GP Gatekeepers

Posted on March 22, 2018 by john graham

At the start of this month, I wrote about GP’s being at the front line of the NHS and their role as gatekeepers to other clinicians.     Now some of the most talented managers in the Clinical Commissioning Groups have come up with a way of reducing referrals to consultants and other hospital services.

It is an idea worthy of the Last Laugh Looney Party 🙂

They are going to pay GP’s NOT to refer patients to hospital.  Wow !   Who could have thought of that ?     Breaking the link between GP’s and hospitals will save a shed load of money.

The GP’s aren’t too happy about it, but you have to agree, it is a unique idea for keeping the NHS within budget.     Of course there may be  some slight consequential damage.    A few people may die before they get old.

Some people might try and get around the new system, by calling  999 for an ambulance to go direct to hospital.     However, the cleaver NHS managers have a plan for that.     Double check-in!    The ambulance will take you to the GP surgery first, where your GP will have an opportunity to explain that he will lose his bonus if you go into hospital.

When these very cleaver NHS managers put their minds to it, I am sure they will be able to come up with a lot more ideas to save money.   Initially they will be going to a luxury NHS think tank in the ski resort of Davos in Switzerland to clear their heads and get away from the incredible pressures of being a manager in the NHS.

I will report back on the progress they are making —— on the thinking —— not the skiing.

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Another Benefit Loophole

Posted on March 20, 2018 by john graham

This is a continuation of my blogs on welfare benefits.   ( You can see all the posts on this subject by clicking on “Welfare Benefits “ in the Tag Cloud )

Now I am becoming a well read benefits expert, I think I have found another source of riches in the 5772 pages of the Government website guide to welfare benefits.    If I have got it wrong, no doubt they will tell me soon enough, because I must admit I was not expecting  to find this much needed benefit.

It’s BRACERS for holding up my trousers.    It comes under Health Benefits on page 4364 and is a grant for fabric support.    I asume this includes bracers.    Quite an uplifting surprise really !    Now I have lost a bit of weight, by following the ‘five fruit a day’ Government advice on healthy eating, I suppose it is only fair that the State should pay for braces or alternatively they could buy me a new pair of trousers 😀

One other pleasant surprise for all follically challenged men is on page 4365 sub- paragraph 7.   Free WIGS.   Obviously to keep your head warm in the Cold Weather Payment days of winter, when the temperature is below zero for 7 consecutive days —— within 10 miles of your house —- unless you live in Spain.

I am really getting the hang of these benefit payments now.   I did not realise how generous the Government was with my money.

My braces, trousers and wig will hopefully be on the way soon 😀

FOOTNOTE – Please note, I hasten to add that I am no expert and anyone reading this should not take my observations or figures as fact.    Hopefully before I finish this series of blogs, I will have raised awareness of some of the issues in the welfare benefits system.    If you’re intending to make a claim, you should go to one of the trusted agencies like Age UK or Citizens Advice Bureau.    

Posted in ELDERLY UK POLICY | Tagged | 3 Comments

LLLP SIMPLIFIES WELFARE BENEFITS

Posted on March 18, 2018 by john graham

This is a continuation of my recent blogs on welfare benefits.   ( You can see all the posts on this subject by clicking on “Welfare Benefits “ in the Tag Cloud )

The LAST LAUGH LOONY PARTY will adopt a totally new approach to welfare benefits for older people, if they are elected at the next General Election.   The LLLP starts from the basis that older people should not have to live on benefits.    They have worked and saved all their lives and should now be entitled to a good pension.

The LLLP approach will be based on the following common sense principles :-

  • Don’t take money off people, only to give it back
  • Give advice before giving benefits
  • Then only to people in proven need
  • Cut out as much bureauracy as possible
  • Make the administration local and face to face
  • Easy to understand, easy to claim
  • Not easy to fiddle.    Fiddling by a few damages the reputation of the many

We will engage the services of the Red Tape Crusader to sweep away the 5772 pages of existing regulation and replace it with a single page of A4 in LARGE PRINT.      All local councils will have to recruit a group of retired volunteers to advise anyone who has problems understanding the single page.

