A BBC report, Patients going ‘private’ on NHS by Nick Triggle, says:
Thousands of patients a month in England are using a government reform to get what is effectively private treatment paid for by the taxpayer.
Patients have the right to opt for any NHS hospital or private unit that can offer the care at NHS cost.
In little over 12 months, the number opting for private hospitals has risen 10-fold to over 3,500 a month.
This story caught the attention of Tom Bowman at the Adam Smith Institute blog, who writes
You might think that everyone would consider this a good thing, but unfortunately you would be wrong. Just read the BBC article I linked to above, the implicitly negative slant jumps off the page every bit as much as the organization’s left-wing bias. Take the first paragraph as an example: “Thousands of patients a month in England are using a government reform to get what is effectively private treatment paid for by the taxpayer.”
Couldn’t they just have said, “Thousands of English patients are now getting better treatment at no additional cost to the taxpayer”, instead?
That would be an equally valid statement of the facts. The question of why the BBC couldn’t just – and just couldn’t – have said it is an interesting one, covered elsewhere on this blog.
However there is an even worse example of bias in the next sentence from Mr Triggle:
Doctors said patients needed to think carefully as vital NHS money was being lost to private health providers.
Emphasis added. I note this partly in obedience to the necessary convention that quotes are not doctored without warning, partly because it helps the reader better amuse him or herself when repeating these words in a voice modelled on that of an awestruck student nurse rebuking a recalcitrant patient in Carry On Nurse.
Socialists talk about fairness and compassion as if they are in favour of these virtues. But their words are shown to be false in examples like these. Rather than have compassion for 3,500 people a month in this example, they prefer these people to a) not have their treatment b) to experience delays or c) to receive worse treatment in one of their NHS hospitals.
Equality is all that matters. It even takes precedence over having a life saving operation.
As an example of a) above, I know someone who was told after an operation she needed a scan, and she would be sent a letter for an appointment. No letter. When you ring, no answer, just an answer machine. Takes weeks to get through.
Another occassion – wait 6 months for a scan, then they lose the results.
‘Oh there is a great demand for the scanner, you have to wait’
– Well why not operate it in the evening then?
Why is it whenever the word ‘NHS’ is mentioned, the BBC has to get someone to say ‘the envy of the world’ which it obviously is not? If it were, another country would have copied it by now, but none has.
We are all suffering the NHS because the establishment loves its socialist principles more than the need to provide health care for all. The NHS is its greatest achievement and it could not bear to see it go.
Other European countries have far better systems and do not experience delays with basic treatment – why not copy one of their systems?
Why does the BBC never make documentaries critical of the NHS? No investigative reporting there.
The socialists really are cruel and nasty people.
And why can’t they sack heartless and lazy nurses?
I went up to the reception desk in an NHS hospital. There were four nurses talking about their social lives. They knew I was standing there but they deliberately did not look at me and just carried on talking.
We need the matrons from the Carry On films back in charge – with the power to sack the lazy and ignorant nurses.
one would think that Al Beeb and the NHS were grateful when ppl go abroad for treatment at taxpayer expense,, dosnt that equate to less MRSA?
most other countries in Europe have opted for a combination of private health insurance and tax funded health care —they have avoided PFI’s and other long term loans. French and German doctors are a lot less well paid and in France you pay the doctor up front + claim it back via insurance. Of course this level of self reliance is far too complicated for numpty UK
You really are a miserable, cynical gang of shy**ers and c**ts. Don’t you realise that our wonderful, wonderful socialist Leaders are attempting to emulate the Utopian healthcare system put in place in socialist Cuba by that great humanitarian, Fidel Castro? What was it that John Keats said about Cuba’s healthcare system?
