From the Telegraph
Pensioners over the age of 75 will be guaranteed same-day access to a family doctor under Conservative plans for a “total revolution” of GP services in Britain.
In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, said that the Tories will deliver better care for the elderly population by committing to a minimum of £8billion of extra funding for the NHS every year by 2020.
The money will pay for at least 5,000 new GPs to ensure that pensioners who require care will be able to see a doctor within hours.
Leaving aside that I think GPs are something that should be scrapped and everyone should just go to specialists for most things, the idea that over 75 year olds should specifically get a guarantee on seeing a GP is frankly nuts.
The people who should get immediate access to a GP are working people and school children. 75 year olds have had their working life, have plenty of spare time and aren't the people who are earning the money that keeps the NHS going. We want kids to be getting back to school or being able to go out and play and working people to be getting back to work or look after their children.
And the only reason this is happening is because 75 year olds vote in such huge numbers and like most people, vote for themselves. Most of them seem to even lack an enlightened perspective that their children and grandchildren are paying for the splurging of government money on them.
So, if you're young and wondering why you can't get a home of your own, it's because you don't vote, and that's all the parties care about. They disregard those who think that they're making a point. If you have a YPP candidate in your area, vote for them, if not, find the least worst option. But for god's sake, vote.
Saturday, 11 April 2015
Why You Should Vote
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But Conservative politics are no so much age politics, as they are instead largely gender politics.
Most 75+ year olds are women, and most use of the NHS is by women, especially older women, as men famously are "stoic" about going to see the doctor, while it is a typical attitude of women to want to see the doctor right away. Even young women like the idea that when they will be 75+ they will be to see their doctor same day, as long as someone else pays for that, for example by "wasting" less money on "useless eater" unemployed or disabled men, which very popular.
Osborne's policies are nearly always to tax more or cut spending that impact mostly (usually younger, northern) men to cut taxes and boost spending that impacts mostly (usually older, southern) women. Including boosting property prices, as most property (and wealth in general) is owned by women.
This is sound electoral strategy at the national level because women, and of course especially older women, indeed tend to "vote for themselves", and so are swing voters for whichever party offers them more redistributive policies to their benefit, while men tend to vote for their "tribe", and so tend to vote consistently for the same party, perhaps hoping it will be all-right in the long run.
Women's vote is so important that Clegg has proposed to (largely if not completely) free women from the oppression of criminal laws, "because actually victims" or "because babies":
http://www.libdems.org.uk/nick-clegg-calls-for-fewer-women-behind-bars
"Abused and vulnerable women…crammed like sardines into crowded prisons. [ ... ] Too often, for too many offenders, prison is not the answer. It is not the answer for every mother left sobbing in her cell."
For Osborne going after women's vote and in particular older women's interest is very important for another reason: members of the Conservative Clubs vote to nominate the leader of the party, and 60-70% of members are over 60-70, and also because of that a large percentage are women, and usually property and cash wealthy women making a lot of use of the NHS. Men tend to die younger than women, and in particular property and cash poor men tend to die much younger than women, and don't usually become members of the Conservative Clubs anyhow.
«an enlightened perspective that their children and grandchildren are paying for the splurging of government money on them.»
Ahhhh, but that is easy to explain, it is intra-gender incentives and politics, where the gender is women, and it redistribution from women who have more children than average to women that have less children than average, or are childless.
It used to be that a woman's prosperity in old age depended on her investment in her sons as long term assets (her husband usually dying before her); so for example in some cultures it still happens that mothers work their sons to the bone (e.g. for exam prep) to maximize their profitability. This meant that a woman had a personal financial incentive to have children, in particular sons, who can be worked harder and longer than daughters, at least for manual jobs. The terror of women for a long time in the past was to alone and thus poor in their old age.
According to a perceptive woman blogger Bismarck invented welfare to prevent women from lobbying against wars, where they would run a risk of losing their investments in their sons (see "Saving Private Ryan") and end up desperate paupers in old age.
So welfare in effect means taxing the children of all mothers to pay for the support (pensions, health, care) of all women in their old age, even those mothers who have lost their children (in particular their sons in war).
But at the same time that means that women who have not invested time and money into bearing and raising profitable children get the same share of welfare as those women who have done so; thus redistributing from mothers to childless women in particular, and in general from women who have had more than average children to those who have had less than average.
That having children is also and perhaps largely motivated by the desire to have a pension investment is not only extremely well documented, it is also demonstrated by the plunging average birth rate in countries where women get pensions.
The result of that is that the increasing number of childless women or women with a lower than average number of children have every reason to vote themselves bigger welfare, including government pushed higher property prices and rents, at the expense of "children and grandchildren" because they are not their own, they are those of other women.
The welfare system not only in effect redistributes from mothers to childless women, incentivizing women to avoid the effort of having children, it also incentivizes childless women to vote to redistribute as much as possible from other women's children and grandchildren to themselves. "apres moi le deluge" :-).
“total revolution” of GP services in Britain.
What, just months after the last one? Why can't the bloody pols just leave the damn' organisation alone?
Agreed.
For some reason, this election Labour is favoured by most under 30s and Tories favoured by most over 60s. So basically Labour are taking the votes which would go to YPP if we had enough candidates.
MW. I have been heavily prostlethysing YPP to all age groups and it gets a positive response from all of them. YPP is approaching the 'Party of Liberty' that should attract everyone. Where it doesn't score is with New Labour's 'client state' and the Tories 'rent seekers'. And they combined are a minority.
I do not agree that GP's per se should be scrapped. They are a useful filter and should aggregate information for patients. I am a 'GP' in what I do and we refer on to all sorts of specialists after making an initial 'diagnosis'.
The answer, 'of course' is de-nationalisation and competition. Do that and all the access stuff and who pays for what and when will sort itself out.
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