The Uk Economy - The Truth

[oracle]

A lot of employees working and paying income taxes, a lot of employees to fund in retirement.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

QUITE.working and paying income taxes from the tax revenue made from other wealth-generating parts of the economy.

let's put things in perspective.

if an average punter is on 27k a year they pay about 5k in tax/NI per annum.

your typical chav(ONE) CONSUMES THE ENTIRE TAX TAKE FROM 4 AVERAGE EARNERS,

once you take dole,housing benefit,free council tax,free prescriptions,free dental etc etc.

...A LOT ISN'T IT??

funnily enough that's about the same amount as a public sector employee.

Anyone want to disagree that both of these sectors need a bit of a slim-down?

[Starcrossed]

I agree there is a lot of waste in public service but can we clarify the word 'productive'?

Does it just apply only to people that screw lids on toothpaste tubes and various investment bankers?

If we want to have a society that operates properly we need to expand this definition to include the people that enable that society to function. Teachers and all the rest of them. They are productive - just not in the simple way that manufacturing is.

I am not arguing that we don't have problems with macro-spending in this country. I agree that an economy driven by personal and government debt is obviously rotten to the core but let's just get away from lazy generalisations about public service.

I personally think that public service is an alternative to the McJobs that are only 'productive' to the corporation and perform no other function (apart from causing harm)

[Guest struthitsruth]

it certainly is BIG. thanks for enlightening me as to how so.

i've made my position clear - i.e that i support the front liners although i have less faith in the system at higher level.

so what do you make of it, clearly the scale of the public sector disturns you?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The scale of the NHS certainly disturbs me. It is a monster isn't it ?

One in forty people working in the UK are working for the NHS.

Our expectations have become ridiculous, that we can maintain this organisation at no charge to the consumer at the point of service - surely it doesn't add up ?

I believe it is time to face facts and explore the alternative models of healthcare service like the insurance based schemes Europe.

I would like to see consumers take more responsibility for healthcare, for example an initial consultation fee for a first visit to the GP - wouldn't the surgery waiting rooms be emptied on a Monday morning, and the missed appointments at surgeries and outpatients would dwindle. Perhaps £5 - less than the cost of a DVD, CD, holiday paperback . . . . . subsequent visits at the request of the GP could then continue at the taxpayers expense.

For me it isn't an issue of productivity at all.

The organisation has even grown since my earlier post : -

http://www.wcigroup.com/Normal/News+Room/A...th+Business.htm

Article by Duncan Cranmer published in Health Business May/June 2005

It is a well known fact that with over one million employees, the UK's NHS is the world's second largest employer after the Chinese People's Liberation Army.

I think the third largest is the Indian Railways !!

Not productivity, but affordability -

The NHS pensionable pay bill was around £23 billion in 2003, which accounts for almost half of NHS spending.

Isn't it time to get real ?

[Smell the Fear]

the figures come from the links shown.

http://www.nhsemployers.org/PayAndConditio...and_figures.asp

also -

http://www.nhsjobs.com/?fs9005=2644af790f5...dd3c29b0bf91e6e

"Working in the NHS

With over a million staff the National Health Service is the largest employer in Europe and has vacancies across the UK for nurses, doctors, physiotherapists, clinical scientists, administrators and support staff, plus a vast range of other allied health professionals and other specialist personnel.

In England the NHS is organised into Acute, Primary and Mental Health (often called Partnership) Trusts. In some areas Partnership Trusts have linked up with Social Services Departments to form Care Trusts. There is also a range of specialist and support organisations such as Strategic Health Authorities. In total there are over 600 separate organisations in England."

It's BIG  isn't it ?

A lot of employees working and paying income taxes, a lot of employees to fund in retirement.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

If you want healthcare, you have to pay for it. The alternative is a privatised system such as the US, where you pay for it through insurance to a private company rather than taxes. If you can't afford to pay, you get basic treatment, but anything expensive and you die.

Bear in mind that the US system costs considerably more per head than the NHS costs. You need to pay for the medical professionals, plus the insurance companies which themselves have massive overheads, plus profits for all of these corporations.

You may argue that those who can afford insurance get a better service, but I don't think it is that superior for what you pay combined with what a lot of people would regard as the social injustice of letting poor people die (particularly unjust in a society with increasingly low social mobility such as the US. If you are born poor, there is a high chance you will stay poor).