Oh yes, I remember it well: ”A thing of beauty is a joy forever.” It takes time, you miserable shower, to achieve absolute perfection (in the NHS) as in Cuba, but rest assured that our wonderful Leaders will achieve it in the end. In that day, when it happens, as it surely will, hospitals will be a veritable paradise. Patients will beg to be ill;
patients will beg to have MRSA in order to rekindle fond memories of the past. You see, you ungrateful mob, patients only need to have patience!!! It really is that simple. Our glorious Leaders cannot achieve perfection immediately. Remember: ”The impossible we do at once, miracles take a little longer.” I find that my eyes are misting over thinking about the socialist paradise that our politicians are fast creating. I wish I were as intelligent as they are. One can only gasp in awe and amazement at these paragons. Are they just ordinary humans like us lesser mortals, I ask myself, or are they like the demi-gods of yore? Clearly the latter.
Here are some links to a vision of the future NHS system, courtesy of our lovely, lovely New Labour politicians:
http://therealcuba.com/Page10.htm
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=25…h? v=25_RgM1jHeo
http://www.realclearpolitics.com…uba_has_better_
health_care_th.html
Sorry. Some of the links I posted (about Cuba’s healthcare for the ordinary Cuban) don’t work (for some reason). Here are some more links. Being squeamish, I wasn’t able to watch them all the way through.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=TD7mLp9j-3k
http://richardgarnerlib.blogspot.com/2007/11/really-real-sicko.html
“Doctors said patients needed to think carefully as vital NHS money was being lost to private health providers.”
Since the cost of the private alternative has to be equal or less than the cost to the NHS, these patients are actually saving the NHS money. Are these doctors innumerate or are they promoting their own interests over those of their patients?
In his article, Nick Triggle refers to a “lower rate of hospital infections” in private hospitals. Isn’t that a good thing? Anyway, I was under the impression that infections such as MRSA are zero in private hospitals. Wouldn’t the British Brainwashing Corporation (piss be upon it) trumpet any observed major infections caused by insanitary conditions in private hospitals? Their silence is deafening on this issue.
got to AGREE TOTALLY with these posts.
My wife works in the NHS, bank staff doing nights [£12-20 per hour] go to sleep on there night shifts and have a rota system to see who gets first break. They go to sleep in beds wheeled into cleaning cupboards etc
Not made up.
Also the pervasive PC attitude is outrageous, where people will use race/sexuality to basically avoid disciplinary matters.
To hell in a handcart stuff.
Agree with the comment about the cabal of nurses- i experienced the same when visiting my mother in law who had fell out of bed after an op – i basically had to say “do you lot do anything other than eat sweets and gossip?”
Because thats all they did for 2 hours whilst i was there.
You couldnt make it up.
Okay — now the BBC has a history of claiming that they have to offer salaries and benefits commensurate with other broadcasters to get the best talent.
So are we meant to believe that this doesn’t include PRIVATE HEALTHCARE?
Now you won’t find any mention of that little goody on the BBC Jobs webpages.
However checking out the Guardian jobs, I was struck by this job.
BBC Head of Media
Westminster, London SW1 – Senior competitive package.
A senior “competitive package.
Okay — they would be competing with Sky, I assume?
So what type of package would Sky offer. From the same Guardian:
Chief Sub Editor – Sky Showbiz Online
Based in Brentford, West London. As a valued employee of Sky you will benefit from Free Sky + and broadband, pension, private health care and share save schemes with access to a range of discounts including dental, holidays, mobile phones, magazines and DVDs.
Now the BBC is very careful not to mention “private haethcare” in its job benefits. Too careful, I’m guessing. I’m also guessing that the head of BBC News gets it.
As do the all senior journalists. Including the amusingly named “Nick Tiggle.”
So I’m also guessing, that, as usual, the Institutionally Leftist BBC, has this message for the plebs: do as we say, not as we do…
It is disingenouous to complain the money is badly needed in the local NHS and is leaking out of the circle of State-owned providers, because patients are being give free choice, and have chosen not to have their money spent with the NHS.Its like being told you must eat at a crap restaurant because it needs the money. Actually it’s called choice and competition, two words that send a shiver down all socialist and public sector thinkers.
The funding is still all public, so its not “privatisation” – its just the state thats paying is rightly indifferent as to who its paying to provide treatment, provided it is of appropriate quality.
