Your pension to be used to fund the NHS from 2024?

[Alanbellend]

8 minutes ago, Non-Believer said:

Warnings were given about the pensions situation in 2006, it took them until 2014 to implement GUS

They’ll have ours off us in a flash though. By next budget by the look of it. 

[The Phantom]

13 hours ago, Two-lane said:

I assume that private patients have wards in buildings separate from NHS wards. It should be easy to calculate the cost of them, and how much to charge the users.

I also assume private patients do not have operating theatres separate from NHS, but have the use of operating theatres that have been constructed with NHS money.

How is the charge-out rate for use of NHS operating theatres and other equipment calculated?

Hi had an MRI at Nobles on Private recently.  It cost £500 and took all of 20 minutes.  Surely that subsidizes the NHS to some extent?

[Lxxx]

Maybe, just maybe, it's time the general public at large started to take responsibility for their own lifestyle and watched how they ate, drank and moved. Chronic disease is fundamentally an illness which is best avoided/managed by showing a bit of personal care and restraint. If a basic health service is all we can afford then maybe it's time we stopped expecting it to do what it clearly can't afford to. 

Extreme point but you get my drift. 

[The Phantom]

6 minutes ago, Lxxx said:

Maybe, just maybe, it's time the general public at large started to take responsibility for their own lifestyle and watched how they ate, drank and moved. Chronic disease is fundamentally an illness which is best avoided/managed by showing a bit of personal care and restraint. If a basic health service is all we can afford then maybe it's time we stopped expecting it to do what it clearly can't afford to. 

Extreme point but you get my drift. 

Very true.  Unfortunately it's not socially acceptable to medically shun someone who has taken absolutely no care of their own health; I wish it was though. 

I know quite a few people in the medical profession and some of the stories they come out with about completely pointless visits that waste everyone's time are mind blowing.  Some of this would be filtered out with better triage and GP receptionists. 

Interestingly I also know a few people without any medical training whatsoever that have recently taken up employment with the Health Services.  Stuff like ward assistants, Health visitors etc.  Tasks that don't really need a nurse or doctor, but can be completed by someone relatively sensible with a bit of training.  Thoroughly agree with it to be honest and it seems like a sensible use of resources for once. 

[Jarndyce]

42 minutes ago, Lxxx said:

Chronic disease is fundamentally an illness which is best avoided/managed by showing a bit of personal care and restraint.

Well, this applies to some - not all - chronic diseases, so I’m not sure “fundamentally” is the appropriate word in this case.

[Jarndyce]

27 minutes ago, The Phantom said:

I know quite a few people in the medical profession and some of the stories they come out with about completely pointless visits that waste everyone's time are mind blowing.  Some of this would be filtered out with better triage and GP receptionists. 

Interestingly I also know a few people without any medical training whatsoever that have recently taken up employment with the Health Services.  Stuff like ward assistants, Health visitors etc.  Tasks that don't really need a nurse or doctor, but can be completed by someone relatively sensible with a bit of training.  Thoroughly agree with it to be honest and it seems like a sensible use of resources for once.

Ask your medical friends how they feel about physician associates being taken on to save money.

[Moghrey Mie]

31 minutes ago, The Phantom said:

Very true.  Unfortunately it's not socially acceptable to medically shun someone who has taken absolutely no care of their own health; I wish it was though. 

I know quite a few people in the medical profession and some of the stories they come out with about completely pointless visits that waste everyone's time are mind blowing.  Some of this would be filtered out with better triage and GP receptionists. 

Interestingly I also know a few people without any medical training whatsoever that have recently taken up employment with the Health Services.  Stuff like ward assistants, Health visitors etc.  Tasks that don't really need a nurse or doctor, but can be completed by someone relatively sensible with a bit of training.  Thoroughly agree with it to be honest and it seems like a sensible use of resources for once. 

You can't just walk into being a health visitor without qualifications.

https://www.healthcareers.nhs.uk/explore-roles/public-health/roles-public-health/health-visitor

[The Phantom]

13 minutes ago, Moghrey Mie said:

You can't just walk into being a health visitor without qualifications.

https://www.healthcareers.nhs.uk/explore-roles/public-health/roles-public-health/health-visitor

Maybe not by name but certainly function. This individual used to work in a Nursery and now does house visits for babies etc she's not a nurse or midwife.

[woolley]

1 hour ago, Lxxx said:

Maybe, just maybe, it's time the general public at large started to take responsibility for their own lifestyle and watched how they ate, drank and moved. Chronic disease is fundamentally an illness which is best avoided/managed by showing a bit of personal care and restraint. If a basic health service is all we can afford then maybe it's time we stopped expecting it to do what it clearly can't afford to. 

Extreme point but you get my drift. 

Fully agree regarding taking responsibility, but we all get old and infirm - if we're lucky. That's when chronic disease kicks in, even among the fittest of us. Like death, it's unavoidable. The luck of the draw.

[The Phantom]

28 minutes ago, Jarndyce said:

Ask your medical friends how they feel about physician associates being taken on to save money.

I think its more to actually get staff and free up time for more real medical time for the qualified.

Don't need nurses to take temps, blood pressure, go through a questionnaire, tell me how to take paracetamol etc..

[woolley]

6 hours ago, Non-Believer said:

The only driver is short-term self interest. Look how long it takes them to address anything, at best it's all last minute.com.

Warnings were given about the pensions situation in 2006, it took them until 2014 to implement GUS and all that did was shift the huge burden onto present and future generations of employee and the taxpayer and consumer.

The only thing that matters is safe-guarding entitlement.

