According to OECD figures, France has 5.7 beds per 1,000 people, compared to the UK’s 2.4 and an OECD average of five.
The average wait for an ambulance last year was 14 minutes while in the NHS in England more than 40% of crews were forced to wait at least half an hour to hand over patients in the week up to 1 January. That is the highest level since records began a decade ago.
In France the waiting time for a hip replacement averages three to four months, while in England about 400,000 people are waiting more than 52 weeks for treatments such as hip or knee replacements. Patients with heart conditions are seen by a specialist within 28 days in Paris, with 70 the longest wait recorded elsewhere. In England, there are more than 340,000 people waiting for cardiology care, with about a third of those waiting longer than the maximum target time of four months.
In France, the time between a cancer diagnosis and the start of treatment averages less than six weeks, while patients with potentially life-threatening conditions are typically seen by a consultant within six days of referral, half within two days. In England, 18,600 people given an urgent referral for suspected cancer last year waited at least 100 days to start treatment.
The analysis also shows that if UK spending per person had matched the EU14 average during that decade, then the UK would have spent an average of £227bn a year on health between 2010 and 2019 – £40bn higher than the actual average annual spending during this period of £187bn.
Over the same decade, the UK also had a lower level of capital investment in new buildings and equipment for health care compared with the EU14 countries. Between 2010 and 2019, the average health capital investment in the UK was £5.8bn a year. If the UK had matched other EU14 countries’ average investment in health capital (as a share of GDP) it would have invested £33bn more between 2010 and 2019 (about 55% higher than the actual investment during that period).
Lord Reid of Cardowan:
“ Jacob Rees-Mogg, paraphrased in the Daily Mail as telling the Armed Forces to shut up and just do as they are told? That is no way for a former failed Minister to speak to people who have pledged their lives—even until death—for this country.”
Almost 2,500 more people died in the week to 23 December than expected, 20% more than the five-year average for the same period, new figures from the ONS reveal.
It’s the highest number of additional deaths in a week since February 2021, during the pandemic’s most deadly period.
There have been over 30,000 more deaths than expected in the past six months alone, equivalent to 1,155 a week.
Even excluding the 8,000 deaths caused by COVID in that period, there are an average of 848 more people dying every week than the average from 2016-19 and 2021 (excluding the pandemic-affected 2020).
Analysis from LCP Actuaries suggests that a significant number of these deaths could be due to the current NHS crisis and delays in emergency treatment.
I mentioned this in another tread a couple of months ago. Axcess deaths seem to be a World wide and worryingly across all age groups. As you can see more people dying now than when Covid was rife.
Better health services would probably save many lives though.
Hugely important explanation by Richard Murphy here:
Jeremy Hunt, in his role as Chancellor, has apparently said that no additional pay offer to nurses may be made this year. He has also ruled out backdating the next year’s settlement. There is, apparently, no money available to meet this cost.
Ignore for a moment the total ignorance implicit in this comment, which ignores the fact that approximately 40% of any pay rise comes straight back to the Treasury in additional tax and national insurance contributions.
Ignore too the stimulus effect that this extra spending power for nurses will have in an economy deep in economic crisis.
And even ignore the additional tax paid when nurses do spend, and the recipients are taxed on what they get, as will the next net recipient, with ever growing returns to the government.
You have to ignore all these facts because Jeremy Hunt and the whole body politic appear to be totally unaware of them, even though they are glaringly obviously true economic facts.
It is endlessly frustrating that politicians and the media always take figures for the ‘cost’ of public services out of this context,
Next: placing them also within the ‘cost’ of lost working days, etc, incurred by NOT properly funding public services…
There have been two consistent policies across the past 13 years: underfunding of the NHS and overfunding of the private sector.
In the same month that the government closed 5,000 NHS beds, it block-booked all 8,000 beds in England’s private hospitals, and covered their entire operating costs. In return, these hospitals were required to do … nothing. It was free money. Rather than relieving the pandemic pressure, the 187 private hospitals treated, between them, a grand total of eight Covid patients a day. And, perhaps because they were now being paid merely for existing, they greatly reduced the other NHS-funded procedures they handled.
In 2021, through a scarcely noticed policy that seems to me just as scandalous as its corrupt PPE deals, the government extended these payments for doing nothing for a further four years, with a new “framework contract” for private hospitals. The expected cost is £10bn.
“Privatisation technique: defund, make sure things don’t work, people get angry, you hand it over to private capital.” - Noam Chomsky
As a French residents both you, me and many others on this forum are recipients of a part privatised health system here in France irrespective if ‘an old fart’ or’old bat’ (ask @John_Scully for definition) and I think we all or most agree that the French health system is superior. So, why keep knocking the NHS via the current government for stealth privatisation?
In my opinion the only way to save the NHS is indeed to part privatise in the same way as mutuelles work in France.
Edit: And although I haven’t said this before there is a lot of middle management deadwood that should be removed.
Initially, way back when, I wasn’t against the privatisation fashion. I thought it would bring efficiencies, but now I don’t think that has been the case. Poor legislation, poor regulation and cronyism seems to have knocked that on head. I also think certain core activities should never have been privatised.
