People come and people go

People in the UK when they are ill are forced to A&E because they cannot get an appointment with their overworked doctor. A&E cannot cope because of an ever increasing population. No one checks who is entitled to NHS treatment and the world turns up for free. Patients cannot be discharged because there is no provision for social care due to savage cuts in every related secondary service, top that with a health secretary who is the most arrogant, incompetent, obnoxious creature imaginable and things start to become clear. Tories don’t give a stuff about the health service, they invented the two tier health service so they can always get treated with their private health policies, no doubt funded by the taxpayer. There will always be an ambulance available to rush a politician to their private hospital staffed by doctors and consultants who have been trained at the taxpayers expense and then go to work in the private sector.

Have to agree with John P & Bill. Her Grace spent most of her career with the NHS & these days despairs at what is happening.
isn’t it the very same “health secretary who is the most arrogant, incompetent, obnoxious creature imaginable” who recently in a different incarnation, singlehandedly almost destroyed the Education system. or is my memory fading

Mr Gove had a hand in the education system. But anyway the answer is quite obvious, people need to pay more into the system, more cottage hospitals need to be built, more staff need to be trained.

It costs 300 million a day to run the NHS, the UK net after you take everything out, pays 7 billion into the EU pot, that’s enough to run the NHS for 23 days, so realistically 7 billion is nowhere near enough to cover what’s needed, especially if the NHS is underfunded by 18 billion. So its a case of dramatically increase GDP which in turn increases tax revenues, or people contribute more, or a system similar to France. It costs 90 billion a year to pay the state pension, increasing every year as people live longer. Doesn’t look to me to be the best time to think about cutting loose from your biggest market and heading off into the unknown.

Well done Jackie, your mum was lucky to have you there 

Back in the good old days, they used to mothball empty wards, keep them furnished, clean and tidy, just incase they were ever needed. Various  governments cut back on funding, and first things to go were cottage hospitals, convalescent units, maternity units, mental units, followed by state owned old folks homes. In France, most of the healthcare is private, affiliated to the state, a lot of doctors are self employed, a lot of consultants are self employed, quite a few district nurses are self employed. The average country GP turns over eight grand a month, pays for their own surgery and other running costs, so its understandable why quite a few ship across the channel. System here is set up to produce enough doctors, not too many or too few, enough, training places are always full. Problem now is docs don’t want the call me anytime country doc life, they want the work in a health centre normal hours life, hence the recruitment problem in rural areas. I have had a bit of experience over here with A&E and its exactly the same as in the UK, full of old folks with the odd younger patient.

Folk on here seem to spend an inordinate amount of time denigrating the NHS when they left the UK years ago and most say that they never want to return there anyway. Having had recourse to both systems nowadays they are much of a muchness.

@Eranu not having used the system here I’ve nothing to compare

Good for you Jackie! I’m not posting to get into conversation about NHS V French health system (we live here and are pleased with the system is all I want to say) but to say good for you for sticking to your guns, a principle I uphold whenever one is faced with a situation such as you were. I would fight to the end to make a loved one comfortable and dignified if I thought they weren’t given the opportunity to be so when they could be – all power to your elbow!

I know JP   APOLOGIES

My fault,

It seems it’s not all about dosh in the UK, as Bo says, staffing the new facilities seems to be a prob too, when I was a teen, there was a large nursing school, (which I used to frequent ), in our town, it’s gone

No not exactly, French health system costs 18 billion more and is up with the worlds best, no idea where the UK falls, will google it. Googled it and actually I am wrong, according to the world health organization, France does indeed have the worlds best healthcare system, the UK sits at eighteenth.