My brother and a friend of my wife fit the description in your first paragraph but my GPs’ surgery fits your second. I live in a village which has a satellite surgery of a nearby town practice and I cannot fault the service. Our nearest hospital also provides excellent service in both A&E and routine admissions but is stgruggling to cope with the constant pressure. A very large expansion of wards and A&E, currently nearing completion, will help - if the necessary staffing level can be achieved.
I read the NHS is a victim of its own success - having kept everyone alive for years there’s now too many old people…
All the other reasons given here also apply - particulary PPP - e.g. the NHS shells out billions for their ‘new’ hospitals - the private contractors can charge £20 for changing a light bulb.
Targets aren’t necesarily a problem - labour introduced the refereral to treatment target - 28 days - mostly kept at about 95% Enter the tories, who scrapped it and now people waiting years. Go figure. Happy new year!
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It’s a real lottery, isn’t it?
From the FT
The current crisis is a perfect storm caused by underfunding, under-manning and the effects of the pandemic.
But nothing is going “wrong”, it’s exactly what the Tories intended.
I suspect that it is already too late.
The audio is awful though (either that of my PC sound is dying).
Russ Jones puts it very succinctly here
The underfunding of the NHS is basically down to the public’s refusal to pay for it via their taxes.
The Lib Dems many moons ago were advocating a penny on taxes to be ring funded to pay for the NHS.
Then you can add in all the other mistakes like closing cottage hospitals, (which would provide beds for those in not major clinical need) and far too many management levels, no centralised purchasing to save money and the PPI.
As for staff, the refusal to increase doctor training and the ending of nursing bursaries has led to a lack of home grown medical staff, resulting in paying more for agency staff and recruiting from overseas.
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Not exactly, it is difficult in a non-democratic society to determine what the public is willing to pay, but you are quite right about the rest of what you said.
At one point in the last century the LibDems (or Liberals) got around 25% of the vote, but only about 14 MPs I think. Says it all.
Once, many years ago I received a serious industrial injury half way up a mountain in Devon and was immediately treated in the first instance in the local cottage hospital before being transferred to Exeter General as a non emergency case for a later operation. I have no doubt that had it not been for that little local place I would only have 9 fingers today. 
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rubbish! The public can’t decide not to pay taxes - if that were the case (as an example), tax payers without children would refuse to pay for education!
I basically agree with that as being a mistake. Many of these local hospitals provided vital services in the community and many buildings were donated to local trusts (AHA’s as they were after 1974) by benevolent local business interests, later sold off controversially and against local opinion. Where I lived in UK, there were hospitals donated by the Courtauld family - one a local general hospital and the other a maternity hospital. There was a third (the old workhouse) which was used for geriatric services and I know of many other in the general Essex area that were similarly closed.
I disagree with this on both counts.
There were initially 2 tiers of management in the NHS which replaced the old (and inefficient) Hospital Boards. The Area Health Authority and the Regional Health Authority. These tiers of management introduced many efficiencies overall and at one stage, there was talk (during Barbara Castle’s tenure at Health) of removing the RHAs which caused much consternation.
As for central purchasing, this was put in place with NHS central Procurement facilities and negotiated central contracts.
agreed entirely. The NHS is not safe in the hands of the Tories. Their clear agenda is privatisation to the benefit of their party funders and monied friends.
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I distinctly remember, not so long ago, listening to a medical rep selling hip implants and saying that he could negotiate with individual hospitals.
so…?
To me, that would imply a decentralised purchasing system.
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No, there was a centralised system managed locally by the purchasing department with the ability to make more localised decisions based on need against cost.
You’re suggesting a best of both worlds? Are you SURE this is the NHS we’re talking about? 
Not sure if this quote was in the videos Graham (I think) linked earlier in the thread.
I would add that there is also a recording of Nigel Farage proposing the privatisation of the NHS.
But it raises 2 further questions, doesn’t it?
First, as these views were known before people voted for right-wing parties (Tories, UKIP/Brexit/Reform), but still voted for them in large numbers, does it indicate most Brits don’t really care about the NHS?
Or, if people didn’t in fact know about these views, what was the media doing not pointing it out in every interview, etc?
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not in the least in my view. The average man on the Clapham Omnibus never really understood how the system worked - they “paid their stamp” and their perception was that they were entitled to use it as they saw fit.
Absolutely - I was part of it. I joined the NHS in 1974 and am now an NHS pensioner having served in a number of senior rôles at a level with responsibility for procurements. I may not now have worked in the NHS in more recent times but I write from direct personal experience. If things have become worse since in more recent times it is not because there was no strong and capable framework in the past but because of political influence and interference by those with an agenda to disrupt the status quo.
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Well the brits should be grateful they don’t have US style health systems. My daughter and her husband have coughed up thousands of dollars for petty things and even with insurance, they still have to pay some as there is no such thing as 100% full cover. Even the cat cost $8000 to have an op to remove kidney stones and her chihauha cross has just had back surgery to repair a disc problem - $10,000 plus. Good job they both earn huge salaries and have big credit cards but many people have lost their homes to pay for health care or just simply don’t get treated although I believe there are some hospitals that treat without charge. Imagine the outcry if the NHS descended into that scenario, the whole country would be homeless and in debt!
I looked on gofundme the other day (US high school pupil wanting people to but her a $3.5k saxophone) and was astonished by the number of people, obviously without savings for whatever reason, asking for funding for almost anything. The Wild West.
And yet many of those that would cry out voted for people that have advocated precisely such a privatised health free-for-all.
Ermmm…that thought is “a bit too close to home” Shiba.