The NHS An Inconvenient View

[MrGongGong]

I have to say, in all honesty, the service I generally receive from doctors tends towards the poor. It is ocasionally good, mostly uninterested, and sometimes downright shoddy. .

I don't doubt your experience
but how is it possible for mine to be more or less the opposite ?
I was given all the information I needed, never rushed etc etc

why is it so uneven ?

[teamsaint]

I don't doubt your experience
but how is it possible for mine to be more or less the opposite ?
I was given all the information I needed, never rushed etc etc

why is it so uneven ?

I don't know. Luck? maybe I am predisposed to remember the bad, you the good?
postcode lottery?expectation?

its difficult to explain.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

societies without thriving private enterprise tend to be poor and lacking in basics .... private enterprise is a public good .... the issues that arise, serious as they are, tend to be of the how well run and regulated any enterprise has been, not the actual ownership ...

as may be others will have different views ....but i do feel that the debate on ownership is pretty sterile and obfuscating ... or if ownership change is seen as a solution eg privatising a public organisation or nationalising a private business, usually deeply mistaken .... quite possibly [i never do quite understand myself] i am arguing that any society is a portfolio of opportunities and risks and we should/could better occupy ourselves with how well they are managed, as focus exclusively on ownership of a segment of what is our social fabric as if that was the only determinative issue .... occasionally it may be such and we should not hesitate to rearrange ownership ....

many of the issues eg inequality that cause us concern are not the outcome of class or ownership but most certainly derive from status concerns ..... i find it ironic that the marxist analysis by focusing on 'class' so that it is always 'they' who perpetrate the crimes against humanity or resist human progress allows that it is not us, we are merely falsely conscious ....duped passive victims .... who can displace their rqage with ideological ranting but would never confront a hospital manager about the incompetent care of a relative ... we are docile in front of each other and that is a problem ... but we can rant in print or on the platform and that is just irrelevance ... we can debate ownership furiously but confront the incompetent face to face?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

why is it so uneven ?

THIS is the key question. How can some overworked, over-stressed Health care centres work so well (as MrGG & I have experienced) whilst others are so bad? (And I'm utterly appalled that teamsaint had to undergo an examination along with other patients.) It's not simply a matter of a predisposition for "remembering the bad/good" - had I been refused treatment/medication (or even actual/perceived neglect) I would have remembered it! If "luck/postcode lottery" then it's this aspect of the NHS, not any other, that most desperately needs Parliamentary-enforced "reform".

[Serial_Apologist]

In the article, Moore speaks of bureaucracies as, "... constructed for the conveniences of the producer, not the consumer, (although, oddly, they are often unpleasant places for the producer to work in)".

One needs to go back to the postwar situation in Britain in which the NHS was introduced, and subsequently, the sub-Stalinist Fabian models upon which it, and the industries which were nationalised, were planned and built.

These models were basically imposed top-down, with little or no grass roots consultation or involvement, either from workforces or communities. And the attitudes of trades unions representing the respective workforces left much to be desired.

My line manager at the nationalised company for which I worked remembered that, at the time of nationalisation, trade union leaders brought in on a consultation exercise involving worker representation on the board of directors informed the newly appointed management that they were only prepared to countenance such worker representation, when "management are paid to manage, not our members", on condition of a large increase in pay across the board, one whick would have stymied the capacity of the company to compete or make a profit.

The problem here consisted in the "economist" position taken by the trade unions - a politics itself born of bureaucratisation, empire-building and hob-nobbing with the bosses within the trade union movement over a protracted historical period which, at this time, saw the emergence on a Communist Party wedded to the political status quo to between East and West in order to "protect" the Soviet Union, ("peaceful coexistence) and see off the Marxist left polemicising and campaigning for worker's control as one part of a bottom-up plan of production and distribution prioritised on meeting need.

Trade unionism had long been about wages and conditions considerations and parliamentary pressure for change, as opposed to challenging the end product of production from shop floor power implicit in who owns the company. With nationalisation, all that happened was that the public became merely the notional owner. Government replaced the private owner as boss, paying out large outlays in compensation to former owners to what had been failing, inefficiently run industries. The relationship to the private sector was as infrastructural backup, and so nationalised industries were expected to "make their way". All brilliantly unfolded in detail and (inter)personal consequences in "Our Friends in the North".

Unsurprisingly - to return to the NHS - the resulting attitude of the general public, instead of responsibility to institutions which emblazoned public ownership in actual practice, was one of getting from it as much as could be grabbed for as long as it lasted - a simple variant on the long working class memory of insecurity in employment and living conditions the rich, from their comparative conditions of security in property and having connections in high places, could easily condemn as fecklessness.

It goes almost without saying that therefrom, the sad litany of alternating ingratiation and condemnation of the working class ensues - from establishing the NHS to ensure employers a more healthy and productive workforce, to tower block replacements of working class communities and the sop of consumerism, to home ownership, to industrial "rationalisation" and outsourcing, to The Lottery, to the fallacious nonsenses of "free choice" and "opportunity", to the according of chav status and accusation of greed.

It will all be repeated in China, India and Indonesia, should any of these countries ever even reach our "standard" of democracy... by which time, what will have become of the environment and natural resource base? Some have come to see the only radical alternatives as religious fundamentalism and fanaticism.

And now, we are where we are...

[Flosshilde]

Originally Posted by antongould
But on the wider issue is there still a majority view in the UK that privatising anything improves it? and/or
That outsourcing anything to the private sector saves money and/or gives a better level of service?

Like, f'rinstance, the police? Now, THAT would never happen, would it??

SA, had you seen the Guardian when you posted the above?


http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/ma...ty-firms-crime

[Serial_Apologist]

SA, had you seen the Guardian when you posted the above?


http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/ma...ty-firms-crime

I hadn't actually, Floss; I heard it on Today just as I was waking up, and had to check the clock to make sure it wasn't April 1st!

[teamsaint]

I hadn't actually, Floss; I heard it on Today just as I was waking up, and had to check the clock to make sure it wasn't April 1st!

a really scary thing.
you figure out that root and branch reform of the OB is essential, especially including very close examination of their relationship with the media, and the need to make masonic activity illegal for police officers, and you are suddenly presented with a scenario that makes you want to keep the status quo.

I am baffled, confused and worried.