These people have suffered for just one reason. That is the refusal of the Treasury to create sufficient money to pay for the services required to ensure that they could have the care they needed. There is no other explanation for what has happened. It all comes down to the obsession with balanced budgets and spreadsheets, which obsession has left people ill, dying and dead.
We currently have inflation. MMT says that if we have inflation then further money printing will just push up inflation. To be battled by increasing taxes.
So, yes, it’s possible to increase the amount to be spent upon health care. But only by increasing taxes.
Even MMT says this isn’t just about printing more money.
Never mind the money. Where are the people to provide the care, and the people to provide the resources to the people who provide the care, going to come from? Y’know, the actual people who do actual things with actual stuff?
One criticism of Murphy subordinate to the fact he is the embodiment of evil in human form is that he appears even within a single post to struggle to maintain a consistent line.
Population has increased from 66.4 million in 2018 to 67.9 million in 2024, or by 2.2%. Demand has increased from 28.5 million appointments to 31.9 million, Covid excluded, or by 11.9 per cent.
Whatever I think of COVID and the official response to it, one cannot deny it has had an impact on demand so excluding it is absurd. It’s even more absurd when he claims to have had it about 7 times but I guess selective memory is a facet of old age. Additionally that number makes no mention of demographic change in age as well as 6 cities the size of Manchester coming in between 2018 and 2024 (maybe balanced to some degree by people leaving) but all of such people will increase the demand for4 healthcare having contributed zero in tax. Leavinga aside the fact that even in 2005 it was fairly standard practice for all the Indians I drank with to extend NHS care to their entire family on cost grounds. Adding the combined population of India (1.43 billion), Pakistan (241 million) and Bangladesh (173 million) adds in 1.8 billion people eligible for NHS care. Of course that’s an exaggerated figure but its only marginally less absurd than his next paragraph.
The number of GPs in England has fallen from 28,368 (excluding trainees) to 27,839. It is true that the number of non-GP medical staff in GP practices has grown, as has also been the case in hospitals, but they are not alternatives to each other. The skilled resources to meet demand are falling whilst demand is rising, and not because of population growth, which is a minor part of this.
Population growth is a ‘minor part of it’ – really. Lest we forget the above calculations only consider the subcontinent. I haven’t factored in the rest of Asia, Africa or Eastern Europe – does this really have ‘no impact on demand’? In terms of GP demand then that would mean a lack of supply also. No coincidence that many trained doctors are moving abroad given conditions in the NHS.
The solution to the problem with the NHS has to be to supply it with more resources. People want those resources because they are creating the demand for its services. That is a simple equation to explain. And if more tax is required. As a result, to counter the otherwise inflationary impact of that new spending, so be it: that is what the UK economy really wants.
So in fairness he does actually consider the taxation angle later on in the post. He never stops to consider that when taxes are at their highest level for over 4 decades, and the administration administering a leviathan of this size is, I still maintain, the worst government in recorded human history it might be time to consider an alternative approach?
What the UK economy does not need is more sick and dying people waiting for care.
Then stop additional demand being created by a city the size of Birmingham coming in, whose demand is so great they are getting, as Reform Uk says, Free private healthcare that British citizens can’t afford.
And nor does it need far-right politicians suggesting this problem is created by migration when very obviously it is not, as the data shows.
It blatantly is created by excessive demands caused by migration. That is not the sole cause I’d agree. I’d argue lifestyle changes, demographic amendments in terms of the age profile of the population also contribute. However, to say migration has no impact is manifestly false, albeit typical of Extreme Left academics and Politicians.
Instead, what we need are politicians who will explain:
How they will meet the demand for healthcare
Reduce migration. Switch to an insurance based system as in continental Europe. Incentivise people to be healthier, whether through cheaper premiums or reductions in their overall tax burden. Politicians who will explain that there is no more money in the pot, that MMT is a dangerous fiction, and that for those who are completely and voluntarily dependent on the state, there’ll not be much more than a soup kitchen going forward and that housing will be as a matter of course allocated to people who are working and who are not a voluntary burden on the state.
How they will recruit the people required by the NHS
Increase the number of medical schools. Limit the BMA right to run a closed shop. outsource administration of the Healthcare system to private sector operators.
How they will change the NHS so that trained people want to continue working for it
As above – switch to a European healthcare system. Limit healthcare to British citizens and those non- British workers eligible for it. Deportation// remigration of all illegals to Kazakhstan/ Uzbekistan/ Rwanda/ Botswana while their asylum claims are checked. Redirection of the entire DFID budget to construct offshore camps in those locations. Change the Human rights act to apply only to British citizens. Strike off all lawyers using the act frivolously.
How they will put under-used resources – like the unemployed GPs that there are in the UK now – back to work?
There’s a load of underemployed GPs in the UK right now?? You could of course lift the cap on pensions that prevents a lot of public sector workers staying on past their 50s.
None of this is hard. It all comes down to meeting the needs of people who would be willing to pay if only they got what they wanted.
You want to charge for healthcare now? The notion that healthcare isn’t hard is one that is shockingly naive. It’s one of the most challenging of all policy areas. The idea that simply adding more money in the absence of systemic change is the solution is embarrassing in a 21 year old. For someone in their 60s it’s frankly pathetic.
Why do politicians have such difficulty understanding that fact?
Because they are manifestly incompetent and lacking in any real world experience. A good argument for radically reducing their sphere of competence, not increasing it
@TW
You are imputing far too much honesty to MMT or, rather, to Murphy’s (flickering) grasp of it.
He would certainly argue that there is insufficient demand in the economy, and thus that money printing can provide what’s needed.
In MurphyWorld demand-driven inflation is a very rare thing, like unicorns. The inflation that we all actually see is almost always caused by something else, usually corporate greed.
“Population has increased from 66.4 million in 2018 to 67.9 million in 2024, or by 2.2%. Demand has increased from 28.5 million appointments to 31.9 million, Covid excluded, or by 11.9 per cent.”
Hmm. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to him that the difference between growth in official population stats and growth in actual demand for healthcare appointments could well be related to the number of people present in the country unofficially.
Population according to one estimate back in 2007(based on the amount of food purchased), put the population at around 75+ million. 67.9 million is a joke and everyone knows it.
p.s, TTK is saying Elon is propagating lies and misinformation regarding the moslem rape gangs. What lies would they be then?
It didn’t happen?
It wasn’t moslems?
It wasn’t tens of thousands of young white girls?
The police and authorities knew it was occurring?
The police and authorities did nothing to stop it?
The Government of the day said it was a matter for the girls (aged under 18) and they should be allowed to do what they wanted?
The more this cunt opens his mouth the further towards the exit door he moves…………
Steves’ lions and flamethrowers, plus lamposts and piano wire on standby. Please…..
Murphy’s argument is that suffering can be removed by the Government creating money and paying for whatever is needed. Great. My suffering is caused by not having a million quid in my back pocket and all the trappings of luxury that would buy. Yes the Government could create that money and give it to me with little impact. Do that for everyone and everyone has money to spend but no extra resources available to buy what they desire to alleviate their “suffering”. Lots of money and nothing to buy with it means inflation and no end to suffering.
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”
“The Gods of the Copybook Headings”, Rudyard Kipling (1919)