Let's talk about the National Health Service !
Cameron’s devious manipulation of mortality figures to make his 24/7 NHS election ‘bribe’.
What is a lie? How much cherry-picking of statistics, concealment of part of the picture, and sheer misinformation constitute an untruth? Here is a very typical example to consider,: sadly David Cameron’s willingness to use subtle manipulations of the true facts in a case (doubtless served up by his ‘think-tank’ funded by the super-rich of Britain), in order to make a statement that LOOKS really promising but in fact makes no sense, and if implemented, would actually make matters worse.
OK - we all know that in reality this David Cameron announcement is probably pure spin - an exercise dreamt up by Cameron's propaganda team to paint a picture of a David Cameron who HASN'T been privatising our precious NHS - a man who actually cares about patients needing treatment on the weekends. What a wonderful ruse! What a great vote-winner!!! But just supposing there were any substance to what he's saying - that the NHS is letting people down on Saturdays and Sundays - THEN WHY THE HELL HASN'T HE DONE SOMETHING ABOUT IT OVER THE LAST 5 YEARS?
Hello? Who has been running the NHS SINCE 2010? None other than this smiling man pictured in a lovely choreographed trip to a hospital accompanied by TV cameras - that whiz-kid full of brilliant ideas to try to get himself back into power on May 7th! Yep, we naive British swallow it all whole David!!!
Here’s what Dr Louise Irvine of the NHA Party says about ’24/7 care" apparently offered by Cameron in his last-minute attempt to pretend that he cares about the NHS.
STATEMENT FROM DR LOUISE IRVINE OF THE NATIONAL HEALTH ACTION PARTY reacting to David Cameron's 24/7 NHS pledge
Mr Cameron seems to be using rather inconclusive evidence about mortality rates at weekends to justify a move to 24/7 day non-emergency NHS services. But trying to implement what would be a 40% service increase to cover weekends without adequate funding for extra staff and support would just mean existing services would be spread even more thinly and this could result in a decline in quality of services throughout the week and we could end up with higher mortality rates every day of the week.
This government’s underfunding of our NHS has already pushed it to the cliff edge. It's reckless of David Cameron to pledge to extend NHS care so that scheduled operations and appointments can happen at weekends unless he backs that up with money that isn’t recycled or previously committed"
Jeremy Hunt recently claimed on TV that Cameron's NHS 'reforms' are saving about £1.5bn a year. Read this for the truth click here (Generally believed to have cost ~£3 billion)
Hunt also claims the Government has increased the number of nurses. The Royal College of Nurses has estimated a loss of ~6000 nurses: see the report HERE:
Any increase in nurse numbers is in part-time and lower grade/less qualified nurses. So Hunt is comparing apples with oranges. The only honest way to compare is to count whole-time equivalent jobs - ie: to count 2 half-time jobs as 1, not 2, as the Government does
Hunt says the Government has increased the number of doctors. This is misleading. In fact, the population has increased by 2 million, which means number of doctors per 1000 population - the only meaningful figure - has gone down.”
So, all this info I’m quoting is direct from people who actually administer the NHS and are appalled that Cameron has been on the one hand saying that he is ‘protecting and reforming’ the NHS, but on the other hand, in reality, parcelling bits of it up and facilitating the sale of these bits to entrepreneurs to make a profit out of our health care.
Scandalous at the very least.
Bri
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Comments (4)
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Hi Brian,
There are some very handy critiques of government misuse of health statistics to be found on the Bad Medicine blog. This notion of a 24/7 NHS being a silver bullet for high weekend mortality rates is certainly not a new idea, and was being discussed back in 2012. Here is a nice post explaining why the idea that more weekend cover will reduce mortality rates is flawed, it's a really good read:
http://www.badmed.net/bad-medicine-blog/2012/02/nature-cooks-books.html
An example the author gives of possible selection bias giving rise to higher weekend mortality:
Now, if we think about our own behaviour when we are ill, we can see all too easily how just such a selection might happen in the present study. Many people, especially the elderly, who are likely to figure large in this study, are reluctant to call the doctor out of hours, all the more so at the weekend; those that can will hold out until Monday morning, as any GP knows only too well. Those with more severe illness, however, will not stand the wait, and so will call the doctor straight away and so be admitted to hospital there and then. And so it is that more patients with more severe illness may be selectively admitted at weekends; and this in turn may account for more deaths in those admitted at weekends.
This is only one possibility, of course, and until the weekend effect is better understood it is unhelpful to make political capital out of it by charging in like a bull in a china shop, making organisational changes to the NHS based on the oversimplified sound-bite assumptions of politicians. Because then you disturb the system and put the academic efforts already made into understanding the weekend effect back to square one. It is very hard to study a system that keeps being reorganised! -
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