COMBATING MYTHS & MISINFORMATION
Not relative to need. The demands of the population have dramatically increased in recent years due to age, population growth, the collapse of social care and the impacts of poverty. Giving the NHS an extra £1 a year would equate to ‘record funding’ but it would still not be enough.
The NHS is poorly funded at side of other comparable world health systems and has been shown independently to be the most efficient healthcare system in the world amongst comparable countries by the Commonwealth Fund (2017) when well-funded. Non-clinical managers are not the scapegoat here either. In an organisation of 1.4m people, only 5% of the workforce falls into this category, far less than any corporate entity equivalent in size.
Privatisation is inefficient and wastes taxpayers’ money. Money going to shareholders is not being invested back into the health system to care for us all. Private companies cherry-pick the most lucrative procedures, leaving the NHS with the more expensive. Private hospitals do not deal in emergency care and often discharge patients after they have made mistakes for the NHS to care for.
NHS staff are grossly underpaid at side of many other comparable nations and there pay has been eroded significantly. For example, junior doctors (fully qualified) start on only £15ph. Staff are leaving in their thousands for this reason with the NHS having over 110,000 vacancies currently. Strikes are therefore as much about safe staffing and patient safety and guaranteeing the future of the NHS, as they are about pay renumeration.
Over recent years many important areas such as dentistry, and some routine but important procedures (such as earwax removal) have been effectively removed from NHS provision. This disadvantages the poorest who do not have the option to pay privately and leads to ill health and complications which then cost the taxpayer more in the long run. Government must commit to restore a comprehensive service. Economic studies have shown that a healthy population is directly linked to a well-funded and fully comprehensive, well operated NHS.