Private hospitals offer in most cases single rooms or small wards, and don’t have to also house the hundreds of thousands of mostly medical elderly patients who catch and spread MRSA and C Diff in NHS hospitals. For simple operations I know which I would choose. The BBC and NHS monopolists would rather not let me.
If a private company is getting taxpayers money, it is not a private company. It is, to put it bluntly, a welfare claimant screwing the taxpayer.
A bit like when the Tories privatised the railways but still pumped taxpayers money into the shitty private companies, which ends up costing more than they did when the state did it directly.
If private comapnies are so wonderful, then why not privatise the military?
If private comapnies are so wonderful, then why not privatise the military?
Zevilyn | 06.12.08 – 5:38 pm | #
What a dummy,
Zevilin: “If a private company is getting taxpayers money, it is not a private company”
Its not “getting taxpayers money” -is producing a service (patient treatment) which it sells to the government and which the government buys from them, just like it buys drugs from drug manufacturers who are private companies, Scanners and equipment and much else beside. It doesn’t have to buy from only “NHS Trusts”
There is a lot of ideological baggage when it comes to health care. A lot of it is not much different from plumbing and carpentry with B&B services attached.
Taxpayers money being given to private companies often leads to the taxpayer paying for services TWICE.
IMHO There is no difference between state and private; they are, as public transport has proved beyond doubt, both rubbish in their own “special” ways.
Private companies in other countries run public transport WITHOUT government subsidy, yet the welfare claiming numpties who run UK transport companies can’t, because they are incompetent, so the government stupidly subsidises them.
Giving companies taxpayers money (Corporate Welfare) has the same effect as giving people welfare benefits.
“Taxpayers money being given to private companies often leads to the taxpayer paying for services TWICE.”
The moon is made of BLUE cheese.
See, I can talk drivel too.
“Zevilyn: Taxpayers money being given to private companies often leads to the taxpayer paying for services TWICE.”
There is a national tarrif under which everyone who provides NHS patient with service gets paid according to procedure
http://tinyurl.com/47q9xq
The rubbish arrangements agreed with train operating companies bear no relation to the NHS, which in a fog of public ignorance has done what should be done to free-up the stranglehold of nationalised politically-run organisations called “NHS hospitals”.
Ironically, this is the right direction of travel to get away from health as a Nationalised Industry in bed with the doctors unions.
David A
For reasons of apathy I don’t know whether your links reiterate the fact that Fidel Castro’s healthcare recently was private and specially commissioned. But let me state that Castro’s “vision” became shattered when his own ill health came to the fore.
He shunned this supposedly world benchmark care system (according to dazed left wingers) for doctors and nurses recommended to him privately. And he paid them out of the country’s pot, just for him. Not very ‘Communist’ really.
I have not heard this reported on the BBC however and, as such, am dubious of its integrity. The BBC, as the BBC tells us, is another ‘envy of the world’. Its voracious appetite for impartial reporting has, so far, not deemed this story newsworthy, either on its website or its broadcast media.
So no-one who watches the BBC as their main source of news gets to hear about it.
A genuine oversight I’m sure.
I agree with some things that Zevilyn says about private companies/public money it could be very incestuous. For instance alot of these consultants and agencys that the government uses are run by ex public servants who got good pay offs to leave the civil service then immediatly set up the same job in the ‘prvate sector’ – only customer ‘the Government’! The only way capitalism can work properly is if there is competition so whoever pays has a choice.
As for privatising the army it might be a good idea except they could be paid for by the highest bidder such as until recently the USA but now Saudi Arabia- come to think of it maybe they are privatised!
I can afford private medical treatment and I don’t mind paying for the NHS. I can afford private TV but I hate paying for the BBC.
The BBC is trash. I don’t want to buy it for others any more than I’d want to buy them their cigarettes or strong cider.
Ross:
Thanks for that interesting information about Castro and Cuban healthcare. It seems that, surprise, surprise, the top dogs get the best treatment and Joe public gets appalling treatment. Some of those YouTube videos are quite shocking.
