UK Taxes

The private sector isn’t always that much better tbf.

There’s no money to pay them. The NHS partially works on a type of monopoly and hoping people will work for low wages because they want to help people. If there were more options everyone would leave for the better hospital and GP.

Sorry? The people who have undertaken years of study and training to effectively help prolong and save your life shouldn’t be paid? Why not?

That’s not the individuals doctors/ nurses fault? That’s the management who can’t or won’t pay for improvements.

Again it might cost more, but if you don’t have “budget” for a full-time nurse (due to legal requirements for instances) but can get a temp in - the business will get a temp in.

So those who desperately need specialised care, shouldn’t get that care, even though the NHS is a state-run body, because the state can’t or won’t pay enough to run the state run body.

It needs better management and needs to re-align, demolishing it all and “re-building” will cost so so much more.

It should be due to market forces. If you can’t do a job, you’re fired and someone who can replaces you when the salary is attractive.

It’s my tongue-in-cheek way of saying a lot of them, from personal experience, have been woefully incompetent, and as such, deserve nothing.

We’re talking about the NHS, so the management has to be included in criticism, otherwise the detail will become overwhelming (seniority, pharmacists, cleaners, paramedics and so on)

You don’t understand; the temp has to be monitored full time by a permanent nurse. So a temp is more expensive than a full time nurse, and you have a net loss of 1 nurse. It’s sheer stupidity that such a situation can exist.

Literally nothing to do with what I said. If you have a budget of £250 a month for a car, you don’t buy one which costs £500 a month.

You say that, and yet the abandoned IT system for the NHS in 2013 cost over £10 billion and amounted to nothing. The whole system is broken, from the buildings to the burearcy, from the knowledge (or lack of) of GPs to the academic drive of specialists who don’t care about patients. Medicine as a whole needs to be reworked to something more akin to a proper science than this outlier that moves at glacial speeds.

You seem to be consistently missing and important point. The NHS doesn’t have any money. They can’t hire permanent staff, they can’t replace IT systems, there’s no money, instead all they can do is severely underpay staff and hope they don’t leave and fill in the gaps with temp staff on the little money they have left for short term contracts in hopes they make it through the next six months.

Are you happy to pay £200 a month more on your tax? Because that’s the only way your getting the NHS you want.

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“a lot of them” - how many doctors have you been to? how many nurses/ surgeons/ GPs - just because you’ve had a bad experience doesn’t mean all GPs are shocking.

But the management is the criticism. IMO the reason the NHS is failing is due to the overall management of the system, put simply politicians should not be managing it, someone who understands how a service business runs should.

No I do understand. But you didn’t respond to my answer. If you have no budget for a new full-time member of staff (who you would have to train up in any event) but you have a contingency in a ward for example for a temp for 3-6 months, you’ll get the temp and not the full time member of staff.

I agree, but the budget dictates what is possible and the budget isn’t big enough (and/or is mismanaged).

But it is? The NHS is a service of which all UK citizens have a right to obtain free of charge. If new technology comes out that is, for the public going to help the overall health of the nation, you’ll implement/ build that thing. The whole government has run over its budget before - so it just shouldn’t have done that?

I’d argue that cuts to rising concerns (such as mental health) and the continued mis-management of the overall system is the reasons for the broken system.

I mean that is your subjective opinion - so isn’t fair to make that part of a “broken system” argument.

Medicine isn’t the NHS - they’re separate concepts/ entities.

Many, all over the UK. And again, tongue-in-cheek but you get my point. They’re getting paid a reasonable salary, even if they’re terrible at their job.

I just pointed out how GPs get away with being crap. Same applies for nurses etc, although yes, politicians shouldn’t be managed it because they know nothing about how to run a hospital, or several hundred.

Read again: if you get in a temp, you actually LOSE a full-time nurse. So NO, you shouldn’t get in a temp as you have a NET LOSS of full-time nurses, meaning there is no gain in actual nurses!! 1 Temp - 1 full time nurse = 0 increase in nurses.

No, because that’s obviously not sustainable, and is moronic to purchase something that cannot be afforded. What do you think will happen when the debt comes to fruition? Everything will carry on as normal? :confused:

Probably all of the above in fairness.

The NHS dictates what qualifications are required to become a doctor. There should be a top-down approach to revamping the entire field.

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I have read it again but you have again missed and not addressed my point.

From an objective assessment it looks ridiculous but if you need that extra body (some wards needs X amount of bodies to actually open) but your budget doesn’t allow you to employ a full-time member of staff, you’ll get the temp even if it a) costs more and b) means that a full time nurses time is diminished.

The government is £1.8 trillion in debt, so yes I actually do think it’ll just keep going on, they’ll pay the oldest debt, with new debt and the cycle will continue.

Then you put more money into it because it is needed.

Going back to you car analogy it isn’t a case of a £250 car or a £500 car, it is that the only option is the £500 car - so you get the £500 car.

