their dignity.

People living outside the EU are charged at 150% of the NHS national tariff, unless an exemption applies to them or the service they are accessing, or they are covered by a reciprocal healthcare agreement between the UK and their country.

I hope that helps.

I can't be certain, but I suspect there is no reciprocal health agreement between Nigeria and the UK or the Philippines and the NHS. Individuals turn up expecting to be treated and they are treated regardless of ability to pay or their entitlement to treatment. The rest of the world know this very well. The Nigerian woman did not pay anything for her treatment and neither did the filippino woman.

Whilst true, the problem is that some the hospitals themselves aren’t claiming the charges as it appears they find it distasteful.

I would think that many of the administrators in hospitals are not up to the job in terms of "best practice".

I wonder how much is overspent procuring even simple things like pens, gloves etc. The waste must be colossal.

If the NHS was a private company they would have been bankrupt years ago, like most public companies I don’t believe much check is ever done on procurement, we buy from a certain company because we have always done.
The day they ‘invented’ the title Chief Executive it started going down the pan along with the the other word Executive it meant a massive increase in salaries and gold plated pensions. The same applies to any public organisation including our council.

just what were these new band of big earners called in old money. new title for more pay or a made up job where one firm has one and the sheep follow.

We had Matrons and Managers before, they now need ‘expertise’ to manage the large amount of money involved and they also say to get the correct people to take responsibility they have to pay them the going rate.

Gill Alexander was the CE of the Council for 5 years, when she retired she received £277,438 during her last full year in office made up of £160,191 salary, £71,448 pension contributions and £45,799 compensation for loss of office. A great big pay off for what, what did she do for Hartlepool, she retired so why was she paid compensation for loss of office ?

The salaries and pension contributions received by other senior managers in 2019-20 comprised the Director of Children’s and Joint Commissioning Services (£131,979), Director of Adult and Community Based Services (£126,506), Director of Regeneration and Neighbourhoods (£134,906), Director of Finance and Policy (£128,098), Director of Public Health (£111,490) and Chief Solicitor (£97,975).

The Council doesn’t have a CE now but a Managing Director, I think on a lesser salary, Denise McGuckin.

The trouble with all these bodies is ‘Town Clerk phobia’….let me explain, until the sixties the person in charge of the Council was the humbly titled ‘Town Clerk’. .. a modest title for what the job entailed, so they gained the grand title of ‘Chief Executive’ ….. and doubtless a salary to justify the title….. and massage the ego of the new generation of ‘public servants’….as if

at one time working for the council was seen as a cushy but not well paid job and if you didn,t mind waiting to fill dead mens shoes you had a job for life.

Dave Stubbs 44 years at the council, started as a Work Study Engineer culminating as the Chief Executive ending his career with a nice little earner