In Britain, public sector systems, including the NHS, always seem to end up with more chiefs than indians. Perhaps it’s more a case of Parkinson’s Law in action rather than anything intentional; administrators multiply according to Parkinson’s Law irrespective of the amount of work that they actually do. If memory serves correctly, some time ago, I read that there are slightly more administrators in the NHS than doctors and nurses. The chiefs proliferate like rabbits as it were and efficiency suffers as a consequence: they make problems for each other. In private healthcare I think the proportions are one chief to six indians. Obviously, a good administrator is an asset in any organisation, whether public or private.
The NHS is great if you are lucky in your choice of hospital. If you aren’t then it isn’t so great.
The NHS did their best to kill me, but failed, in the aftermath of a serious road accident.
It was a comedy of errors from beginning to end, starting with an incompetant ambulance crew and ending with me discharging myself against medical advice.
In the meantime I was left to bleed to death on a trolley for an hour and a half( which I didn’t because I pinched the bleed off myself, anyone unfamiliar with battlefield medicine would be dead now ), physically addicted to morphine thanks to a malfunctioning drip and then given cold turkey as a solution, put through neglect and what I can only describe as low grade torture after I complained.
The ward was filthy, the state of the toilets was Cuban and the night staff arrived with a curry and then went to sleep for the rest of their shift, ignoring any calls.
My care only improved after my missis told the staff that she wouldn’t be complaining through the proper channels, she would be taking direct physical retribution against the cruel and the lazy. Like knocking them the fuck out.
My operations were bodged and I was left unable to walk.
My GP, who is a good guy, got me referred to a different hospital who belatedly fixed me up. I finally got mended by the surgeon who repairs Prince Charles’s when he falls off his polo pony. Such is the nature of the NHS lottery.
They say patients fall in love with their nurses – I was left wanting to hunt most of them down and extract their teeth with a pair of rusty pliers. Thankfully I couldn’t walk for the next 2 years, allowing my rage to subside.
My story isn’t that unusual. Our local hospital is famous for killing people.
It’ll never be told on the Beeb though.
HSLD
Your story is quite horrifying. My (late) father was infected with MRSA in an NHS hospital. Fortunately he recovered from the MRSA. The treatment he received in the NHS hospital after contracting MRSA was excellent; just a pity that he got it there in the first place…
It is indeed a lottery. Do you happen to know the results of the Government’s “Operation Deep Clean”? Was it successful, do you know? Was it just another Government ‘initiative’?
I would highly recommend James Bartholomew’s book, “The Welfare State We’re In”. This gives a careful and thoughtful dissection of our current welfare state and argues that, counter-intuitive though it may seem, the welfare state has actually been the cause of many of our woes. One of the chapters in the book is entitled “The NHS: Like a Train Crash Every Day”. James Bartholomew includes many relevant quotes throughout the book. Here’s a quote about the managers [chiefs] in one hospital:
“An estimated thirty-five managers meet fortnightly at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital to monitor the ‘four-hour trolley waits’. Meanwhile there is usually one casualty doctor [indian, figuratively, not necessarily literally!] at night.”
To HSLD: Just to say your piece above is very powerful.
Same applies to many of the other postings above.
Jack Bauer: excellent points about who gets private healthcare. If ‘important people’ in the BBC and politics who love the NHS had to actually use it, they would have their eyes opened. For most people, though not all, actual personal experience can be more powerful that theory.
I remember some agony aunt (Claire Raynor?) who loved the NHS trying to justify why she went private.
As for the army being privatised – not necessary, as the army already has the best people in the uk working in it, and it has patriotism and professionalism as motives to make it operate effectively in place of profit.
If you were to swap, say, an army regiment with all the Labour council employees where I live, and sent the council employees off to war, it would take them two years to arrive at the war zone, then they would probably blow themselves up whilst carrying out a health and safety check on their weapons.
