Comments by "Helen Trope" (@heliotropezzz333) on "How The United Kingdom's Health-Care System Works" video.

  1. This government is a bunch of liars though. Can't rely on what they say.
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  2. You have to understand that the UK is always 'having a debate over how to reform the NHS' which is code for The Tories don't really approve of it and want to privatise by stealth (slowly and gradually) because they know any suggestion of privatisation of the NHS is a vote loser. The Labour Party does support the NHS so tries to undo Tory damage any time it's in power. The term 'socialised medicine' is not used in the UK. Only Americans use that term. I think they use it as a way of trying to create aversion to the idea of universal healthcare, free at the point of delivery, because the word socialist or socialised is not a popular term in the USA and creates a sense of fear. The Tories tend to allow waiting lists for non urgent NHS operations etc to grow because it incentivises people to turn to private healthcare in order to skip those waiting lists. The Labour Party, when in government, tries to bring waiting lists down in the NHS. During the period of Covid, private hospitals have often been contracted to do some non Covid NHS work, paid for by NHS funds, because it's not possible to expand NHS staff numbers quickly, because of how long it takes to train doctors and nurses, and because of Tory government unwillingness to fund expansion of those numbers. The Tories would rather the balance of extra work is taken on by the Private Sector.
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  3. The British never refer to the NHS as 'socialized medicine'. That's very much a US term. Private Healthcare in the UK relies on staff whose training has been paid for by the NHS. Also if anything goes wrong with private healthcare, the patient will be transferred to the NHS because Private Hospitals don't have Accident and Emergency Departments. The NHS tends to be a political football with various governments having different beliefs and political stances on it and it has been subjected to many 'reforms', often for political reasons, which can be expensive. This is sometimes reflected in the length of 'waiting lists' for non urgent operations for instance. Under the last Labour government (ending 2010) the NHS had the shortest ever waiting lists and the highest satisfaction survey results. When the Conservatives came to power they abolished a number of treatment targets, and for a number of years gave NHS staff no pay increases, not even to keep up with inflation, and staff vacancies and waiting lists grew. Funding was also tightly restricted during the times of 'austerity'. The Conservatives have usually favoured private medicine and privatisation of the NHS (The Conservative Health Secretary for many years after 2010 was Jeremy Hunt and he had written a paper on privatising the NHS before being appointed). The Conservative government spent £3billion on a 'reform' that created many quangos, all to push for many NHS services to be put out to contract so private providers could get an increasing share of the pie. In the current Coronavirus crisis, the government would have been lost without a national service that can rapidly pull together and co-ordinate its response but the underfunding of the service over a decade has come back to bite the government. I hope that's a lesson learned.
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