[Guest struthitsruth]

If you want healthcare, you have to pay for it. The alternative is a privatised system such as the US, where you pay for it through insurance to a private company rather than taxes. If you can't afford to pay, you get basic treatment, but anything expensive and you die.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The US is only one alternative isn't it ? There are European models that combine state support with private insurance.

It would be more honest to know that you are indeed getting what you pay for. Our present system is a lottery in which services will increasingly have to be rationed. Ask someone who has recently had to have dental work done - could they find an NHS dentist willing to do it ? Was private treatment the only choice ?

And I'm right in thinking that the US doesn't have health tourism does it ?

Does France ? Belgium ?

Where do people go to get free healthcare whether they have contributed to the scheme or not ?

There's only one place to go isn't there - good old NHS . . . . . .

As for "letting poor people die " well I'm not suggesting that there isn't a service to provide a safety net, or trauma and accident treatment. I am suggesting that the costs need to be looked at more closely. We've all been brought up to believe that our NHS is sacrosanct - I'm just saying think again !

[Smell the Fear]

The US is only one alternative isn't it ?  There are European models that combine state support with private insurance.

It would be more honest to know that you are indeed getting what you pay for.  Our present system is a lottery in which services will increasingly have to be rationed.  Ask someone who has recently had to have dental work done - could they find an NHS dentist willing to do it ?  Was private treatment the only choice ?

And I'm right in thinking that the US doesn't have health tourism does it ? 

Does France ?  Belgium ? 

Where do people go to get free healthcare whether they have contributed to the scheme or not ?

There's only one place to go isn't there - good old NHS . . . . . .

As for "letting poor people die "  well I'm not suggesting that there isn't a service to provide a safety net, or trauma and accident treatment.  I am suggesting that the costs need to be looked at more closely.  We've all been brought up to believe that our NHS is sacrosanct - I'm just saying think again !

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

You're right, but I'm sure many European countries spend more than we do.

I have no problem with change. Only with those posters who think that taxes should be cut to the bone and to hell with the consequences. The NHS is not bad in my opinion, and the alternatives are generally much more expensive.

[Guest wrongmove]

Bear in mind that the US system costs considerably more per head than the NHS costs.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

1 in 40 working in the NHS sounds reasonable to me. If we had zero healthcare in this country, we would free up 2.5% of the population. Unfortunately, we would also be back in the 1900's when life expectancy for any but the rich was forty-something.

So by employing 2.5% of the population, we double life expectancy, and are much more healthy while we are alive.

Or we could just go private and pay even more.

Edited September 16, 2005 by wrongmove

[BuyingBear]

1 in 40 working in the NHS sounds reasonable to me. If we had zero healthcare in this country, we would free up 2.5% of the population. Unfortunately, we would also be back in the 1900's when life expectancy for any but the rich was forty-something.

So by employing 2.5% of the population, we double life expectancy, and are much more healthy while we are alive.

Or we could just go private and pay even more.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Not quite as simple as that, life expectancy is so good today due to better housing (ha ha), clean water, sanitation and the lack of want for food, heating, clothing etc. Even the poorest man today has better life expectancy than the richest of men of a century ago.

Remember that the cures come from the labs of Glaxo and the Novartis, Pfizer's and universities of this world, they're only dispensed by the NHS, if they can afford to dispense them at all. This is where the contrast in the US system comes to light, they are on the cutting edge of new developments and pushing things forward but of course like our NHS that doesn't translate in the egalitarian bulk of treatment.

[Won'tGetFooledAgain]

I don't believe that the EU vision for the future of Europe will allow for the continuation of the NHS or any other nationally controlled enterprise.

Health provision in the UK is slowly being privatised such that there will be a separation from insurance scheme and the health businesses.

TB and GB can't admit it of course.

