If you need urgent support, call 999 or go to your nearest A&E. To contact our Crisis Messenger (open 24/7) text THEMIX to 85258.
Read the community guidelines before posting ✨
Options
Essential support for under 25s
Essential support for under 25s
Take a look around and enjoy reading the discussions. If you'd like to join in, it's really easy to register and then you'll be able to post. If you'd like to learn what this place is all about, head here.
Comments
Maybe the area near the water is otherwise unsafe. Terrain, animals, angry men with guns etc? I give regularly to WaterAid, even when the water is nearby, it can be deadly.
Good point but bad argument, the flip to that is "no treatment" for kids or young adult who haven't contributed at all yet.
I think that you'd be surprised but for me to go into the full detail would require a considerable essay. So I'll try to summarise...
There are three key parts to look after the older generation
1. Prevention - eg living healthier lifestyles will reduce those "aquired" long term illnesses such as diabetes 2, heart failure, COPD
2. Self Care - teach people to look after their own conditions for as long as reasonable. This reduces need for NHS intervention
3. Pro-Active management - the NHS is working to become more predictive rather than reactive. So to identify when someone is going into crisis and intervene *before* they actually do. This will help avoid many of the admissions to hospital.
Cancer is an interesting one because it's so emotive, for obvious reasons. Try telling anyone that you don't invest in these services and see how long it takes you to hit the Tabloid front pages! Seriously though, the NHS will always invest in this because it's usually a real life saver. This is why I struggle with the concept of "assisted suicide". That investment would drop dramatically.
The real issue though isn't elderly taking up beds or cancer. It's the "worried well"... those who attend the GP for every sniffle, ring an ambulance when they could go themselves, those who go to A&E instead of GP, those who don't bother ringing the GP for weeks but then go to use Emergency Units...
A couple of financial contextual facts for you:
Each local commissioner gets about £1,100 per person to pay for your care. One hip replacement costs just over £5,000
Your GP costs us about £100 per person, per year. One trip to A&E is a minimum £55, rising to over £150 if you have investigations...
Failure to use the medication prescribed costs us millions in destroyed drugs and even more in resulting admission because your condition exacerbates... e.g. poorly controlled diabetes will lead to heart disease, blindness and amputations.
A little, but instead of putting people down, we're talking with-holding treatment. I saw this article today, and thought it was pertinant
I don't think so at all, I was pointing out that there is an increasing demand on a finite resource.
I haven't argued against providing that to older people.
But we don't want a situation in Japan where healthcare becomes so overstretched that someone is ferried from hospital to hospital in a critical condition until they die. (this happened 6 days ago)
I don't see why people feel they need to be so defensive about the older generations, nobody is seriously calling for them to be culled. On BBC question time many many of the older commenters believe house building initiatives are only there to undermine their own property portfolios.
Can't talk policy with regard to pensioners without it being perceived as an attack, which is probably why pensioners got a nice fat increase in pensions (that tapers off by the time we are pension age) whilst the tiny proportion of the budget eaten by jobseekers and welfare claimants has a hard cap below inflation.
Bear in mind when the nhs was formed a much greater proportion of the population were paying in compared to those simply using it. This trend will only continue. Without any foreplanning, the NHS will become a second rate service instead of world leading.
now thats my kind of maths
[url]Http://ind.pn/ZKjruA[/url]
The notion that because older generations have paid their taxes that they are untouchable is simply burying our heads in the sand. Their healthcare isn't paid for by their national insurance contributions - that paid for the healthcare of the relatively smaller proportion of elderly people a generation or more ago. It's paid for by the workers of today NI contributions.
And what happens when all of us are pension age? By that time, there will not be enough money coming in to cover all of our care needs.
The bill and Melinda gates foundation makes decisions on a clinical, years of life added and quality of life added. If you are pouring billions of money every year into additional cancer research to ensure 85 year olds can live to 95, you have to spend less in other places.
The crisis can't be averted anymore than a drifting ship at sea can't magically find more fresh water.
I personally don't want us to drift into a crisis where the government slashes NHS funding as emergency / basic only, and that private health insurance for the wealthy is the only way to get an acceptable standard of healthcare.
