//

The NHS serves millions of people every day. Because it also deals with us at critical times in our lives, its failures have a drastic impact. But for many of us, every day some medicine, or piece of equipment keeps us going and will do for the rest of our lives, long after our money runs down or out.

What happened to the mother was disgusting, but older people with dementia should not be in hospitals. She should have been in a nursing home. Hospitals should be for fixing people. Families have to get to know the system and lobby effectively to make the right thing happen. Even then some nursing homes (many of which are private) fail.

I agree with Jeanie, the bad things need fixing not scrapping.Scrap it and private fees would soar because it would remove the main (free-ish) competition.

I’d hate the NHS to be run by some of the plumbers, lawyers, bankers (personal and institutional) and telesales people who have blighted my experiences. And the profit motive doesn’t offer the kind of stability long-term health care needs – look at the care homes that shut as soon as there was more money to be made from asylum hostels.

In the scale of everything the NHS does every day, scrapping it for the current failure rate would be like shooting yourself dead for the things you could have done better as a parent so that your kids could do better adopted.

And yes, I could probably think of a few too, but as a general policy, it’s unworkable.

♫ When you’re sad and feeling blue
With nothing better to do
Don’t just sit there feeling stressed
Take a trip on the National Express ♫

@mrs_teapot wrote:

well all we can do is react to stories that are reported….its not good enough to say oh as a society we should change our values, the need for care is now.

How many times have we been told problems have been solved… if it is that dementia cases should not be in hospitals ok… but the fact is they are… we have to deal with things as they are today and right now people are in hospitals suffering from little or no care…

OK keep what is good about the NHS…. if there is excellence keep it… but where it is proved there is no care and its not fit for purpose…. I say enough is enough…. we need an alternate service NOW and unfortunately the NHS has had enough chances to get it right.

If we only respond to what gets reported, and it’s always the bad news that’s reported we’ll end up scrapping everything. When the Christmas and New Year babies are reported in the papers, no one says “and mother and baby got first class care in an NHS hospital” they’re only mentioned if there’s a problem.

The NHS is a principle of finance rather than an entity, it has been run by successive governments with greater or lesser success, but never without problems because even if it ran perfectly, the bloomin patients can be a contrary bunch.

Overall it is a success. Many of the larger voices against it either have a political principle against state ownership or a vested interest in the money to be gained from health care. We have alternatives to the NHS, they are expensive and limited and the NHS tends to pick up the pieces when they drop them.

Long Live the NHS! (at least as long as I do anyway)

Blimey Mrs T!

I’m not a soothsayer, even though I do think nice words are much better than nasty ones.

We are on the same side as far as wanting sick older people to be well cared for, but I can’t offer any more guarantees than you can.

I hope that if either of us gets a chance to influence things for the better, we step up to the mark and play our part.