This is all intentional. They can't outright privatise the NHS without major outcry so they've made it unusable for as many as possible.
this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2024
376 points (96.8% liked)
United Kingdom
4060 readers
89 users here now
General community for news/discussion in the UK.
Less serious posts should go in [email protected] or [email protected]
More serious politics should go in [email protected].
Try not to spam the same link to multiple feddit.uk communities.
Pick the most appropriate, and put it there.
Posts should be related to UK-centric news, and should be either a link to a reputable source, or a text post on this community.
Opinion pieces are also allowed, provided they are not misleading/misrepresented/drivel, and have proper sources.
If you think "reputable news source" needs some definition, by all means start a meta thread.
Posts should be manually submitted, not by bot. Link titles should not be editorialised.
Disappointing comments will generally be left to fester in ratio, outright horrible comments will be removed.
Message the mods if you feel something really should be removed, or if a user seems to have a pattern of awful comments.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
“That's the standard technique of privatization: defund, make sure things don't work, people get angry, you hand it over to private capital.” — Noam Chomsky.
Indeed. As a Yank who always has to pay for healthcare anyway, it's easy to see the parallels in labor/employment, civil rights, and financial security: We're facing a global regressive movement from the political right, and those people have no scruples. They absolutely want to claw back every single gain the general public has made in rights and benefits over the last 75 years, and making benefits unpopular is the first step to privatizing them.
Never forget the NHS, warts and all, is a thing that we Americans would die to have, and for want of it many of us too often literally do.
An anecdote for anyone in the UK that is leaning towards abolishing or privatizing your NHS.
I had an appendectomy last year, you know, a surgery that something like 40% of the population will need at some point in their lifetime.
It cost me $7000, with "decent" insurance (UHC to be clear).
The final bill pre-insurance was a smidge under $170.000.
You guys need to burn the Tories down before you end up with the same system. The USA's healthcare system should be considered an example of what not to do, not a goal to strive for.
I work for UHC.
I think they're a decent company, considering the industry.
I've made a nice and fairly comfortable career here.
Burn it all down. Give everyone healthcare.
I'll find another job.
My girlfriend works for a private company instead of the NHS and she hates it on a moral level, too, but it's impossible to work for the NHS and keep your sanity. Be it the working conditions, hours, or pay. It's a shambles and it's all because we - the stupid public - continue to be suckered into believing it's good for us.
Not to mention that the left is fractured. We all want progress, but can't decide on exactly what progress should look like. Meanwhile conservatives only have 1 real option: Tories.
I'm convinced at BEST we're going to have another hung parliament with the bastards ultimately staying in power.
This country is fucked.
An anecdote for anyone in the UK that is leaning towards abolishing or privatizing your NHS.
Fortunately that's a vanishingly small number of people in the UK, the NHS has almost universal support.
That's good to hear. Now kick the Tories out & fund it properly.
It's so fucked up because not only are these assholes ruining another countries healthcare, they also are giving ammunition to our shithole country to never implement a universal healthcare system...
Which assholes are you talking about?
"Conservative" thieves, worldwide.
The ones in the UK government trying to ruin the healthcare system so they can make a privatized system more "appealing."
The Conservatives did that. I don't think Charles actually likes them much.
Does anyone care about major outcries in UK anymore? What do they ever achieve?
People forget and move on after a couple weeks of anger
The Tories haven't recovered in the polls since partygate and Truss, something has finally stuck.
They still need to get elected to carry out their plans.
Even the most zealous Tories I know are planning to vote against them this time.
Most of their voters aren't rich people and they need to keep them on side.
It doesn't matter how much money you have, if you're a Tory voter you never think you have enough money. The fact you don't have enough money is always the government's fault mostly due to immigration either there's too much of it, or not enough of it depending on your bank balance. Conservative voters only like the Tories come election time, the rest of the time they can't stand them like the rest of us.
In my experience that isn't true.
They think the Tories are doing good and if they mess something up labour would definitely have messed it up worse.
The ones I speak to genuinely support their policies even if they can't name any when asked haha
I'm still waiting for the follow-up on the Panama Papers.
I don't know what you mean people are still very angry about all this, but we're not going to have riots in the street over it. I kind of wish we would in a sort of way, but realistically simply voting the idiots out is probably the best way to deal with the problem.
Of course Labour have their own issues but I feel like their issues that might actually be fixable, whereas the Tories just don't care.
It's good to be the king
Perhaps the waiting times for homeopathic treatment are a lot shorter?
But he's such a stand-up guy. We should totally stop everything and treat this manchild. After all, what would we do without him??
This country and the people who run it is a fucking joke. This is no different to Victorian era shit, except we’re supposed to be more civilised nowadays and accept these freeloaders to get preferential treatment? Fuck off, paid thieves is what they are.
Oh, maybe he's is not being treated on the island meaning Britain, ... but that other one where doctors regularly fly in.
He’s the monarch…. I’m … not surprised in the least.
Banish the monarchy if you want to complain.
Banishing the monarchy won't help the problem of long waiting lists though. At least is has brought the issue to the front page and people are aware of the seriousness of the problem. Let's hope they vote for a party that will do something about it in the next elections
It would be nice if you could abstain from paying a proportion of tax to the monarchy and making it opt-in to support it
Of course he didn't have to wait he's probably going private, which other people could do too. This isn't an issue of him being a king, and everything to do with him being rich.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Hundreds of thousands of cancer patients in the UK are being forced to pay for private treatment amid record NHS waiting times, according to data obtained by the Guardian.
Amid growing frustration at NHS waiting lists, record numbers of people are paying for private healthcare.
On Monday, the king spent the night at his Clarence House home near Buckingham Palace after beginning a series of outpatient treatments within days of his diagnosis.
The cancer was discovered when Charles stayed three nights last month in the London Clinic, an exclusive private hospital in Marylebone, where he underwent a corrective procedure for a benign enlarged prostate.
“It is vital that people come forward if they are concerned about cancer symptoms – getting checked early saves lives,” a spokesperson added.
On Tuesday 27 February, 8pm-9.15pm GMT, join Denis Campbell, Narda Ahmed, Siva Anandaciva and Greg Fell as they discuss what an alternative manifesto for health and social care could look like.
The original article contains 652 words, the summary contains 158 words. Saved 76%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!