If you’re worried about the NHS please read this. GPs in England are going to vote about whether to build a more privatised service, like NHS dentistry 🚨🚨🚨
https://t.co/NZYyTSntrF
Too on point not to share. This is great, but too bad the Orange Felon’s enablers won’t let him see it.
This Australian's reply to #Trump's rant about “NATO not being there for America” is perfect.
"Mate. You run a country with 600,000 homeless people sleeping on the street tonight. A country where 40% of adults can't cover a $400 emergency without borrowing money. A country where insulin costs more than a car payment and people are rationing it to survive. A country where medical debt is the number 1 cause of bankruptcy. A country where women are dying in hospital car parks because doctors are too scared of abortion laws to treat a miscarriage.
You lock up more of your own citizens than any nation on earth. More than China. More than Russia. More than North Korea. The land of the free has 2 million people in cages, and a quarter of them haven't even been convicted of anything. They're just too poor to make bail.
Your life expectancy is going backwards. You're the only developed nation where that's happening. Your infant mortality rate is worse than Cuba's. Your kids do active shooter drills between maths and English while you sell the gunmaker's stock to your mates.
Your minimum wage hasn't moved in 15 years. You've got teachers working 2 jobs and veterans sleeping under bridges and you just spent a trillion dollars flattening a country that didn't attack you.
And you’ve got a convicted felon, adjudicating raping, paedophile protecting, porn star shagging insurrectionist running the biggest dumpster fire war campaign since the Taliban thanked you very much for losing again.
And you're calling Greenland poorly run?
Greenland has universal healthcare. Free education. One of the lowest incarceration rates in the world. Nobody goes bankrupt there because they got sick. Nobody dies in a waiting room because their insurance said no.
'NATO wasn't there when we needed them." When exactly was that, champ? September 11? Because NATO invoked Article 5 for the first and only time in history FOR YOU. Soldiers from dozens of countries deployed, fought, bled, and died in Afghanistan FOR YOU. Australia wasn't even in NATO and we still showed up. For 20 years.
And you pulled out at 2am without telling anyone and left them to deal with the mess.
So maybe before you start calling other countries poorly run, have a look at your own backyard, you spray-tanned aluminium siding salesman. The only thing poorly run in this picture is your f----- mouth."
- Tony Locke
Labour MP Jenny Chapman, "I think what's happened is there is so much focus on the person at the top, and there is the sense that if you change the person at the top, all of the problems, um, somehow resolve themselves or... "
"And I just think we have to be a bit more honest and adult about some of this. "
"There are huge challenges facing our economy. Look at the geopolitical situation, uh, the situation that we inherited. "
"There are amazing things that we have done actually in the first two years. I would like to go faster, but we've done renters' rights, employment rights. There are more police. "
"We've done work on violence against women and girls. There are things that we are really proud that we have done, breakfast clubs for young kids. "
"You know, things that are going to make a real difference in the long run, but you're not feeling it right now, and I think that desire to feel the change is really palpable. "
"And if I genuinely thought that changing one person in the entire government, even if that person is the prime minister, would somehow unlock that, that growth or, or make things happen more quickly, then I, I would be absolutely for that. "
"But I, I really don't think that that is-- You know, you keep trying the same solution, which is about changing the person and expecting a different outcome. I don't think that that's really what we need to do. "
"I think the point about stability is absolutely right. It needs stability, it needs focus, and it needs clarity and determination to do the things that need to be done to get this country back on the right path. "
Brilliant piece. @NickCohen4 is right. The current madness is just another breathless distraction by a country that simply doesn’t want to face up to its real problems. https://t.co/YN99L92Jyo
If Starmer goes that would be 5 different PMs in five years, despite two of them having historically large Parliamentary majorities…
Impossible to plan, strategise and deliver even medium term economic plans, let alone long term thinking going on elsewhere…
@Addyspectre1@Rachelle_Hulme@m_jones_1797@dommedebbiexx Farage was an MEP...a bad one.But he knew the rules. He knew Brexit meant,no more UK access to Eurodac the EU immigration ID https://t.co/6cUre1cCSM more Dublin3.And a return to the 1952 refugees act, requiring physical presence for asylum application.Meaning more boats.He knew!
Let me make this quite clear. Immigration is a false flag to Reform voters. Nige doesn't give a toss about it except that it gets votes. His foreign masters want two things. One they've achieved: Brexit. The other is selling off the NHS. Its the jewel in their crown. They're salivating like hungry dogs over it. Its worth trillions to them. Because if you want to be treated, if you want to survive! you're going to have to pay for it. You'll need insurance. And it costs an arm and a leg and you won't get it for pre existing conditions. It costs the average American about £6500 annually. The only free medicine in the states is paid for by charities. If you qualify. Get my point.
#PsychAssassin
@Addyspectre1@Rachelle_Hulme@dommedebbiexx The frenzied desire of the media to gleefully report our slide towards fascist kleptocracy is perverse. Farage is not a dynamic, effective leader rescuing the UK from a malaise. He’s a clownish agitator, a parasite the media and its billionaire patrons lend false credibility too.
Brave Sir Nigel strode forth with flair,
Ready to battle a lass so fair.
He swore he’d face her down with might,
No donor scandal could ruin his fight.
