General election 8th June

NAME : NICOLA STURGEON
PARTY: SNP

Born with Japanese legs
No pet owls

:joy:

Sounds like Nuttall wrote his own biogā€¦

Breakfast is cheaper for reasons. No second helpings.

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Hmmm, not sure about ā€˜truthā€™ even if I agree with some elements of what he said but others arenā€™t factually correct or only tell half the story.

Putting his political assertions to one side (I bet his employers will face criticism for this as it leads up to the election -

  • I agree on the long and unsafe waits in mental health. 6 months is common when someone triggers the at risk score. Iā€™m keen to see the DH set access targets for these cases as it does for cancer, elective treatment and urgent care - it wonā€™t because it will cost big time especially as mental health providers need significant reform as their cost structure is top heavy and not aligned to the frequency of peopleā€™s actual needs.
  • I donā€™t agree on his assertion about not being able to prescribe certain drugs and refer for certain specialisms. At first glance this sounds like denying access due to money but what heā€™s not saying is that we do need limits to ensure doctors are not wasting money (which they are) on prescribing over the counter medicines on the NhS which means that limited drug budgets are wasted on paracetamol, calpol etc when there are other drugs we could use this funding for.
  • same for specialist referrals; there is way too much unwarranted variation in referrals which again means that doctors refer for appointments and diagnostics that arenā€™t needed, and that specialists provide treatments with very limited or no clinical value. We need to stop this waste and use the money to fund faster treatment for those who need it.
  • the argument that we spend less than other developed countries and that this is an argument for more funding. Iā€™d agree if our care model was modernised. Sadly itā€™s centred artificially around 200 hospitals and the ridiculous idea of a competitive market. Most health experts including the Kings Fund etc agree that spending most of our money on the acute sector and increasing consultant led specialism will mean that by 2050 weā€™ll have to pump something like 50% of our GDP to keep up. Itā€™s wrong and most doctors and health professionals have realised that we need that money out of hospitals and into communities to care for people over the longer term with multiple conditions and invest more money in prevention.

Where I do think we need more money right now is to ease the crisis in unsafe urgent care (esp mental health), and injection of money to double run whilst we shift resources in the next 2-5 years. Although the NHS has been asked and failed to do this for the last 5 years, itā€™s still the right thing to do.

He sounds like a GP, in which case isnā€™t he more-or-less self employed and therefore not gagged ?

VB

Thatā€™s not how the Local Medical Council will see it.

This was the flaw in Landleys thinking, that GPS in relatively small enterprises will have insight across complex systems to reach appropriate commissioning strategiesā€¦

One of the flaws.

VB

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Imagine the scenario, youā€™re married with the husband being the main earner and itā€™s retirement time. As a child of the 70s he decided not to invest in a personal pension following Thatcherā€™s removal of company pensions, relying instead on their property equity.

They decide to downsize at age 65, buying for Ā£200k and using the other Ā£200k from the sale to boost their savings, allowing a modicum of comfort to enjoy retirement. His memory fails further and eventually his doctor diagnoses dementia. His wife, her strength failing, canā€™t cope so she buys in some help. Their released equity is forced into paying for this help at the rate of Ā£30k/year. Unfortunately as the illness progresses a care home is the only viable option and now , funds having dried up, Ā£100k equity in the house is secured to pay for care. Within a few years he dies and she finds herself age 73 with only Ā£100k equity left and a small State pension. She has 15 years of active life to go, a shame she wont be enjoying it.

That and similar scenarios will be played out in the hundreds of thousands over the next few years as individuals are forced into paying for private care.

It is the one reason I will now be voting Labour. I would rather take the risk with Labour and my job than the surety of Tory private care provision. We look across at America and wonder how they can provide such an inequity in health service, yet we are about to vote for the same principal here when it comes to care.

Social provision of care costs is the only proposal that makes any sense to me. Having seen first hand how they take the money when it comes to care home costs, this Tory promise to raid your wealth under the guise of a dementia tax is a disgrace. I see they now state that Ā£100k is a sufficient inheritance! itā€™s not an inheritance for millions, its a necessary bit of financial planning.

I so hope this becomes Mayā€™s Poll Tax moment!

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Iā€™m not sure whatā€™s changed tbh, when my parents were in care, once the cash had run out, the council picked up the bills on the understanding that the estate would reimburse them after they died.

And guess what happened, the executor received an invoice/demand for the money soon after my mother died, which they paidā€¦ This was 2009 btw.

It now applies to care in your own home and that adversely affects dementia sufferers more than any other group.

In a more Yorkshire based explanation,

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I think that if they simply billed on the second death, a lot of the problems would go away. The charge needs to come before the kids inherit, without impacting the spouse.

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Bobā€™s argument about a spouse whoā€™s depending on an asset to sustain them after the first death applies here. Perhaps youā€™re suggesting that the local authority should be able to claim against whatever assets are left, not when the care is needed but when both partners are dead ? There would be a strong incentive for the remaining partner to spend the money on wine, gigolos and song though.

VB

Exactly that.

I agree that there is then an incentive to spend it all on coke and hookers, but that is the case either way, and anti avoidance legislation will be needed.

I do find it odd that the left are against this tax. I approve of the principle of wealthier people paying more. Iā€™d be happy simply to increase inheritance tax (which only kicks in on the second death) - I hate the idea of wealth and privilege passing from one generation to the next - but nobody is proposing this.

We could of course pay for the care out of general taxation, but that means that everyone pays so that the rich can pass on their wealth. This is a genuinely progressive proposal from the Tories (sure, it needs fine tuning), and the left is freaking out. Dafuq?

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Except that I am not sure that it is progressive at all.

Firstly, under the current rules about residential care, the implementation depends on the Local Authority. If you live in London these agreements are almost never entered into, while in other ares (e.g. Southampton) they are common. Seems like another postcode lottery.

Second, it is incredibly discriminatory in that treats aged care as a distinct class of care, why arenā€™t the assets of cancer patients, or those with physical disability, being used? This is a breach of free at the point of service ethos.

Third, it favours the wealthy who can take out private cover against this kind of risk.

Finally, this policy must inevitably lead to securitisation of homes via reverse mortgages. Weā€™ve already seen how good an idea securitisation of homes via mortgages was. Why would we want to open our economy/banks up to the risk of another 2007/2008?

Not sure that the left are running from this either as there are huge efforts today to shine the spotlight on Brexit and away from these proposals.

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One of the comments:
ā€œIā€™m 71 and Iā€™m disgusted by so many agist comments; not because they are agist but because there is too much truth in them.ā€

This is the elephant in the room.

VB

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