Socialise the essentials.

[BoldonLad]

It's quality of life though isn't it ??

Not just 'lifespan'

And of course that quality of life is also tied into things like access to safe spaces for exercise, fair access to nutritious foods, wellbeing in the workplace, good early years provision, free access to decent healthcare including screenings throughout a lifespan, education opportunities and so on.

All those things feed into good health, are therefore 'healthcare' in the broadest sense.

Get these right and the likelihood is that emergency style expensive intervention healthcare costs go down for society as a whole.
Whilst overall well-being goes up.

Win win.

That's what government s are supposed to be doing.

Prioritising the welfare of their citizens.

So socialising the 'essentials' seems like an obv move in that direction.

Most definately, could agree more with the bolded bit.

Are you suggesting the Japanese, French, Spanish have an inferior quality of life to us, here in UK?

 

[AndyRM]

Very good.

Now, simple question, is the system doing what it has been set up to do?

As a money-making system it excels.

As a healthcare system it is broken.

 

[mudsticks]

Most definately, could agree more with the bolded bit.

Are you suggesting the Japanese, French, Spanish have an inferior quality of life to us, here in UK?

No , where did you get that that inference from??

I was just pointing out that lifespan alone is a crude measurement.

Aiui the Spanish come out much higher than us for 'quality of life, and life satisfaction' overall.

Having spent a fair amount of time there I can see why..

 

[FishFright]

Because it is the wrong system?

The failure is built into the system so yes it is .

 

[FishFright]

If I pitch up and rob your house and kill your family, what happens then? You just buy new stuff, get a new family and we all move on?
If a foreign country invades us, do we just shrug and learn Russian?

Step away from the keyboard for a while and do some thinking. I find it helps when I disappear down the BS sewers.

 

[icowden]

That the state is not exactly well known for its ability to run big organisations is clear from the way the NHS is run and interfered with, the delays and overspend on major projects, or the well documented struggles to deliver major IT systems.

One of the main problem the state has vs a private company is around responsibility to the tax payer that results in poor politically motivated decisions, and the fact that it is extremely difficult to get rid of bad employees.

If we take the NHS for example, we have a situation where payscales are decided nationally. They do not take into account the market. Thus for the majority of IT projects, the NHS pays a secondary supplier to run a project because that supplier can contract people at market rates. The NHS cannot retain IT workers as the rates are so far below the market. This is now carrying into Nursing as a Nurse can earn far more working through an agency than they can working directly. There are downsides in terms of pension, sick leave and holiday, but most Nurses would rather take the money now I think.

I have seen a lot of wastage in the NHS because contracts are weak or due dilligence isn't performed well. NHS Scotland have national procurement, but the Westminster Government decided that it would be much better to have a competitive marketplace where every Trust spends a tonne of money having to duplicate work that would be eliminated by a national tender - not to mention the discount that could be secured on such a large contract and the improvement in patient care by having joined up data.

But then I wouldn't have had a job for the last 12 years. So I'm good.

I've also worked under countless p*ss poor managers in the NHS who should really have been let go or managed out of the organisation. But as a state employer it seems to be almost impossible to sack anyone.

Public sector tends to be slow, cautious and poorly motivated. Private companies are motivated by profit but the risk is in maximising profit over service and taking shortcuts or risks which can sometimes reflect badly and end up with state bail outs.

 

[BoldonLad]

No , where did you get that that inference from??

I was just pointing out that lifespan alone is a crude measurement.

Aiui the Spanish come out much higher than us for 'quality of life, and life satisfaction' overall.

Having spent a fair amount of time there I can see why..

Just checking.

So, you would agree that Spain (if not Japan and France, and a few others also), enjoy a better lifespan and quality of life, and life satisfaction, than UK?

 

[newfhouse]

One of the main problem the state has vs a private company is around responsibility to the tax payer that results in poor politically motivated decisions

Various state ownership models exist and not all require week by week meddling by politicians. Channel 4 is a topical example that springs to mind. There’s a charter, a regulator, and competent management as far as I can see. Why can’t electricity distribution or railways be run in a similar way?

and the fact that it is extremely difficult to get rid of bad employees.

I have seen this in every large enterprise I have worked for, public and private alike. I think it’s more about scale than ownership.

 

[BoldonLad]

Various state ownership models exist and not all require week by week meddling by politicians. Channel 4 is a topical example that springs to mind. There’s a charter, a regulator, and competent management as far as I can see. Why can’t electricity distribution or railways be run in a similar way?


I have seen this in every large enterprise I have worked for, public and private alike. I think it’s more about scale than ownership.

Why indeed.... but... we don't seem to have managed it so far with Electricity, Gas, Railways, Coal Mining, Shipbuilding, NHS, etc

 

[mudsticks]

Just checking.