But brave Sir Nigel ran away!
Bravely ran away, away!
Just tucked his tail and vanished from sight
When questions began to bite.
@Nigel_Farage Change? Headed by a longtime City banker, ex-MEP who profited from the EU system he attacked, an elitist, billionaire funded populist, protecting and promoting core financial and establishment interests. At best a self-serving, cynical disruptor whipping up public anger.
Germany figured something out
that the rest of the world
is still pretending it doesn't need to know.
11 things. One thread.
Some of these will make you uncomfortable.
All of them are true. 🇩🇪🧵
How #NHS is adopting US insurance industry denial of care tactics.
GP referrals to be blocked by additional bureaucratic hurdles equivalent to US 'prior authorization' scam!
#SickoUK
Today @CHPIthinktank published a singularly depressing analysis of 760 private firms now providing NHS services in England such as CT scans, hip and knee replacements & mental health support.
Companies like Spire & Circle are creaming off billions from these lucrative NHS contracts.
£2bn of £12bn worth of contracts went to firms with owners based outside the UK.
£533m of this £2bn went to companies owned by people living in tax havens such as Jersey and the Cayman Islands.
I find it grotesque that while NHS patients are stranded on trolleys in corridors or waiting months or even years for care, taxpayers’ money is being siphoned off into offshore tax havens & lining the pockets of private equity companies.
The government *could* be investing in growing NHS capacity – instead, it has elected to grow private companies’ grip on the NHS, a short-term folly that is already costing patients dear.
Madness.
I’ve been doing this GP malarkey for nearly 20y now. It struck me today that the only way I can carry on practising the way I used to is if I do it at my own personal expense. It never used to be like this - there was enough time in the day for bereavement visits, wellbeing checks, proactive care, time with colleagues to discuss patients & build relationships.
General practice today is decision making at the same speed as a shoot-em-up game. Today was just me for 55 same day requests for appointments, clinical supervision of three members of staff, medical student education, paramedic education and all routine needs for a population of 1250 patients.
We’re fortunate to have personal lists - though the new contract doesn’t value the continuity at all - and that matters to me deeply.
Leaving work at 7, I decided to pop in to a patient of mine that I’ve known for 14y. In their 80s, they’ve just had joint replacement surgery and are having a bit of a wobble. We had a chat, they felt better, we have a plan & I’ll check in next week.
This is the kind of GP I want to be.
My day would have been less frantic, I’d have eaten/urinated at a sensible time, and I’d would have been less snappy with the children whom I saw briefly before bed if there hadn’t been so much nonsense crowding my day: 25 mins on hold trying to get through to a specialist (and failing), an insurance company slyly demanding a conversation with me about a non-urgent issue because it saves them money, dealing with consequences of private tests not requested by me but with the inevitable ‘see your GP’ as disposition, missing discharge medication, delayed follow-up, inappropriate ‘GP to’ as the heart failure team have a waiting list - and much more.
Commissioning gaps, poor clinical pathway planning, govt targets on access over quality, media perpetuation of entitlement over responsibility and disproportionate investment & expansion of specialists over general practice have caused this. This is not ‘part time’ GP working - as a partner that’s never a thing. This is expectations from everywhere without resourcing to match.
We want to deliver the things we did 20y ago - that’s why we went into this.
If you want your family doctor back then you need to support us - because we want to be that too. I’m a GP, but also a Mum, wife and daughter of aged parents. I can’t do this at my own expense any more, and nor should I have to. Arguments of laziness and greed always abound, but really what we need is a properly resourced service. Please stand with us - a fight is coming.
It is not a good relationship when one side berates, belittles and demands and the other just goes along with it… that’s weakness. A good relationship relies on mutual respect not bullying oh… and don’t mistake Trump for America… his popularity is plummeting because they don’t like what he is
Yesterday you may well have seen the headlines announcing that from April onwards, GPs will be “made” to offer patients same day appointments for 'urgent' health issues. The implication, which I cannot imagine Wes Streeting is unaware of, is that he is on the side of patients, whereas recalcitrant & possibly even workshy GPs are the problem. A subtle undercurrent of GP-bashing, in other words, just as in previous governments.
The headlines omit a crucial aspect of the new GP contract, which this letter in the Times brilliantly highlights.
GPs will no longer be able to refer patients for specialist care as they do currently. New mandated "advice and refer" systems are being introduced for all specialist referrals from general practice, supposedly to 'streamline' care (as though GPs aren't highly trained physicians who know when a referral is needed).
As anyone waiting desperately for an appointment with a neurologist, oncologist, rheumatologist or orthopaedic surgeon will already know to their cost, currently waiting times can be absolutely horrendous – and this looks horribly like yet another barrier to patients receiving the prompt care they need from a specialist.
Already, for example, I am aware of patients with a new diagnosis of major, life-changing diseases such as multiple sclerosis, motor neurone disease or lupus having to wait many heartbreaking months to see a specialist for the first time. That is simply not right. It is a national scandal. If Wes Streeting’s aim is to massage the waiting list figures so that it ‘looks’ as though he’s improving care for NHS patients (while actually keeping patients away from doctors via a tortuous saga of ‘pathway navigators’ and other hoops that only create more delays) this would be an excellent way to do to.