Funding the NHS .....

[TheOstrich]

….. at the expense of schools, police, social work, and most worryingly defence.

Is it not time we shot this sacred cow? There must be a billion and one ways we can cut the NHS budget, not increase it. Cut out all the obsessive lecturing over lifestyles, for starters …...

[Suff]

You have not even begun to scratch the tip of it Ossie.

Personal care budgets anyone? Just imagine how much that costs to administrate!!

However someone in the May camp is a political strategist at least. We already know the black hole in the EU funding comes to £260m per day. This is the EU figure they are asking for the rest of the EU27 to fund. So clearly it is a true state of affairs. What is now clear is that the Government had no intention of using that windfall on the NHS, no matter the promises on the side of a bus.

However, with one single stroke, May has made this about Leaving the EU and funding the NHS or staying in the EU/single market and NOT funding the NHS....

Excellent. More like that please!

[cromwell]

I suppose all of us have had experience of the NHS. Mostly good I hope.
I do know what you are getting at though Os. It seems to be politically and socially unacceptable to say anything against it.
I have no idea how to reform the NHS but I do wish they could fix the waste problem and I don't know how long you can fund unlimited demand from finite resources.

[Workingman]

We already know the black hole in the EU funding comes to £260m per day.

Really - £260 million per day? Are you absolutely 100% sure? It's not just a number, is it? Got a reference?

£95 trillion every year... wow, that's some big black hole when the annual global economy is "only" £55 trillion.

Not that it matters, the EU has sod all to do with how the UK funds the NHS, it is wholly down to the UK.

Ossie, I disagree that we have to shoot the sacred cow, but we have to control what we feed it. We have to get rid of a raft of unnecessary management and get some meaningful control on the procurement of everything from drugs to toilet rolls. Getting rid of the duplication created by "Trusts" in the internal market might also not be a bad idea.

Promising more money might be a good and popular soundbite, but it does not solve the issues.

[Suff]

We already know the black hole in the EU funding comes to £260m per day.

Really - £260 million per day? Are you absolutely 100% sure? It's not just a number, is it? Got a reference?

£95 trillion every year... wow, that's some big black hole when the annual global economy is "only" £55 trillion.

Not that it matters, the EU has sod all to do with how the UK funds the NHS, it is wholly down to the UK.

Ossie, I disagree that we have to shoot the sacred cow, but we have to control what we feed it. We have to get rid of a raft of unnecessary management and get some meaningful control on the procurement of everything from drugs to toilet rolls. Getting rid of the duplication created by "Trusts" in the internal market might also not be a bad idea.

Promising more money might be a good and popular soundbite, but it does not solve the issues.

Yeah, yeah, I meant per week. Silly me.

As for the EU having sod all to do with the NHS funds that is totally untrue. We pay £260M, per week, to the EU,DIRECT, this is totally without indirect or the costs of administrating the EU bureaucracy. That millstone round our necks impact everything we fund in Government.

That is not OUR figure or your massaged figures or some think tank figures. That is the bare stark truth that the EU budget arrangers have had to go and request from the EU27 to fill the damned great big black hole left by the UK leaving. This is not myth or wishism, this is hard FACT.

The other reality of the matter is that the government did not want to throw this windfall down the ever increasing black hole of the NHS. They wanted to use it for something useful like trade deals with other countries to increase our economy so we had a sustainable way to throw money down that black hole.

But the whole political well is so badly poisoned by Brexit that they had to feed some of that poison back to the poisoners. Now they are faced with a stark alternative. Get behind Brexit or say they don't want to fund the NHS. Expect that message to be reiterated over time.