So, you would agree that Spain (if not Japan and France, and a few others also), enjoy a better lifespan and quality of life, and life satisfaction, than UK?

Always good to check.

Especially in there might be a chance to start an argument right,??

I don't know the figures, but I think I read recently that Spain comes out above us in life satisfaction.

Couldn't say for 'lifespan' some fairly straightforward research should do it though .

 

[BoldonLad]

Always good to check.

Especially in there might be a chance to start an argument right,??

I don't know the figures, but I think I read recently that Spain comes out above us in life satisfaction.

Couldn't say for 'lifespan' some fairly straightforward research should do it though .

Sorry, if my differing opinion is deemed an argument.

I used lifespan as a measure of healthcare effectiveness, you said it was a crude measure (I agree), and brought "life style" and "life satisfaction" into the argument(?)/discussion.

I simply asked, if you felt the three countries, I had indicated had higher lifespan/life expectancy than UK, also had superior quality of life and life satisfaction, in your opinion.

You replied to say:

"Aiui the Spanish come out much higher than us for 'quality of life, and life satisfaction' overall."

Which, I would have no problem agreeing with.

Would it seem reasonable, therefore, to ask "how does the Spanish Healthcare work, and how is it funded?", we might, actually learn something, from our European cousins. A similar view could be taken for the other two countries I mentioned (Japan and France). there are, more countries with greater lifespan/life expectancy than UK, some of which, possibly, enjoy better quality of life and life satisfaction.

 

[mudsticks]

Sorry, if my differing opinion is deemed an argument.

I used lifespan as a measure of healthcare effectiveness, you said it was a crude measure (I agree), and brought "life style" and "life satisfaction" into the argument(?)/discussion.

I simply asked, if you felt the three countries, I had indicated had higher lifespan/life expectancy than UK, also had superior quality of life and life satisfaction, in your opinion.

That wasn't what I said about 'differing opinion' we seem to be roughly on the same page vis a vis life expectancy and life quality.

It was more what seemed to be your deliberate misunderstanding of my point in the first place, as if to be provocative

But no matter

I don't know much about Japan having never visited, but I understand they have a lot of issues around overwork, presenteeism, and even a fairly high suicide rate

But I understand diet and exercise wise, and seeing the value of spending time in nature they score more highly.

Spain I know better, and there are elements of the diet, and general attitude to life, emphasis on community and family life, etc which apparently score highly.


Nowhere is without its particular troubles of course.

 

[BoldonLad]

That wasn't what I said about 'differing opinion' we seem to be roughly on the same page vis a vis life expectancy and life quality.

It was more what seemed to be your deliberate misunderstanding of my point in the first place, as if to be provocative

But no matter

I don't know much about Japan having never visited, but I understand they have a lot of issues around overwork, presenteeism, and even a fairly high suicide rate

But I understand diet and exercise wise, and seeing the value of spending time in nature they score more highly.

Spain I know better, and there are elements of the diet, and general attitude to life, emphasis on community and family life, etc which apparently score highly.


Nowhere is without its particular troubles of course.

I have no personal experience of Japan either.

Spain (and France) I have visited extensively, even lived in Spain for a while, and, "enjoyed" experience of their health service (to me, it seemed very similar to NHS, lots of waiting, but, my one experience is hardly statistically significant).

Certainly, my experience of both Countries is that quality of life is superior to UK. It is only my typical British lack of language skills, plus a few family commitments (and now of course the triumph which is Brexit) which causes me to be living in UK.

 

[Craig the cyclist]

Step away from the keyboard for a while and do some thinking. I find it helps when I disappear down the BS sewers.

How do we have a society without a group of people to ensure the law is held up? Remember, he and claud are saying we should get rid of the police.

 

[icowden]

Various state ownership models exist and not all require week by week meddling by politicians. Channel 4 is a topical example that springs to mind. There’s a charter, a regulator, and competent management as far as I can see. Why can’t electricity distribution or railways be run in a similar way?

Very true. But I also suspect that Politicans (until now anyway) haven't been that interested in Channel 4 as a "vote winner". The health service is constantly being "reformed" and meddled with. Changes tend to last as long as whichever government is in power. Even the much lambasted National Project for IT was in the end somewhat successful in that it moved community and mental health Trusts onto electronic patient records and onto a system where records could be viewed across the country. So of course the Government ended it and forced all the Trusts to go into their own negotiations for replacement, taking them all multiple steps backwards with the net result that Trusts have then developed IT systems to try and share data between themselves - just to get back to what they had previously. Add to that duplicitous vendors and poor quality software and you see where a lot of the money goes.