@ Sarah in the Desert I actually said BUPA consultants are also

Comment on General Election 2010 Poll Results by Helen.

@ Sarah in the Desert

I actually said BUPA consultants are also NHS consultants, meaning that generally many of them work for both the NHS and private sector. I work for the NHS and you don’t even live here so my perspective on the UK health service is possibly more current than yours. You were acting like because you have gone private you are doing the NHS a huge favour, when in fact, there is a different indirect argument here which relates to the amount of NHS trained clinicians who then work in private sector. It’s not as straight forward as sapping somebody’s timetable. To be fair doctors doing private work often fulfil their NHS contract and their private one without compromise (their NHS patients simply wait longer). It’s a wider issue about UK tax revenue investment in educating and training clinical staff, some of which is then siphoned off into the private sector benefitting a minority (and benefitting the people sitting on the boards of insurance companies and private hospitals).

You did clarify your point to David about support with childcare in 1997, but in your comments to me you still seem to think of the NHS, the DSS, and the Labour party as the same entity. You claimed that the Labour party are the source of my income and haven’t clarified that to me.

You also haven’t answered my question about your proposed health service:

Your NHS ideas don’t include “…those with hereditary or long-term illnesses that are through no fault.”. It would be interesting to see how you would legislate for this if you have time to summarise?

You also wrote: “I just think that there shouldn’t be waiting lists at all, if you need treatment you should just get it and not have to wait until you’re half-dead or have bits falling off you before it’s treated; this is a problem because the NHS is a bureaucratic, over-subscribed public service.”

An example: In the UK, if your GP thinks you have symptoms suggesting a possible cancer, you wait no longer than 2 weeks to see an NHS specialist. If a hospital fails to meet the two week target (which very occasionally happens usually because of human error), it gets fined. You are out of touch with the NHS and are blind to the progress it has made.

I haven’t got a problem with those who choose to go private for healthcare, that is everyone’s perogative. I have got a huge problem with anybody trying to marginalise the NHS when it has clear that if the right investment is in place, it can improve. If we eliminate beurocrats from the NHS, we would then expect clinically trained staff to take on more administrative duties which is a massive waste of them as a resource. I agree the NHS is oversubscrided, becasue we are an unhealthy nation, and we have an aging population, but public money is being spent on health promotion, preventative services and screening so that in future the burden on the NHS will be relieved.

I’d be really interested to know how your proposed healthcare system in the UK, only for those who are not ill through anything they have self inflicted (how do you define this?), would be rolled out to the general population without any waiting lists, and how we would expect normal people to fund this if you also advocate “allowing people to keep more of the money they work for”?

Oh, and who would be making a big fat profit out of this new health model?