Socialism. Fed up with NHS waiting times? It’s even worse in the US | Mary O’Hara | Society. I have a lot of information about my primary care physician (GP to British readers). Because the private insurance company publishes it, I’m aware of what university she attended, what degrees she has and I even know her hobbies. But we’ve never actually met. There have been many trips to see the doctor over the past year that I have lived in Los Angeles, but I’ve never managed to get an appointment with the US equivalent of my GP when I needed it, instead being directed to the equivalent of a locum. The shortest waiting time offered to see my designated doctor was five weeks. In the UK, there are certainly plenty of reports about how overstretched and underfunded GP and A&E services are.
When it comes to healthcare – primary or otherwise – waiting times are never far from public consciousness, especially in the UK where targets are built into the system and fluctuations or strains on access regularly hit the headlines. Overview of the UK population - Office for National Statistics. This report gives an overview of the UK population. It examines the size and characteristics of the UK population: showing how the UK population has changed, how it is projected to change, what has caused it to change and how its characteristics are changing. It also compares the growth of the UK population with other European countries. This is a quarterly report and contains the most recently published statistics. While the report is primarily concerned with the UK picture, it does contain a brief exploration of subnational variation in population statistics.
Back to table of contents The UK population grew to an estimated 64.6 million in 2014, its highest ever value. Population projections are also available which show how the population would change in future years if recent demographic trends were to continue. The change in the UK population, including annual growth rates, from the 1960s onwards is available in Table 1. Download this table .xls .xls Natural change 1953 to 2014 Notes: Age Age. The changing UK population. Understanding the size and characteristics of a country’s population is vital when it comes to planning and delivering services like education, transport and healthcare.
Population change occurs as a result of births, deaths and net migration (the difference between immigration and emigration). These factors may also affect the age and sex structure of the population. Part of a series of UK Perspectives providing an overview of key aspects of the nation over the last three decades, this article presents some key statistics relating to the changing UK population. 1. Mid-year population estimates for the UK, 1980 to 2013 download the data for this chart Million, UK population Since 1980, the UK population has grown by 7.8 million people (13.8%). 2. Factors driving UK population change, mid-year estimates, 1992 to 2013 download the data for this chart Between 1999 and 2011 net migration was the main component of population change in the UK. 3. Cohort life expectancy at birth, UK, 1980 to 2037 4. Ageing population | The King's Fund. Population trends People born in the baby boom just after the Second World War will reach their late 80s by 2035 – and are more likely to reach that age than the previous generation.
Age breakdown of England population by national population projections (2012 and 2032) From 2012 to 2032 the populations of 65-84 year olds and the over 85s are set to increase by 39 and 106 per cent respectively whereas 0-14 and 15-64 year olds are set to increase by 11 per cent and 7 per cent respectively. Source: 2001 census and 2011 census population estimate The projected change in the age structure of the population in England over the next 20 years Source: Office for National Statistics (2010). Regional population projections Regional population projections reflect the national trend – with the exception of London. The impact of the ageing population The impact of the ageing population on health and social care services is hard to predict. Factors suggesting that the ageing population will increase costs.
The significance of demographic changes for the health of the population and its need for health and related services. The overwhelming influence on health service needs is the age structure of the population. This recognised in the UK, where NHS resources are allocated on the basis of age-weighted capitation. Social care funding and the NHS. The impact of funding cuts to the NHS has been widely reported and discussed, but less attention has been given to social care – and, most importantly, to the inter-relationships of health and social care.
Social care funding has increased in real terms for the past decade, but there has been considerable variation in how that funding has been spent – in part because spending on social care is handled by local councils, whose circumstances vary. The wide geographical variations in cost and performance across a number of measures – for example, emergency hospital admissions, delayed transfers – reflect different relationships between health and social care. The government has pledged to facilitate closer integration so that people can receive a more joined-up service. Social care funding and the NHS: an impending crisis? UK social policy. Insurance. Companies. Health care in the United States. Health care in the United States is provided by many distinct organizations.[1] Health care facilities are largely owned and operated by private sector businesses. 62% of the hospitals are non-profit, 20% are government owned, 18% are for-profit.[2] The United States life expectancy of 78.4 years at birth, up from 75.2 years in 1990, ranks it 50th among 221 nations, and 27th out of the 34 industrialized OECD countries, down from 20th in 1990.[3][4] Of 17 high-income countries studied by the National Institutes of Health in 2013, the United States had the highest or near-highest prevalence of infant mortality, heart and lung disease, sexually transmitted infections, adolescent pregnancies, injuries, homicides, and disability.
Together, such issues place the U.S. at the bottom of the list for life expectancy. On average, a U.S. male can be expected to live almost four fewer years than those in the top-ranked country.[5] The U.S. History[edit] Statistics[edit] Providers[edit] Facilities[edit] Healthcare-Providers. Semo.insurance. Health Care Reform. HealthCare Reform. VPN. ObamaCare. Health Politics.
World Health Organization. Social & Public Service Reform. Setting the Record Straight: Labour and the NHS. So, it’s the silly season again, and politicians are once more gripped by an irrational argument. No change there. But for those of us who study history, the latest furore over the NHS is positively nauseating, with people apparently split into the camps of those who decry its very right to exist, and those who suddenly pretend they haven’t spent the last few years grumbling about how it’s in dire need of reform. Part of this division is built upon a myth – a boil that needs to be lanced. We’re so used to Labour politicians churning out the line that Labour gave us the NHS, that we’ve begun to unthinkingly accept it. When Ian McCartney MP celebrated Labour’s centenary in 2006, he actually shed a tear for the NHS as Labour’s greatest triumph. Anyone familiar with 1940s history will tell you that this version of events is a cruel lie. Revealingly, all three parties had NHS proposals in their 1945 manifestoes.