[farmerdring]

what are the real alternatives?

we could totally privatise the nhs, and then education and then the fire service.

but where do we draw the line? the police, the army!

there is no reason it couldn't work in theory and as far as welfare is concerned, if you cannot aford (means test) your own costs (insurance) then the state will pay it for you - eg as with the legal system.

seems to me we have two choices; we can keep it state owned not-for-profit but keep taking the enormous hit through continuous reform and red tape. or we can completely privatise it and provide state subsidy as with the legal system.

so what's it gonna be? which do you believe is more open to corruption, waste and profiteering (for my part, I honestly think it' a close run thing)

my gut instinct is to er with the status quo.

all in all, if a job needs doing, does it matter who does it provided it is done as efficiently as is reasonably possible?

some socialist policies have stood the test of time even with conservative governments. the nhs is one of them.

[Clouseau]

If you want healthcare, you have to pay for it. The alternative is a privatised system such as the US, where you pay for it through insurance to a private company rather than taxes. If you can't afford to pay, you get basic treatment, but anything expensive and you die.

Bear in mind that the US system costs considerably more per head than the NHS costs. You need to pay for the medical professionals, plus the insurance companies which themselves have massive overheads, plus profits for all of these corporations.

You may argue that those who can afford insurance get a better service, but I don't think it is that superior for what you pay combined with what a lot of people would regard as the social injustice of letting poor people die (particularly unjust in a society with increasingly low social mobility such as the US. If you are born poor, there is a high chance you will stay poor).

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Posters on some of the US forums that I visit recount their experiences of the US health service, & it's not pretty - the health insurance companies are adept at finding getout clauses in users' contracts, & with big stuff (eg heart bypass surgery, cancer) cost of treatment can easily mean selling all you have, including your home; the wealthy, of course, are fine with this, but the ever-pressured middle- & lower-income groups look with longing across the border to Canada's state-run health service; our NHS should be cherished..

[Guest struthitsruth]

I think that the way forward is to involve the consumer more directly with the costs. If I am a patient I would like to see some semblance of customer service when I access health services, I find it notably absent today. Prescription medicine is a very good example of the customer not ordering or making choices about what goods they receive.

The NHS is a government monopoly which is effectively being run by a tier of managers whose chief responsibility is to meet the demands of politicians rather than of patients. Instead of being accountable to patients, it is accountable to the centre.

As there is no price mechanism, resources are allocated by bureaucrats shovelling money into the system at one end, rather than by patient demand at the other. The Conservatives have started to think along the right lines, but even they have more work to do. For until the patient has some purchase on the system, preferably through health insurance – as in France – British hospital care is unlikely even to be able to address, let alone solve, its problems.

from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jh...2/ixportal.html

and continuing on the theme of Getting What You Pay For

from a study called "Managing Not to Manage" by Harriet Sergeant 2003

"UNISON the biggest trade union in Britain representing people who work in Public Services, displays on its web site what it wishes to deny to the general public : membership of a private health benefit scheme. Unison members like NHS porters, for example, can join Medicash which offers cash to those who need medical care. The Essential Surgery Plan which, we are reassured on its web site "is Unison approved", protects against the cost and inconvenience of undergoing surgery 'either on the NHS or privately'. Members can receive £400 to £6,000 a year for an operation, 'giving you the freedom to choose how, when or where you're treated - or spend the money how you wish if your treatment is undertaken by the NHS!' "

so it wouldn't surprise me if many of the employees themselves have little experience of being a patient/customer on the receiving end of the service.

NHS - NUKE IT !

. . . . . . just my humble opinion

http://www.cps.org.uk/pdf/pub/399.pdf

Edit : spelliing

Edited September 16, 2005 by struthitsruth

[DTMark]

Just some random thoughts, looking at the blog headlines 'secured loans demand to ease off'... I'm no economist, so do feel free to correct/challenge:

If the theory that much of consumer spending - especially on the things we're watching slow down the most now, such as new cars, electricals, home improvements, fashion etc (all non-essentials) - has indeed largely or even significantly been fuelled by MEW over the last couple of years, and if we then look at the data regarding MEW easing off...

The lack of sales in the high street versus last year is something of an invalid comparison in that YOY sales in 2005 shouldn't be compared with 2004, but, say, 2002 in so far as the money financing that spending was a "blip" in between time.

So: so what if retail sales are down 0.6%, 1%, 2% etc...

In the context of house prices - again, so what if prices are down 3.7% YOY...

Hardly a disaster is it.

