Over the past decade and beyond successive governments have been subsidising the NHS with tax payers money. The bill is phenomenal yet it keeps failing. In the real world is this 'dead-horse' with so much innefficiency within it ever going to make ends meet ?

The NHS costs far less than the health systems of most comparable developed countries. The USA spends 14% of GDP on healthcare while we only spend 7-8% of our smaller GDP even with the big recent increases. Most systems in continental Europe are also costing 8-10% of GDP.

No system can ever provide everything everybody wants all of the time as demand for 'health' is virtually limitless, either treatments are rationed by what the system can afford like here in the UK or by what the individual can afford like in the US.

If I was going to choose a system that I preferred, I would probably go for the French model personally, it's by no means perfect but i don't know of any better.

http://www.ambafrance-us.org/atoz/health.asp

I wonder if anyone, very often have feelings on our NHS. Individually it makes no waves to complain however I cannot see at any time through the history of its turbulent past apart from financial cuts, the general public have not really sat up and said much. Its the inneficieny and waste of public money that grates me !

How, in your opinion, is the NHS inefficient?

It is, after all, not a business but a public service. Saying the NHS is inefficient is rather like saying that the army is inefficient. What outputs are you measuring?

Town Walls

Definition of the word innefficient : not efficient, not fully capable, not well qualified. I mean just that regardless of public or commercial sector.

Here is another Analagy. The Army in Afganistan is innefficient, it is crying out for air support

If youare measuring health 'outputs' like life expectancy, infant mortality, premature deaths and cancer survival rates, we do about as well as some other countries that spend much more so that would seem to be pretty efficient.

On other measures no doubt we do badly though and the system is very inflexible and not very patient-friendly. Since the fall of the USSR and the Eastern Communist bloc, we are just about the only major country with a centrally planned, target driven, government led healthcare system.

Commonly when people talk about 'inefficiency' it's a shorthand way of saying that some aspect of the service has not reached their expectations. But surely the major issue for the NHS today is that it is being systematically rationalised, asset-stripped and privatised.

What are the major issues in the media to do with NHS inefficiency today?

1. MRSA and other 'super bugs'. I'm not convinced that various appeals to reintroduce 'matron' into hospitals will have much of an effect. This is a problem that I put down squarely on the contracting out of cleaning services in the 1980s, leading to under-staffing and a lack of continuity in hospital hygiene.

2. The cost of new drugs. A good example is Herceptin - Sample headline: 'Breast cancer sufferers condemned to death by callous hospital bosses', etc. etc. It's now pretty well established that the drug companies making Herceptin are behind this rash of media interest. Having to wait for the completion of Herceptin's full clinical trials is such a drag on profits. Good primary healthcare doesn't require drug companies' glitzy new products.

3. Hospital closures / staff redundancies - predictably this is what happens when the private sector arrive on the scene. PFI arrangements lead to a concentration of services on one site with the closure and sale of the rest (the attempted closure of Ludlow and Whitchurch in Shropshire, and the downgrading of Kidderminster Hospital and the concentration of services at Worcester being 2 good local examples)

The idea that the only other countries with a centralised healthcare system were the USSR and the Eastern Bloc plays straight into the hands of the the Tories, who apparently 'see no limits to the role of the private sector in the NHS'.

Of course, there's no earthly reason why the NHS needs to be micro-managed by politicians, and nor does it need to be in its current state of permanent revolution caused by a deluge of new initiatives and policies. The NHS wasn't like that before the 1980s, after all.

David Cameron has promised that the NHS will be safe in Conservative hands, if he takes the Party back into power at the next election.

What kind of a statement is that? Most tory Mp's seem quite 'slimey' 'slippery 'types to me which means in their hands it would be more like a wet fish!

Let's not forget though that it is Labour who are currently privatising great chunks of the NHS.

Personally I feel sucessive governments use the NHS as an election tool, get into power and watch it fail

I know. It's shameful.

I'd agree, especially as they have now since given away what powers they once had to the EU, the US and various fly by night private utility firms, the NHS and the education system are about the only two things that politicians have left to tinker with.

Personally, I don't have a problem with private service providers so long as the 'free at the point of use' principle is maintained. It works well in other countries and we've had private businesses (GP's) working as part of the NHS since it was founded.

Please dont lets get onto GP's. In my opinion a glorified referrall service funded by the NHS (us taxpayers) With most GP's fearing to be sued unable to come to a diagnosis other than saw throat or common cold telling patients to 'let it take its course 'or asking for a second opinion from a consultant referrall. I'd rather talk to a computer regarding my ailments !