In my opinion, everyone will eventually die. There's nothing we can do as society to stop that eventuality and we need to face up to that. Getting the % of people killed by cancer down is all well and good, but it does just mean that the % of people killed by something else will go up. As society we need to face up to everyone has a limited life expectancy - and start focusing more on what kills prematurely, rather than just what kills. Personally - I'd take all deaths over a fixed age, e.g. 75, out of the main statistics. Not because they don't matter, but because realistically treatment isn't going to make a significant incremental difference to a persons overall life by that point and it just becomes trading causes.
I always a bit odd about how to look at things about suicide, specifically "Suicide" being one of he biggest killers of young men. With say cancer you can say it was the cancer that caused the death, or with a heart problem that it was the heart. It is a bit hard in my head to classify suicide as the killer. Yes someone took their own life, but it wasnt suicide that caused it. It is likely a massive number of factors, which all need to be targeted to try and reverse this increase in young men (and people of all ages from both sexes) taking their own lives.
Yes I imagine I'm just talking about semantics here, but suicide doesn't kill, it is a word that we use when someone takes their own life through what could be a multitudes of methods. What kills is frankly a shocking level of mental health support across the board, in the sense that whilst it might be ok in some areas, it most definitely is not in others. Stress, lack of help and many of other issues can effect peoples mental health, I sometimes feel that many people in the country see mental health as a specific illness when in fact the term covers a multitude / spectrum of things.
I guess after that little rant, my possibly unpopular opinion (in some circles) might be that its stress/problems/issues that contribute towards a persons mental state making them want to take their own lives, but its the lack of wider understanding, compassion and stigma which kills them. Suicide isn't the killer, the factors that drive someone so low as to want to take their own life are the killers.
I was just talking to someone about this the other day, these days is doesn't seem to matter if a problem is solely the fault of one person or many, people often look to blame everyone else but themselves. It annoys me that even yourself is to blame, even if personal action could solve the whole situation, the common trend is to let the other interested party do it all for them.
Also, this whole "I've paid taxes all my life so I should be entitled to everything I can be," we could solve that comment by banishing the NHS and letting people pay for everything themselves, but then people would complain about it. I like the NHS, and I don't think we should scrap it, but people should be careful what they wish for. As has been mentioned elsewhere on here, you've been paying all your life for the upkeep of the older and sicker people in society, now you're old (imagine you were) your care is being paid by the younger and healthier folk.
I'm generally rather a large burden on the taxpayer, because my wage is paid by the taxpayer, so it doesn't matter how much or little tax I pay, the government can't make "more" money by taxing me unless they tax me 101% of my wages. So not matter how much or little I use the health service or other publicly funded things, I'm always going to be a burden on the state as long as I'm in this job. Hence I'm appreciative of the help I can get if and when I need it, but only because I would need it, not because I feel I'm entitled to it.
We do, and 75 is the number which the Department of Health uses. It's referred to as "Early Death" and we are monitored on the rate in our area and expected to make improvements...
its what happens when as a people we are taxed to the hilt on everything . We are now being encouraged to think that people who want anything for their taxes are somehow acting "entitled" and unreasonable
Whos getting the money though, because it aint the people
and then we are emotionally blackmailed into raising money to make up for the fact that actually the west is looting the majority of those resources
Literally zero fucks given by the ruling elites.
The west has blood on its hands in the sense that we continue to deal with these people, but many argue that not dealing with them will only make it worse. Give the case of foxconn in China where the working conditions are appalling (they literally had to build nets to stop the slaves jumping off the building and killing themselves) but their standard of living is better than it would otherwise be. Like new graduates in the UK in media industries have to be unpaid slaves for so many years before they have an opportunity to become middle class.
as if i've got the answers to the africa situation????
No, im not saying dont give to charity, but dont be fooled thinking there is any reason for this other than greed and capitalism
As most electricity there currently comes from diesel generators this is a good thing for Kenya financially, and a good thing for the world in terms of pollution and oil consumption.
Of course they still have to build a decent grid, but at least they'll have electricity to put on it.