But there is a distinction between the study of medicine and the direct application of medicine - hence the different professions.

A doctor applies the knowledge of medicine, a scientist develops medicine further, its different. I wouldn’t want a scientist who is looking at progressive niche medicines in one area to be my GP for instance.

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I’m not sure they necessarily get away with it. They have 10 minutes to see you and figure out wtf is going on, then another 8 hours of 10 minute appointments not to mention writing it all up. Put on top of that that there isn’t enough GPS either so there overworked and that have to diagnose100 different ailments a day, I feel sorry for them.

I’d still be interested to see if your happy with a tax increase to get the NHS you want?

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@JustJordds made a good point on this. To add some extra. You don’t lose a full time nurse, the NHS doesn’t have any to begin with. When they have the option of hiring a full time nurse which may take months to do so and cost £50k for one year, or instantly hiring a temp nurse for £2k for one month. There going with the option in their budget and hire the temp nurse, they cannot afford or wait to hire the full time nurse, they have no money.

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Just an FYI, temp nurses aren’t allowed to be hired if a permanent nurse isn’t available to supervise them (that was as of a year ago though, may have changed).

They can misdiagnoses and as long as you don’t die, they don’t really care. If GPs are rushed, then there’s a problem with the system, not to mention the fundamental flaw of having a “jack of all trades, master of none” trying to make a quick diagnosis with tools anyone half interested in their health would have at home.

A tax increase would be fine but considering how poorly the money is spent today, you could throw endless cash at it and the NHS would still be trash. That’s why I’ve gone private and the results have been brilliant.

I now get your point and it’s painful to read because it’s an awful waste of money but clearly necessary some of the time :frowning_face:

Ask Greece/Ireland etc how that ends.

Where from? The magic money tree? If you can’t afford a £500 car, find a way to afford it, then buy it. Doing it the other way around is being inexcusably reckless.

The distinction becomes blurred quickly when trials come into play. You need patients to try a new drug/treatment, so at that stage both scientist and doctor are involved. A GP should never be anything more than a triage nurse IMO sending a person off to either the pharmacist or a consultant. Any reputable consultant should be actively engaged in research.

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From better management of taxes and the overall placement of money - money gets burned at every step of the organisation because those running it are clueless.

The problem is I agree with you and it makes complete sense to have it operate this way. The problem is there is no time and no money to have access to these things.

As an example, a GP diagnosed someone I know with a mental health problem - the wait list to see a consultant (bearing in mind this wouldn’t result in immediate care) was 6-9 months. The reason is the system is oversubscribed because it doesn’t pay well enough for some positions, the facilities aren’t overall good enough and there isn’t enough money to bring more people on to deal with the demand.

Simple economics suggest supply = demand and demand = supply but due to the way it is run, this gets thrown out the window and then private organisations come in and make up for it.

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Depends if you count things like student loan. I undertook a 4 year medical degree as a graduate and came out with about £50k in student loans.

Here’s the pay scales when you start work (£27k starting salary). The salaries get increased depending on how many hours a week you work on average and how often you work antisocial hours:

https://www.bma.org.uk/advice/employment/pay/juniors-pay-england

It currently costs £150 a year for me to have a medical license, about to go up to about £500 as I’ll be 5 years graduated.

There’s other costs such as indemnity insurance (I think it’s around £10k a year for a GP, though that’s coming down to about £2-3k), royal college fees £500 a year for me as well as professional exams (each are £500-£1000 to sit).

All the above tends to comes out of a doctor’s pocket.

I made a career change from being a web developer as I wanted to do something more rewarding. It’s always disheartening hearing how little regard some people hold for doctor’s when I’ve been covered in blood, sweat and tears (literally) after a long night shift with multiple cardiac arrests.

It’s not an easy job, but it’s f**king rewarding! I certainly don’t do it for the money, but I wouldn’t do it for nothing.

Edit: sorry, I know it’s a bit off topic!

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As an ex NHS employee, I know what you mean.

Don’t forget, though, that some people feel it OK to write this:

Say what you want, but I’m just showing the other end of the spectrum. I’ve been recklessly misdiagnosed with terminal diseases before and had different GPs stall in making any decision because “I looked healthy”. Years of pain and misery later, turns out they were all horribly, and importantly, avoidably wrong. Will any of them be held accountable for this? No.

So yes, I will decry that some GPs are :poop: and more interested in self preservation whether you like to read it or not.

A fascinating insight into the UK health system. Regrettably, much of what’s being stated here is at best half-truth and in many instances poorly researched opinion.

Frankly, some of the references to the relative worth of doctors and nurses, be they permanent, temporary or consultants, research or otherwise, could be considered offensive.

I know forums are good avenues for venting one’s frustration, and Monzo’s is about as eclectic as it gets. But this feels largely like bar-room chatter with no up-side.

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:flushed:

You just wonder if the government hadn’t realised that non dom means not domiciled which means that they don’t actually have to live here and therefore can leave fairly easily.