The health services of the country will be made available to all citizens. NHS managing bodies. Chapter 1 1948 -1957 - Establishing the National Health Service Chapter contents Chronology: the first decade On 5th July we start together, the new National Health Service. Message to the medical profession. Preparing for the new service For almost a century the government’s Chief Medical Officers (CMOs) had often begun their annual reports with an account of the year’s weather. The eighth year of austerity, 1947, was a testing year. Just before the service started, Aneurin Bevan sent a message to the medical profession.
Additional resources were negligible. In making allocations to the regional hospital boards (RHBs) the Ministry of Health worked from what had been spent in the previous year. NHS managing bodies, 1948 14 regional hospital boards (RHBs) 36 boards of governors for teaching hospitals (BGs) 388 hospital management committees (HMCs) 138 executive councils (ECs) 147 local health authorities (LHAs) There was uncertainty about who was in charge at region. Medicine and the media. The start of the NHS. The history of the NHS is that of an organisation established after a century's discussion on the provision of health services to meet a long recognised need. It appeared at a time when Britain saw health care as crucial to one of the "five giants" that Beveridge declared should be slain during post-war reconstruction. (want, disease, squalor, ignorance, idleness) The cataclysm of war provided an opportunity that might not have been taken in quieter times.
The NHS was noble in conception and has been faced on the one side with ever increasing costs as a result of advances in medical knowledge, medicines and technology, and on the other with the financial restrictions inevitable in a centrally funded service with changing management dogmas and political beliefs. Whether knowing what we know now Britain would follow the same pathway towards a universal health care system is anyone's guess. Below you will find a quick and simplified over-view. How we came to have a health service. The NHS: what can we learn from history? What was British health care like before the NHS? The organisation of health care in Britain before 1948 – and access to it – had significant drawbacks. In 1911, the chancellor, Lloyd George, established a system of National Health Insurance.
This offered benefits to the contributor below a certain level of income, and did not include dependants. Contributions were not graduated according to income but were paid at a flat rate – approximately half by the employee and half by the employer. In return for their contributions, individuals received cash benefits for sickness, accident and disability. Lloyd George’s insurance service may have been Britain’s largest pre-1948 health care system, yet it wasn’t alone in providing medical assistance. The public health system in local government also provided a wide range of services, such as support for school meals and health education. In short, Britain’s health care system, pre-1948, did not work well. What’s wrong with the structure of the NHS? Back to the future: healthcare before the NHS. Two television documentaries on UK healthcare before the NHS have eerie resonance with current moves to marketise the NHS, says Peter Davies How much better our healthcare system would surely be if it was based on those most noble human impulses—self help, voluntary effort, and charitable giving; reinforced, perhaps, with a diversity of providers troubled by the very minimum of regulation.
Such a blueprint might be vigorously advocated by the think tanks currently commanding attention in Downing Street. But of course, just such a system existed in the UK before the NHS was founded, and the ramshackle, chaotic, and disorganised services it produced left millions in terror of falling ill. Memories of those times survive in the public consciousness and partly account for the indestructible popularity of the NHS, whatever its shortcomings.
I remember a pre-NHS Britain. I don't want to see a post-NHS one | Shirley Murgraff | Opinion. I was about 17 when the NHS was founded, and I remember life in Britain before it. I came from a large family. We weren't well off but we weren't impoverished either, though being a large family meant we had to stretch our money a long way. Money was always an issue when it came to seeing the doctor. Half a crown was the amount I always remember, and when you're only earning shillings, that can be a lot of money. Quite a lot of people simply couldn't afford healthcare. The second world war crystallised the need for good healthcare. Politicians talk a lot about being progressive, about modernisation. The health and social care bill is based on three big lies.
The people of Britain have been seriously let down by political parties and the TUC in recent years. I'm joining UK Uncut's action to Block the Bridge, Block the Bill on Sunday 9 October because it's absolutely the right thing to do. The NHS history - NHS England. Since its launch in 1948, the NHS has grown to become the world’s largest publicly funded health service. It is also one of the most efficient, most egalitarian and most comprehensive. The NHS was born out of a long-held ideal that good healthcare should be available to all, regardless of wealth – a principle that remains at its core. This section gives an overview of the changes and milestones of the NHS in England from its launch in 1948 to the present day.
The early years 1948–1959 Read about the humble beginnings of the NHS from its launch in July 1948 to the first vaccination programmes and medical and scientific breakthroughs of the decade. The NHS in the 1960s The 1960s is the decade marking the UK's first major heart and liver transplants. The NHS in the 1970s Read about the world's first test-tube baby and how CT scans revolutionised the way doctors examine patients' bodies.
The NHS in the 1980s AIDS awareness receives a major push with the first TV advert being aired in the UK. The NHS history - NHS England. WW2 People's War - Timeline. Meet the real William Beveridge | Geoffrey Wheatcroft | Opinion. Although no punishment is legally ordained, few crimes are more cruel than intellectual grave-robbing, the misappropriation of someone's name and legacy. We have just marked the 70th anniversary of the famous Beveridge report, and in a week when the welfare state is said to be imperilled by the present government, its supposed begetter has been lauded on all sides. Shirley Williams sings the praises of Beveridge on Radio 4, while Will Hutton names him as his hero. But do these admirers really know about their idol?
A fascinating and emblematic figure of his age, William Beveridge was a child of the Raj, born in Bengal in 1879 the son of a judge in the Indian civil service who himself hailed from Dunfermline, and William inherited a streak of Scottish Presbyterian rectitude. He had a rather lonely childhood, before public school in England. Actually, Churchill couldn't complain. But here's the fascinating thing about Beveridge, though his devotees seem unaware of it.