Agreeing with what pmjk says above, private being better is not a black and white issue – eg rip-offs from banks, insurance companies, energy companies, etc although who knows what they would be like nationalised; and I would never rent privately again after several bad experiences in private accommodation, including finding all my private things had been sold by the new owner of some storage rooms – police not interested – at least you would not get that situation with the council.
“If you were to swap, say, an army regiment with all the Labour council employees where I live, and sent the council employees off to war, it would take them two years to arrive at the war zone, then they would probably blow themselves up whilst carrying out a health and safety check on their weapons.”
OMG – I haven’t laughed so much for a long time. As an ex-soldier I think that would be a fantastic thing ro do, and army engineers would soon sort out your infrastructure – and it would be done properly.
Thanks for the laugh.
i once went into an nhs hospital with a niece of mine.. drove her and her dad to the hospital.
she had third degree burns , because, as a toddler she had managed to step up on a stool , while dad was peeling veg, and wondered what that rather attractive blue gas light was coming from the cooker was. i was chatting to dad in the kitchen when it happened.
split second is all it takes – big mistake on our parts..
trouble was, the entire side of her hand was burned – and very severely.
so i go into the A&E of the local “best in the world NHS” , and told to take my line in a queue. what the fuck?
a queue of about 50 people on a saturday night.
my niece was 3 years old. and i dont think 3 year old and burns go well together – needless to say , i lost my rag with the “NHS world class” idiot nurses on reception.
got to see a burns specialist in about 1 minute.
NHS – darwin, law of the jungle treatment. the more you shout , the better treatment you get.
fuck – i pity the fuckers that are naturally meek and dont want to cause trouble.
Ellacar | 07.12.08 – 11:43 pm | #
theres an idea – only ex-army guys can run for the local council.
yes , its a bit fascist.. but our local democracy seems to have turned into fascism anyway..
and i think ex-army guys would have a better sense of duty to the community as well..just a thought.
HSLD | 07.12.08 – 3:28 am
socialism never works. your post has just added to that theory.
thanks. albeit , i am open mouthed at the horror of it.
Thanks, Natalie, this has got to be one of the all time BBC classics.
The military are one profession that always attracts respect and admiration, because they represent the best characteristics of the British, and they have the best people working for them.
Only the left hate them, because they represent the worst characteristics of the British people and have the worst people working for them.
When most people see a soldier in uniform they think “Well done, great profession, great job done, congratulations, I admire you”.
When they see someone from the local council, do people think, “Well done, you have dedicated your life to making this a better place to live”?
When they see someone who is an NHS administrator would anyone say, “Well done, your skillful and necessary administration is helping the NHS to run smoothly and maintain its position as the envy of the world.
I don’t need to park near casualty when I visit. I can see why you need a parking space there in the day, and I am sure there is a good administrative reason why you need it at night when you are not here.
This thing about the NHS having more administrators than nurses and doctors always makes me laugh as its a bit of disinformation put about by the way statistics are collected by the Department of Health (managed by to HMG LabGov.) They include with the “administrators” (hated bosses, bureaucrats, men with clipboards)all the clinic receptionists, outpatient clerical staff, medical secretaries, switchboard operators and all many tuppence h’appeny non-medical staff that enable the hospital to function.
Its called “news management” – fostering the myth. As long as the public keep blaming the “hospital bosses” they won’t know enough to blame – the Government who is really responsible. Same way they want you to blame “bankers” or any other convenient target of Class Envy.
I have read elsewhere for every British soldier pointing a rifle at an enemy, there are nineteen non-soldiers in the army, making sure he has a rifle, is in the right country, knows who to aim it at, has been fed that day, is being paid, has been trained, and so on.
You are being played by these statistics-lite.
