By UPDATE: Join the Facebook group We Love the NHS.
The outpouring of affection for the NHS has continued today, after the #welovetheNHS hashtag was one of the biggest trends online yesterday.
Gordon Brown and members of the cabinet have been Tweeting, and the normally foaming Fox News is reporting the fightback against vicious right wing rumours and myths on the front page of its website.
It's not surprising there's been such support. The Healthcare Commission has praised consistently high patient satisfaction results in the NHS. Their last annual national inpatient survey showed that 92% rated the care they received as “excellent”, “very good” or “good”.
In Accident & Emergency departments, the Commission found that 88% of respondents said their care had been “excellent”, “very good” or “good”.
Meanwhile, overall satisfaction with the running of the NHS has risen from 60% in July 2007 to 73% in December 2008, and the British Social Attitudes survey showed the highest level of satisfaction with the NHS in 25 years.
Those are the numbers, but some of the personal stories on Twitter are equally powerful, if not more so. The hashtag was started by Graham Linehan, the television comedy writer who created Father Ted and The IT Crowd. Some of the Tweets are below, and at #welovetheNHS:
From @Downing Street:
Andy Burnham: Over the moon about strong support for NHS - an institution I will defend to my dying day, 2nd only to Everton FC #welovetheNHS.
PM: NHS often makes the difference between pain and comfort, despair and hope, life and death. Thanks for always being there #welovetheNHS.
Elsewhere:
@SarahBrown10 #welovetheNHS - more than words can say.
ashleytmasonRT @mintsauce Stephen Hawking: “I wouldn’t be here today if it were not for the NHS" - http://bit.ly/wBnvQ - #welovethenhs
BrendOTron #welovetheNHS because in a medical emergency, your 1st thought should be "where's my ambulance?", not "where's my credit card?"
slummymummy1 #welovethenhs Because they spend their advertising budget on health awareness and promotion, not lobbying to protect profit.
TomGreenhaugh #welovethenhs I prefer the UK system to the awful American model. It may be not be perfect but at least it is there for all.
SteveFieldsend #welovetheNHS my Grandad had a brain aneurism and two heart attacks and would not have survived if it wasn't for the NHS.
DowningStreet RT @NHSChoices #welovethenhs ...and here's all you need to know about it, its history and what you can get from it http://bit.ly/2mpYjK
lilmishap RT @wilmotatkins: #welovetheNHS I'm so annoyed at American right & so proud of our NHS that I stopped studying, got on twitter& posted this
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I hate the NHS for a very public reason - the scale of inefficiency is huge, and efficiencies could so easily be translated into more effective healthcare.
I adore the NHS for a very public reason - literally millions of people every year in Britain are given life-saving, life-enhancing, and life-changing treatment that unless they were rich they could not afford under a privatised model.
I hate the NHS for a very private reason - I am a proud socialist, but I do not believe that taxpayers' money grows on trees. The amount of waste, inefficiency, and bureaucratic obesity is undefensible. I am not a senior Doctor, but I have been around for long enough to know that raising these topics in the staffroom is not smart, or even likely to generate a debate. Increasingly, I find myself drawn to charitable work where strained finances somehow manage to cut back the costs of delivering medical care by removing many layers of bureaucracy.
“There are millions of people who are grateful for the care they have received from the NHS.
“It does them and the NHS a disservice for Daniel Hannan to give Americans such a negative and partial view. That we can access healthcare free at point of use, based on need, is something others envy.”
"Our task is to ensure that the quality of care is consistently excellent. And the service is efficient and responsive to patients. Choice, competition and information, focused on outcomes, will deliver this".
http://waugh.standard.co.uk/2009/08/gordon-and-sarah-brown-join-the-pronhs-twitter-campaign.html
This government has, as with other publicly funded organistations, poured billions of additional funds into the NHS - but the ipmprovement in the service has barely changed and in some cases got worse - because most of the additional resource has gone into paying inflated salaries or administrators.
The political leadership is dire. Running the NHS rests mainly on control by targets imposed from above, which as any junior business student will know, achieves nothing of value. Because anyone given a target will achieve it one way or another. A recent example was someone who required a scan and was, to his surprise and delight, given an appointment within a week of seeing a consultant. When he called to ask about the results after hearing nothing for several weeks he was told that he could not be given a date for their availability. They had a target of 2 weeks to do the scan from the consultancy but no target for issueing results - hence the delay.
We do all love the NHS - we just wish it was run by someone who knew how to run it effectively and efficiently.
It has its drawbacks but as a system it is the best available. Setting up a social insurance system would be prohibitively expensive and America's two-tier service where those with chronic conditions and no/not enough insurance receive very little is not a path I would want to travel down
Maybe you should raise an article about the 2.4 million unemployed and we can discuss it....
I do think that we should consider that if we are true to ourselves we know that in parts of the country there just are not any jobs. We should be discussing youth schemes, what we do for the unemployed, how we can mobilise people to give back to the community, I am not talking about benefits for work, but a reason to get up and feel valued. Why can we not make our society the focal point. This would unite us rather than divide us.
In my view we have far to many people seeking election victories and point scoring, just look at this mornings terrible leading article, that was straight from a redtop, with lots of rousing colourful language. Did it actually say anything factual and moreover that truthful? In writing this I think there must be a society where this informed interaction between competing political groups exists. Any ideas where that exists an what the success is?
This site is not about real issues and grassroots conversation. It seems to be more orientated to bashing Tories, jumping on bandwagons, clutching at straws to score political points and spreading misinformation.
May I suggest you do something different. How about mature conversations???
Some mature conversations about the grassroots of Labour from the last few days:
We have to be insurgents at conference, filled with energy and hungry for renewed change - here's how:
http://www.labourlist.org/conference-insurgents-hungry-energy-change-how-paul-richards
Next four years of conference venues:
http://www.labourlist.org/liverpool_manchester_bournemouth_2011-14_labour_p
The change we see through Labour government:
http://www.labourlist.org/the_change_we_see
How and why the grassroots can get excited about wind energy:
http://www.labourlist.org/excited_about_british_onshore_wind_energy_gabe_trodd
Ruth Smeeth's constituency tour:
http://www.labourlist.org/i_will_walk_500_miles_ruth_smeeth
Time for Labour primaries:
http://www.labourlist.org/prime-time-progress-campaign-for-labour-primaries-jessica-asato
PPC profile, Tom Miller:
http://www.labourlist.org/ppc_profile_tom_miller
On economic issues:
www.labourlist.org/chris_cook
www.labourlist.org/duncan_weldon
Meanwhile:
(1) There is massive youth unemployment (and mature unemployment) about which nothign is said.
(2) France and Germany moved out of recession last quarter. Our economy was still shrinking. Again, nothing about that from you.
We've done the NHS. Peter Bernard said it all yesterday:
"Labour has transformed the NHS in the last twelve years, by leaps and bounds. I just wonder about the agenda of those who seem to find it necessary, always, to knock the very concept of a NHS. It works as well as, if not better, than any endeavour put together by human beings."
There is nothing more to be said: it's unbeatable.