Monday, August 29, 2011

Wine & Tea: NHS ---- Will it die?


Margaret McCartney pleaded on her blog:

The NHS, for all it’s faults, is fuelled by people who care about their work and who will add extra in. These are the people who chase things up, will stay a bit late to help, who will take a phone call when offduty because it’s something they know about and can fix well. Numb us down to the level of contract salespeople, and we will all suffer. But some people, the sickest, you can bet will suffer far more than others.


Here is a reprint of my earlier blog on the NHS over wine and tea:
 
.......As he dined with his good friend who served a beautifully fresh Red Mullet cooked the Chinese style with a simple spring onion sauce, the Cockroach Catcher produced a bottle of his recent discovery: Torrontes from Argentina.
Torrontes is truly an Argentinian wine that is really suitable for our Chinese Style of cooking. On the nose, it has a delicate pear and citrus flavour. My friend who is used to the good and expensive wines took a sip and declared that it has a wonderful peach flavour. It has a long aftertaste that is unusual for this class of wine. At the price, it beats any other white wine. Let us keep that as a secret.

Over tea afterwards the topic of NHS privatization came up.

No, not all of NHS will be privatised.

Why?

Government money is the best money for anyone to make and that is really tax payer’s money. The new NHS will be the private sector’s main source of income, as only 90,000 in the UK are covered by private insurance and often they are offered cash incentives to use the NHS.

It is therefore essential for the private health care companies that the NHS is around, at least in name, so that they can make money by providing a “better value and more competitive” service to the NHS!

Some parts of the NHS will have to remain too, as it is necessary for the private sector to dump the un-profitable patients: the chronic and the long term mentally ill, for example. (Right now, 25% of NHS psychiatric patients are treated by the private sector.  But why? Even in psychiatry, there are cherries to be picked.)

Finally, in order to keep the mortality figures low at competing private hospitals, they need to be able to rush some of their patients off to NHS hospitals at the critical moments!


Have some more tea!!!
 
Iron Goddess of Mercy (Oolong Tea ): traditional tea  of my friend's home village, Teochiu which is of course where my family is from.

These are traditional tiny cups and the tea is lovely on the nose and has a long aftertaste. To do this tea justice, use the softest water you can get: like those for a good malt!!! (Calcium is the villain here: no more than 12mg/Litre)


So the NHS will be free at the point of delivery.
Lets hope so but the money must come from somewhere.

And some us pay taxes!!!

So nobody in their right mind would want to privatise the NHS. There is certainly more money to be made if it remained in the public domain.
Dave Cameron’s brother-in-law should not worry either as his income would go up at least 300% as long as he works for one of the private providers.

Business is business!!!

Killing the NHS is no good to the privateers!!


Wait: the sums are wrong though:If the private providers are making money and the GP commissioning teams have a limited pot and that Consultants working for the likes of BMI hospitals have a 300% increase in pay compared to old NHS Hospital pay scale, either tax payers are going to be forking out more and more money or someone is not going to get their treatment.

Is some politician heading for a top job with the likes of GHG or Bupa? Only time will tell and history told us it won’t be long: less than 2 years!

From May 26, 2011:
                                       
Useful notes:


SOUTH Africa's Netcare has become one of the world's biggest private healthcare organisations after beating three international companies to win control of Britain's General Healthcare Group (GHG) in a R23.7-billion deal.

The company won a controlling stake in the British hospital group on Monday, after a bout of frenetic dealmaking that saw management teams in Johannesburg and London go for 96 hours without sleep.


Netcare says sorry again for kidney scandal


Netcare in Scotland: ISTC
Our analysis of the only Scottish ISTC contract and a private sector report on value for money shows that the requirements for collecting and reporting data, for contracts, and for evaluation do not conform to NHS standards.
The Scottish Regional Treatment Centre treated only 32% of annual contract referrals in the first 13 months of operation at 18% of the annual contract value. If the same patterns apply in England, up to £927m of the £1.5bn may have been paid to ISTCs for patients who did not receive treatment under the wave one ISTC contracts.







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