Yeah, but I have difficulty buying that. How is it self-interest to jeopardise the finances of the state that you hope will one day pay your gold plated pension? It really isn't safeguarding entitlement. The opposite, really. Unless you subscribe to the "something will come along" theory.

[Moghrey Mie]

19 minutes ago, The Phantom said:

I think its more to actually get staff and free up time for more real medical time for the qualified.

Don't need nurses to take temps, blood pressure, go through a questionnaire, tell me how to take paracetamol etc..

Maybe we need some 'barefoot doctors'. 'The barefoot doctors usually graduated from secondary school and then received three to six months of training at a county or community hospital.^[6][14] As Hesketh and Wei (1997) indicate, this training was often provided by medical professionals who had been sent away from their urban homes to work in rural areas.^[3] Training was not standardized across the nation, as different areas had different needs. In general, preventative care, vaccinations, and disease identification were skills taught to barefoot doctors-in-training.^[2] Thus, duration and curriculum of the training was adjusted to fit the specific needs a region's barefoot doctor was meant to fill'

[woolley]

7 hours ago, asitis said:

I had an appointment this week with a medical professional ( nothing to do with Nobles) who was here on a part time basis having been flown in and accomodated by their company. This person was asked if they were prepared to move to the IOM, they would be high earners, taxpayers with private pensions etc etc ! They told me in no uncertain terms that whilst the proposition looked attractive, on digging deeper they realised they would become older, and at some stage need health services. They told me not a hope in hell of relocating here, simply because the possibly needed future healthcare was poor to non existent. They went on to explain that although the UK health system was in tatters it was still far better than here, and this was a risk they were not prepared to take !

Looking at the future income and reserve draw down bar graph, published by government, it's difficult to see where income is going to increase , apart from pain for everyone in the form of taxes / stealth taxes, or indeed less expenditure ( rolls on floor laughing ) !

In terms of enticing professional residents, I think this is a snapshot of where we are, and if any of our elected morons don't get the importance of our health services, this is exactly why services shouldn't have been in the hands of Quayle, Ashford and Hooper !

Goodness me. Talk about risk averse. I'm surprised they even took the gamble of coming here for the day, just in case! I'm glad I never took decisions when I was younger based on the prospect of getting old and ill. What a grim way to look at life. We did what made us happy at the time, and largely still do. The Isle of Man makes us happy.

Yes, we live on a remote island of 85,000. It's always been the case that if you have an acute medical event, the chances of a good outcome are somewhat poorer than if you lived in a city close to a centre of excellence. We're an air ambulance flight away from specialised procedures in a number of disciplines. That's just a fact of island life that could never be changed even with limitless resources.

Taken overall, though, among my own friends and family in the past 10 years, Manx residents with similar illnesses have fared as well or better than UK residents. Nobles is pretty good at patching you up till you get there if necessary. Horror stories come out of every hospital.

Edited Thursday at 02:08 PM by woolley
fixing tautology

[Jarndyce]

25 minutes ago, The Phantom said:

I think its more to actually get staff and free up time for more real medical time for the qualified.

I think you might need to do more research, specifically about the use of “physician associates”.

Edited Thursday at 01:50 PM by Jarndyce

[manxman8180]

On 9/25/2024 at 1:39 PM, FANDL said:

Please do give the feed of @christhomasiom a read on X today.

It seems that after Treasury’s failed tax raid on low income workers in the budget, and Manx Care’s subsequent blowing of the enhanced budget by £40M in just six months, Dr Allinson may well now be seeking approval to steal from taxpayers state pensions in the October Tynwald with plans to re-draw (or re-align in civil servant double-speak) the existing terms of the IOM NI Fund (that’s ordinarily peoples retirement savings to be clear). Presumably to fund his proposed NHS levy to generate even more money for our inefficient and failing healthcare system. 

The link to the paper that is going to Tynwald is here:

http://www.tynwald.org.im/spfile?file=/business/opqp/sittings/20212026/2024-GD-0081.pdf

The relevant part of the paper is reproduced below.

Government has finally outgrown what we can support as deductions from our own direct incomes and the final raid on accumulated inter-generational assets that are currently ringfenced to provide for most Manx peoples retirement is now clearly in play. No doubt several generations of ring-fenced cold hard £ cash will be swapped for more IOM government magic beans in this proposed “re-alignment”.

 

So just for the purposes of stimulating a debate - I propose we do use the NI fund for other purposes and support longer term strategic investments (pretty much the same way as any private pension fund would work).

It has to be on the right things though....

So, let's say Government actually took the housing challenge seriously.  Build 1000 affordable homes in the next 2 years.  Taking a wild stab at build cost of £150k - funded by taking £150m out of the NI fund.  £1000 p/m mortgage (Government) over 20 years, £240m back into the coffers.

So at even a modest repayment level, you replace the capital and achieve a return over 20 years (when you wouldn't have needed to draw on the initial capital anyway.  Plus you have provided 1000 homes for our young people, key workers etc etc - and derived exchequer benefit from related employment.  You may even start to tip the balance on the birth rate if younger people can afford to live and raise a family.

Yes, you would get a return on the £150m if you just left it and invested etc - but at the same rate?  And even so, you wouldn't get the ancillary benefits.

I'm sure there are a myriad of models where you could offer mid rents and hold the capital asset etc - but I'd need more time and brain cells.  Likewise there are likely loads of other infrastructure projects you could use the NI fund for on the basis of longer term payback (airport improvements anyone???)

So there you go - I think we should use the NI fund to invest for the future - shoot me down.