Fix the GP system and we fix the NHS. We could nationalise GP's but doing that is another issue because how many GP's flexibly earning £100k+ will accept working 60hrs+ a week on the frozen NHS banding system...?
According to BMA/DDRB figures, £100k p.a. is top whack for NHS GP's. Not that there is an upper limit, just that's the upper end of the spectrum.
Retention wise, they need better jobs. We have them applying sticking plasters to quite ill people with no hope of being treated properly, unable to make effective referrals, finding patients who can't get enough time from them in A&E being diagnosed with severe conditions, because there is no time to practise whole patient or preventative medicine. They just don't fancy such a demoralising professional existence. They were leaving even before health statistics in this country are in free fall. Because of our attitude, Brexit, funding, COVID. And it's clear as day, for many years, we have not trained or recruit enough replacements. Much of the reason why is in the hands of politicians. They simply chose not to address it. Instead, shortly before COVID arrived, they pulled a political move in telling Doctors to shut up about this stuff and get on with it.
There are many things we could have done, that Consecutive Tory governments won't do for ideological reasons. They don't like safety, advice, nanny government. Which is a problem - that runs into best practise, preventative and whole patient / whole society medicine. They are also very cynical about NHS spending but they are very cynical about any public spending. 12 years ago I could get a referral to any number of services. Now, in a much worse situation, I have a serious condition that inevitably would have been picked up and treated sooner but for not being seen face to face, not having my heart listened to, my BP checked, my inflammation symptoms checked visibly.
A stitch in time saves nine. Well, there's a whole NHS problem - and our solution has been to stop handing out stitches. And now we turn around and say, well, look how bad it is! No real solutions here guys - we'll have to find a way of bypassing this whole stitching idea altogether.
I am so confident, as I rarely am. I'd compare my confidence and experience of this to WMD in Iraq, that Syria would lead to a disaster... maybe the obvious outcomes of Brexit.
Somewhere between all three. Because it doesn't add up the way anyone is talking about it. People of all sorts get swept up in the stream of information and ideas and news. And they don't pay attention to the very basics that are swept away under their feet. That's what's happened here. This is a nonsense, we are losing hundreds of thousands, millions even, of people from the workforce, some from economic activity. And we are guaranteed to spend masses of precious resources spending on emergency treatment.
This is getting worse, and I am the tip of this iceberg. I honestly believe the Tories will leave it for Labour to clean up.
Simply because they have no will to do it. And astonishingly, neither has much of the populace - which is pulling the same trick it did when it congratulated itself for not repeating the sins of Iraq by refusing to intervene in Syria, and feeding the same learned helplessness that made headline austerity such a political thing, whilst never once tackling the constant feed of 'one off' govt and bank supply and spending in the background.
My opinion is, many, many people have lost their bearings over the last decade. Capitalism that supports failing entities, pacifies markets. Social politics that paint spending with proven economic benefits as unaffordable.
This is the 'new' way of thinking that accompanies rhetoric about the ideas and actions of previous decades as being tragically deluded. Most of it because, everything is an exaggeration, and most people trip up in front of one or more issues.. get stuck, and before you know it, they're assembling words into shakespeare, misquoting their own made up figures, and ultimately making nonsense sounds that 'just happen' to chime in with the basic political momentum of the times. Because that is what a fecking brain is - like it or not, the damned thing evolved to make all sorts of complicated and nuanced noises to ensure it's safety within the group long before it ever invented ideas.
People should stop making excuses, and check the outcomes. Check the treatment levels. And check their own recent mistakes. This is not how it was. The results are already visible and we have already dialed in huge amounts of furher inevitable shit for the coming decades. Let's see how much is required for us as a society, to feel it is time to stop degrading ourselves.
I give it four years, but it could be fourty. Because if people won't instinctively recognise that unhealthy people cost lots and lots of money, the longer you leave them, the more they cost... then, we're in lalaland already.... but frankly the recency of our decision to 'forget' about COVID probably play a big part in that.