On MRSA/ deep clean, its incredibly difficult to know if its improving as it depends on the veracity of the data, which as every manager knows it doesn’t pay to be too truthful but woe betide you being found out lying. The problem is a lot of patients are already infected prior to admission. They don’t catch it in hospital. You have to be able to know that the symptoms of infection occured at least 48 hours AFTER admission. Large numbers of elderly patients are admitted to hospital with infection contracted within their nursing home environment and it has nothing to do with “filthy hospitals”
Yawn – too much information…
When I was at the original hospital, the one which made repeated attempts on my life, a little man with a clipboard arrived and started swabbing various surfaces and placing the swabs in glass vials.
I asked him what he was doing ( I knew damn well, I just wondered what his response would be ) and got a load of contempt off him. What a horrid little worm he was.
There was an old guy in the bed opposite me who was very posh and delightful to talk to when he was rational, which was about 50% of the time. The other 50% he spent raving like a mental patient because he was dehydrated ( why he didn’t feel the need to drink I don’t know, I’m not a doctor ) and the nurses couldn’t care less.
His episodes always happened at night when the staff were chomping curry or bedded down.
He kept the whole ward awake.
His family visited in the afternoon and were completely unaware of his state ( until my missis took them to one side and told them )
That put the cat amongst the pigeons and earned me an afternoon without a piss bottle, I presume in the hope I would wet myself.
That was when my missis finally lost her patience and quietly told the fat arsed ward sister that whatever happened to me would be happening to her, but twice as bad.
My missis was a full contact kickboxer and takes no shit whatsoever from anyone. Get on her wrong side and she’ll light you up, god bless her.
The other hospital which finally fixed my legs wasn’t just better, it was like being in a totally different system. They had pride in what they did and were proud of their reputation. That’s got to be down to leadership in my opinion. At the other place no-one gave a shit.
I can walk OK nowadays, but I sometimes wish we weren’t so programmed with the ‘decent working class’ gene back then not to have sued the NHS over the way they fucked me up. I’d be driving an Aston Martin now, full of supermodels and cocaine 🙂
A question which will never be explored by the Beeb.
Message to the BBC – okay, you can deceive people over certain issues – eg the way we are being manoeuvered (how I remember how to spell manoeuver: MANure On the EU) into the EU by deceit – a bit at a time, that’s it… gently does it…
But what is the point of trying to deceive people over the NHS or education when everyone either uses it or knows someone who does? You just make yourselves look like Soviet communists with your propaganda messages.
Are patients who are waiting for treatment for months going to read the figures about short waiting times and think, ‘Well the government figures say I have not been waiting, so I must be mistaken, as it says so in black and white’?
I know more than one person who rang up to chase treatments and when they eventually get through they find they are not on the list. When they get put back on, I suspect the figures show a discharged patient followed by a new patient, thereby showing a shorter waiting time. Instead of one person waiting 12 months, you get two people waiting 6 months each – two for the price of one. And the beauty is, you don’t have to even do anything for the first one.
AndrewSouthLondon:
I just want to mention something about your point about genuine admin and useless admin being lumped together deliberately to fool us. I think the useless admin staff would make too much noise if they were separated from the useful admin staff. Imagine on your job description form, they would have to put: ‘please tick:’ Usefull admin or wasteful admin’.
Also some useless admin are not completey useless, for some jobs are 10% useful, others 65% useful.
It is just administratively impossible to distinguish as everyone would claim they were vital and even more necessary than the nurses and surgeons.
Also, someone has to organise the computer that the receptionist uses. It is a necessary job that admin has to do; it is just that it takes 20 of them to do it. So in that case it is just overstaffing and the tasks are genuine admin tasks.
It would just be too hard to decide what proportion of your job was useful- and who would get the job of deciding? Another layer of admin staff.
I believe the government really thought they could improve the NHS based on achieving targets. Basically they think if everyone has a job description and targets everything will work. Someone arrives, slots into that job position, and the system will work as long as the job description has been drawn up carefully enough.
What they do not realise is the only system that will work is giving power to the better people to run things. Let the matrons sack the bad nurses. Let her appoint a caring person who works hard and wants to care for people but might not be able to write the essay required to pass the exam.
Let her employ a cleaner and sack them if they are lazy.
Obviously none of these things are possible in socialist Britain.