The Politics Thread

[TANGODANCER]

Properly made me laugh.

Bit tricky to pick the best headline out of that!

Quote: She claimed ***after his conviction*** that he had merely been punished for being "attractive and attracted" to women."Unquote.
Cor, shades of Rudolph Valentino "I am merely the canvas on which women paint their dreams.."

[Worthy4England]

GPs proposing to strike. If no bugger can get in, who will notice?

[jimbo]

GPs proposing to strike. If no bugger can get in, who will notice?

It’s not a strike. It’s working to the NHS contract and essentially pushing back on the extra unfunded work that is done, and to try and get an improved contract that covers the substantially increased costs in the last couple of years that partners are bearing.

[Worthy4England]

GPs proposing to strike. If no bugger can get in, who will notice?

It’s not a strike. It’s working to the NHS contract and essentially pushing back on the extra unfunded work that is done, and to try and get an improved contract that covers the substantially increased costs in the last couple of years that partners are bearing.

Ok let's call it a "work to rule" then - not a strike - question remains, for many people who can't get in anyhow, who will notice? The whole thing needs reworking, it's broke. It shouldn't take a work to rule to show that. But I am interested in what (non-labour) costs partners are bearing, because as an outsider, you should think they're covered by the NHS or paid for by private.

[jimbo]

GPs proposing to strike. If no bugger can get in, who will notice?

It’s not a strike. It’s working to the NHS contract and essentially pushing back on the extra unfunded work that is done, and to try and get an improved contract that covers the substantially increased costs in the last couple of years that partners are bearing.

Ok let's call it a "work to rule" then - not a strike - question remains, for many people who can't get in anyhow, who will notice? The whole thing needs reworking, it's broke. It shouldn't take a work to rule to show that. But I am interested in what (non-labour) costs partners are bearing, because as an outsider, you should think they're covered by the NHS or paid for by private.

Non labour costs are buildings (interest rate rises have seen mortgages on premises rocket), consumable items, utilities (when our gas electric term ended a couple of years ago it quadrupled), cleaning, any repairs or upgrades needing doing around the surgery. All vastly more expensive and have to come out of the practice budget.
Practice budget is determined by the NHS GP contract. That has increased on average by about 2% per year for the last 5 years. That’s obviously not enough to cover all of the cost increases, so partners are taking pay cuts, some practices are making staff redundant, and others are simply closing.
Action is being taken to highlight that the contract is not fit for purpose and it is becoming harder and harder to deliver the care needed on its terms. Practices will acknowledge they need more staff, but the contract means they can’t afford to hire them.

[jimbo]

And I fully accept that generally things are crap for patients at the moment. Access is poor. Waits are long. This action is about having a contract that allows those things to improve.

[Abdoulaye's Twin]

^ Yep, all of that sort of stuff has absolutely hammered my business in the last couple of years. I'm operating on significantly increased turnover for significantly less profit. I fear a lot of business is in a far worse place than I am and wont be able to ride it out. We'll see plenty more closures in the next year.

[jimbo]

Yep. All businesses will struggle with the same. Majority have freedom to put prices up though to help a bit. Our income is dictated by the government who have stuck to their 2% which has left partners funding the extra through wage cuts and is making general practice unsustainable.
Since my first comment on this today, Streeting has announced a bit of positive movement on the contract, so I’m hoping that it’s the start of some more positive times.

[Worthy4England]

All reasonable jimbo, thanks for taking time out to explain. Goverments should be covering those costs in full for me. And to AT, I've long been of the opinion that we need to help smaller businesses by stopping kickbacks and funding for the massive ones and transferring some of the savings. The amount we bail out utilities, banks, global corporates and subsidise their investments is truly shocking.

[jimbo]

No problem. The general public really don’t have much idea at all about how general practice is funded and it’s often the practices or GPs getting the blame for not working harder and just seeing more patients. Always happy to try and simplify the issues we’re working with.

[boltonboris]

The Mum of my lads best mate is a GP and she's proper fed up. Highly educated, trained and skilled and she's feckin off to Canada in 2 weeks to be a GP there instead. She says GP's who came over from other countries are leaving in their droves and have been for a few years now. We can't backfill them anywhere quickly enough.

We're replacing 2 for every 5 Doctors that leave

[BWFC_Insane]

Brilliant to see this explained on here. I will add that funding primary care correctly will save vast amounts more than it will cost. Streeting knows this too.

[Worthy4England]

No problem. The general public really don’t have much idea at all about how general practice is funded and it’s often the practices or GPs getting the blame for not working harder and just seeing more patients. Always happy to try and simplify the issues we’re working with.

I think NHS and private are different. For private, if they can make profit, then I think they should hold the risk. (Whilst still noting that shitloads of "private enterprise" is taxpayer funded or subsidsed).

[BWFC_Insane]

No problem. The general public really don’t have much idea at all about how general practice is funded and it’s often the practices or GPs getting the blame for not working harder and just seeing more patients. Always happy to try and simplify the issues we’re working with.

I think NHS and private are different. For private, if they can make profit, then I think they should hold the risk. (Whilst still noting that shitloads of "private enterprise" is taxpayer funded or subsidsed).

GP practices are private and the partners hold the risk.

[Worthy4England]

Another shining example of privatisation. Pull them back into NHS, fund them and pay the Drs a wage.

[Hoboh]

Kier Starmer was walking down the street and saw a little old lady struggling with two bags of shopping.
You shouldn't have to do that, I can help he said.
So he havled the value of her pension income so she could only afford one bag.

[Hoboh]

Another shining example of privatisation. Pull them back into NHS, fund them and pay the Drs a wage.

I wonder why they don't pay the shop workers a huge pay rise as well?
At least they didn't feck off and hide during Covid!

[Worthy4England]

Another shining example of privatisation. Pull them back into NHS, fund them and pay the Drs a wage.

I wonder why they don't pay the shop workers a huge pay rise as well?
At least they didn't feck off and hide during Covid!

What are you moaning at now?

[BWFC_Insane]

Another shining example of privatisation. Pull them back into NHS, fund them and pay the Drs a wage.

They were never in the NHS. Never have been.

[Worthy4England]

Another shining example of privatisation. Pull them back into NHS, fund them and pay the Drs a wage.

They were never in the NHS. Never have been.

Oh. Not very conversant with GPs and the detail of how they operate, don't generally deal with primary care providers.

If they're generally funded through contracts that are broadly paid for out of our taxes (rather than privately/insurance funded) then it sorta feels like they're part of the national heath provision and for that element of the service they should expect coverage of their costs etc. and paying for the hours worked. But that's different than "profit making."

It feels like they're pretty well remunerated overall on average and pretty much in any sector people getting over 100k per annum aren't working 37 hour weeks to get it. They're often working 70+ despite 37.5 hour contracts, which doesn't help the Doctors attrition problem but is often the case.

The picture that's been conveyed is that we're not paying them for some things we should be, which again sort of conjours the part of the national health service notion (small letters not caps )