This will of course displace thousands of civil servants, they can be redployed in the Brexit Department tearing up the European legislation in 27 different languages.     When this is done, estimated to be in 2028, they will be relocated to the Amazon rain forest to plant new trees.

FOOTNOTE – Please note, I hasten to add that I am no expert and anyone reading this should not take my observations or figures as fact.    Hopefully before I finish this series of blogs, I will have raised awareness of some of the issues in the welfare benefits system.    If you’re intending to make a claim, you should go to one of the trusted agencies like Age UK or Citizens Advice Bureau.    

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Loophole Benefits.

Posted on March 15, 2018 by john graham

This is a continuation of my last blog on welfare benefits.   This post illustrates just how difficult it is to navigate your way through the benefits system.   ( You can see all the posts on this subject by clicking on “Welfare Benefits “ in the Tag Cloud )     Now I have read through the thousands of pages of benefits bumph, I think I am just beginning to get the hang of all the confusing jargon.    So before I before I start my Red Tape Crusade, I will take advantage of my newfound knowledge.

When I was reading through the 116 page abbreviated, simplified benefits guide, I think I found a loophole !      It is one that must have been missed by the thousands of civil servants who spend their happy hours drawing up all the rules and qualifications that make up the 5772 pages on their not so very helpful website on benefits.

It is a potential pot of gold that could give thousands of pensioners a happy winter break in Spain and save them from having to claim for Cold Weather Payments.    It is about the little known TRAVEL ALLOWANCE to cover the cost of going to hospital appointments.

It is buried in the section on health benefits.     Here is how to claim it :-

  • First of all, you need to get yourself a hospital appointment —— just go and talk to your GP for more than 10 minutes about your poorly toe and keep going on until they send you for an X-ray or something.    Now this is how you get what is called your Passport Benefit, if I have understood it right.
  • Don’t go to hospital yet,  this is where the loophole comes in.
  • Transport to hospital is free if you have a Passport Benefit and although they say it should be by “ the cheapest means possible”, I can’t find anywhere in the 5772 pages on the Government website, where they tell you which route to hospital you must use.
  • So book a taxi to the nearest airport and an EasyJet flight to Spain —- remember to ware a slipper on your poorly foot and it might be an idea to take a walking stick or a Zimmer frame, just to be convincing.
  • When you arrive you will have to pay for your hotel, unless you can claim it is a specialist poorley-foot hospital.
  • However, on your return from your winter break, get another taxi from the airport to your hospital appointment in the UK.  Try not to look too sun-tanned and don’t bring your ‘ I love the Costa Del Sol ‘ tee shirt with you.
  • Now check in at the hospital reception and submit your expenses claim for a TRAVEL ALLOWANCE !      It should work, otherwise what are Passport Benefits for?

FOOTNOTE – Please note, I hasten to add that I am no expert and anyone reading this should not take my observations or figures as fact.    Hopefully before I finish this series of blogs, I will have raised awareness of some of the issues in the welfare benefits system.    If you’re intending to make a claim, you should go to one of the trusted agencies like Age UK or Citizens Advice Bureau.    

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Demography Benefits Sequal

Posted on March 13, 2018 by john graham

This is a follow-on from my previous two blogs.    They chart the changes in society since the Second World War and  the introduction of the Beveridge Report recommendations.

Mr. Bartholomew’s book “The Welfare State we’re in” reaches the conclusion that welfare benefits have been a bad thing for society.    Whilst I accept there he makes a good argument that benefits have not been wholly good, he also acknowledges that in a democracy it would not be possible to remove many benefits now.

Having worked in the charitable Housing Association sector for many years, it has been my experience that many people are in need of welfare support to lead a reasonable life.     I am not naive about this, I accept that there are some who take advantage of the system.   I also think benefits can remove incentives to work.     It is also the case that some poeple are swept into the benefits system unecessarily.        But, most people entitled to benefits that I have come across have genuine needs and would much prefer not to be in the situation they are in.

So what’s to be done ?   You can’t turn the clock back.    Politicians won’t propose things that won’t get them elected in future, so they can only cut things by stealth, e.g. by linking  State Pension increases to CPI rather than the Retail Price Index.      Or by making things so complicated that people don’t really understand the changes,  for example, the announcement of a new much more generous State Pension, which first, only applies to newly retired pensioners and then gets postponed for several years. (You can see this storey by clicking on “ The £155 Pension “ in the Tag Cloud)

Benefits reform needs to be imaginative and offfer advantages to all generations.   It needs surgery to the red tape of regulation and bold, off the wall ideas typical of the Last Laugh Looney Party.