Except perhaps it is. Because if we're now "finding the level" of consumer spending we ought to expect once that "blip" has been removed (delayed recession theory) we don't know quite how far it's going to fall or how many layoffs are needed to then get the correct level of staffing for the sales we *ought* to be expecting.

Meanwhile, the public sector is having to be cut back at the same time as the private sector is having to cut back, with the pensions 'crisis' bubbling away in the background and the threat of some major strike action.

This all seems to have come as an enormous surprise to retailers and Brown himself, though I don't quite see why, perhaps the same level of ignorance that led people to believe that "property prices always go up".

If we accept that the housing market boom was fuelled largely by a combination of sentiment/speculation boosted even more by the low IRs, and that now, house prices are so high that BTL doesn't make sense and the so-called investors are heading for the door (with other morons being caught up in buy-off-plan negative equity, more delightful headlines along those lines to come) in really basic terms, the drop in the economy, and house prices, ought to roughly mirror the boom since 2002.

If interest rates dropped, say, to 3.5%, this would give a boost to manufacturing - in theory, provided people want to buy the goods actually being produced, but until house prices come back down, BTL still doesn't make sense because of the level of house prices. This assumption that if we cut rates to 3% tomorrow we then simply "resume" HPI and the game is back on again doesn't make sense because the climate is so different now.

MEW might then have something of a resurgence, but rather than being used for the purpose of buying that new car, plasma TV or whatever, is maybe more likely to be directed at credit consolidation, which isn't going to do much for the high street or the credit card companies.

The "average" man in the street is not going to BTL with falling house prices. Even if the yield calculation worked after falls of say 20%, if they're still falling I don't see people buying in. What's the point? "Why buy at today's price, if you can buy at tomorrows".. now, where did all the first time buyers go? They're certainly not rushing back.

I suspect BTL was so attractive not for the long term, not for a nice pension pot, and so forth, but because "the average man" could hope to get some cash quick in the form of capital appreciation. Remove that single factor (even if the others remain valid) and the whole thing just isn't the get rich quick scheme portrayed by the plethora of property programmes over the last coupld of years that people hoped it might be.

The so-called professional investor (landlord) might indeed pick up some relative "bargains", but only after prices have fallen, and the extent to which anyone professional is going to invest in the housing market is seriously undermined if the stock market looks infinitely more attractive and the housing market is on the way down.

Meantime the housing market is screwed partly because if we believe there is any grain of truth in BTL lending being masked by BTL being done with residential mortgages rather than BTL ones, and so the "data" is faulty, we have a whole section of the bottom of the market currently populated by people with no desire to move up the chain. Meantime the owners of the 3 bed semis can find potential buyers - just nowhere near as many as in the past - and if you reduce the pool of buyers, you're unlikely to get that price you were holding out for. Especially if the seller of the 2 bed flat who wants your home can't get their price either because (8% FTBs) there is just nobody to sell to.

Nobody can project where it's going, but I'm quite surprised by just how quickly the whole thing seems to be unravelling. Thoughts...?

[MarkG]

Posters on some of the US forums that I visit recount their experiences of the US health service, & it's not pretty - the health insurance companies are adept at finding getout clauses in users' contracts, & with big stuff (eg heart bypass surgery, cancer) cost of treatment can easily mean selling all you have, including your home;

That's pretty silly when they could fly to Thailand and get the treament in decent hospitals with US-trained doctors for a tenth of the price... as many Americans are now doing.

The problem with US healthcare is not that it's private, because it's not in any real sense: the government, medical guilds and pharmaceutical lobby determine who can get what treatment, how many doctors will be produced each year, what conditions they can be treated in, who has to pay and how. They also use tax laws to encourage business to provide health insurance and therefore there's little incentive to keep costs low, and give big payouts in court cases for 'negligence' which is often probably unjustified.

Another issue is that something like 75% of the _entire lifetime healthcare spending_ on the average American occurs in the last two weeks of their life. In the NHS, if you're a no-hoper they just let you die... in America they're expected to continue hugely expensive treatment until your body finally gives out.

the ever-pressured middle- & lower-income groups look with longing across the border to Canada's state-run health service

Which is odd, because historically a lot of Canadians have gone to America to get treatment they can't get in Canada under their socialised system.

Like it or not, the NHS is expensive, inefficient and doomed: most people just haven't realised it yet.