£350 million a week - let's fund our NHS

[Paddy]

£350 million a week - let's fund our NHS by increasing National Insurance contributions by 1.5%
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-58430364

[ladymuck]

Oh it's up to 1.5% now? When I saw it in the torygraph yesterday it was 1 - 1.25%

[malvolio]

The NHS has enough money. Problem is it is being spent on PFI repayments, property taxes, distributed and repetitive procurement by each Trust and supporting an unnecessary army of middle management mostly concerned with largely meaningless performance reporting. Less than half their budget goes on patient care. Put the clinicians back in charge an you might see a difference, but that will never happen.

The public finances are now in such a mess following Covid that a lot of changes will be needed to get things back on track. Sadly, politicians are only interested in their careers so look only at popularity and the next election, and not at anything to do with supporting the country longer term.

Expect more such stories over the next few months. Just don't take them at face value.

[cojak]

...but still expect that £350 million a week, Boris was photographed in front of that bus after all.

[northernladuk]

...but still expect that £350 million a week, Boris was photographed in front of that bus after all.

I'm sure someone somewhere will write an article proving we are hitting that using some figures from somewhere... even if absolutely nothing actually changed.

[lorakeen]

The NHS has enough money. Problem is it is being spent on PFI repayments, property taxes, distributed and repetitive procurement by each Trust and supporting an unnecessary army of middle management mostly concerned with largely meaningless performance reporting. Less than half their budget goes on patient care. Put the clinicians back in charge an you might see a difference, but that will never happen.

The public finances are now in such a mess following Covid that a lot of changes will be needed to get things back on track. Sadly, politicians are only interested in their careers so look only at popularity and the next election, and not at anything to do with supporting the country longer term.

Expect more such stories over the next few months. Just don't take them at face value.

the NHS is prisoner to the trade unions, who are forcing it to keep employing an unholy amount of penpushers and jobsworths.

[AtW]

And they charge companies also, as usual, even over the normal NIC max limit which currently 2% and they want to make it 3.5%, plus on company side no limit for some reason?

I guess after that it would “only be fair” to increase divi rate

[BlasterBates]

It's unlikely that the NHS can make savings by cutting admin costs. Around 14% percent of the budget is spent management and admin. The following is a dated but still relevant analysis.

https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/project...s/nhs-managers

Recent media coverage and parliamentary debate suggests that the NHS is bureaucratic and over managed. The argument goes that much NHS management is unnecessary and that over the past decade the number of NHS managers has increased at a rate disproportionate to need and to the wider growth of the NHS.

Myth. The NHS in England is a £100 billion-a-year-plus business. It sees 1 million patients every 36 hours, spending nearly £2 billion a week. Aside from the banks, the only companies with a larger turnover in the FTSE 100 are the two global oil giants Shell and BP. If the NHS were a country it would be around the thirtieth largest in the world.
If anything, our analysis seems to suggest that the NHS, particularly given the complexity of health care, is under- rather than over-managed.

[SueEllen]

the NHS is prisoner to the trade unions, who are forcing it to keep employing an unholy amount of penpushers and jobsworths.

Is this why there is a shortage of doctors specifically GPs, nurses, midwives, etc to fill advertised vacancies?

[malvolio]

Is this why there is a shortage of doctors specifically GPs, nurses, midwives, etc to fill advertised vacancies?

No, that's down to a lack of training places (too long a reliance on imported labour that mysteriously disappeared when they were asked to prove they could speak passable English), unrealistic educational requirements (other than for doctors, of course) and three month hiring cycles. Add that to high absentee levels, often stretching into months on full pay.