I think this is a big thing. The NHS has had huge amounts poured into it. It's had eye-watering funding uplifts in the last 5 years particularly. It has been claiming it is on its knees financially for probably the last 30 years. I invite anyone to go on NHS jobs and scroll through the vacancies....yes there are some substantive medical posts and some obviously key support roles, but there are far far too many *WTF* roles paying over £40-50K a year.
'Eye-watering funding uplifts'?
Are you simply talking about the money invested in it?
Feel free to provide an alternate source of information, but this should get the conversation going. What possible reason -beyond greed- is there for THAT level of profit from private contractors?
https://weownit.org.uk/blog/analysis-nhs-has-lost-10-million-week-private-profits-2012
There's an 'eye-watering' figure in the next story, which once again has experts and professionals arguing against private sector providers. I'ver said it many times; they will cut costs in order to maximise profit and services suffer. This line is repeated here.
https://www.bigissue.com/life/health/nhs-mental-health-private-beds-spend-everydoctor/
As for your frankly flippantly dismissive reference to far too many 'WTF roles paying over 40-50K a year', I looked up listings for one specific Reading post code, and in 130 listings found very few of these positions of which you speak. What I DID find were plenty of posts for, say, a Community Midwife for which the offer was between 24-25k a year, a registred nurse for 17-28 quid an hour on 'flexible hours', and an Occupation Therapy Assistant (elderly care) for 23, 615k a year.
Meanwhile, a finance officer position at the University College London offers between 43,124 and 51,620k a year, a data analyst position at the Lloyds Banking Group in Bristol offers 57,546 - 63,940K a year, and a Finance Analyst position at GitHub, Inc (!!!) which is part of Microsoft apparently (and a remote position) offers between 52,200 - 96,900 a year.
I suppose it all comes down to perspectives on what is actually of true value to society.
I don't dispute that modern times require financial sector employment and experts, but would we really venture to say that a 'Finance Analyst' at 'GitHub, Inc (for the record, I find the term 'financial analyst to personally be a little vague?!) is TWICE as valuable to society as someone caring for our elderly people?
I accept that of the 13 pages of NHS jhobs available for the Reading post code I chose, I honed in on those specifically, and accept there might be a few jobs to question, but what I will NOT accept is that the vast majority of jobs I DID look at over those pages were 'WTF' positions, whereas I found myself repeatedly pondring what, exactly, the various 'financial office/analyst' type roles broke down to being versus the money being paid. It is, of course, a sector that can afford to pay wages like that for positions which are perhaps not vital to the daily grind in the numbers they appear.
Meanwhile, most of the waste in NHS spending appears to be in the private contract sector...once again, I'd liike to thank the Tories for fudging the NHS quietly whilst claiming they've been supporting it with 'spending'. And again, we need a better breakdown of what these 'eye-watering' sums have been spent on. IMO...
Would be both interested and happy to read a counter argument which perhaps teaches me some things I don't know (and there's plenty of those).