See next weeks thrilling episode

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Demographics of Benefits Continued

Posted on March 11, 2018 by john graham

This is a follow-on from my previous blog.    It charts the changes in society since the Second World War and  the introduction of the Beveridge Report recommendations.

The ‘you-can-have-it-all’ attitudes of the Baby Boomer generation turned welfare benefits into ‘ entitlements’.    Part of the everything’s free, spend now, save later thinking encouraged by every TV advert.    Saving was out of fashion.

This was accompanied by much more subsidised public housing and much greater liberalisation of divorce laws.   The introduction of the birth control pill also changed the attitudes of young people to sex.    The family ties of the previous era were gradually loosened.   The Hippy era had arrived.

Marriage became an option not an obligation.   So from then on  marriage rates have steadily declined from close to 100% after the war down to only half that today.     Birth rates outside of marriage rose from 5% in 1960 to 40% in 2004.    Only 7% of children were living with lone parents in 1972 by 2004 that had escalated to 24%.

That significantly increased the need for more housing and also since many single parent families were relatively more impoverished, the demand for benefit support increased.    To add to this unemployment which was less than 4% just after the War rose to over 10% by 1981.

In my lifetime we have moved from a society where only 4% received benefit and were generally frowned on, to now where 24% of people of working age are entitled to State support.

How can it be when society is so much wealthier overall, that so many people still have to depend on Welfare Benefits ?

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The Demographics of Benefits.

Posted on March 6, 2018 by john graham

This post is related to my recent blogs on welfare benefits, that puts them into the broader context of the changes in the demographic profile of the UK population since the end of World War 2 when major benefits were introduced.   ( You can see all the posts on this subject by clicking on “Welfare Benefits “ in the Tag Cloud )

This spans the period of my lifetime.      A baby boomer generation of changes in society compared to the Second World Wartime generation of my parents.   They knew the deprivations before the war; the worries,dangers and deaths during the war and the post war hardships.       My generation had it lucky, but were eager to break away from that history.

The book I have been reading is “The Benefits State we are in” by James Bartholomew. His broad overall conclusion, is that the introduction and escalation of the welfare benefits system since the Second World War, has been detrimental to our society.    His arguments are well argued and supported  by facts, but he didn’t reach a happy ending.

It led me to reflect on the changes in society in my lifetime.   I grew up on a post-war council housing estate built to house ‘returning heroes’, which they continued to live in for the duration of their lives.     My parents were married and remained so all their lives, like all the other families in the street.     They both worked in relatively low paid jobs all their working lives.   Going on “the social” was something to be avoided.    They saved up for everything, buying ‘on tick’ was not an option to consider.    We had lodgers for most of my early childhood, which no doubt helped pay the rent.

In my teenage years, I was one of the few kids in the street to go to the Grammar School. That led to more saving for my school uniform and my PE kit and my rugby kit and my cricket whites.    It was an expensive business going to Grammar School and I never did get enough to go on the school trip to France.   Still I never thought we were hard up.

So what’s this got to do with Mr Bartholomew’s book about the Welfare State?  Well I didn’t know much about benefits then and I didn’t know anyone on benefits or at least as far as I knew.    You were expected to pay your way, benefits was a back stop, which carried a mark of shame.    I am not saying this was right, it is just the way it was.      It was an era and a generation where everyone was married before they had children.    They stayed married, divorce was rare.

Then came the 1960’s, the flowering of the baby boomer kids like me.  We were going to change the world and we did.   Every thing was free and easy.     Free education, free health.    No more wars and nothing to pay.    We could have it all.

Don’t think about tomorrow.

Posted in ELDERLY UK POLICY | Tagged | 2 Comments

Benefits Book

Posted on March 6, 2018 by john graham

This is a continuation of my recent blogs on welfare benefits.   ( You can see all the posts on this subject by clicking on “Welfare Benefits “ in the Tag Cloud )

So now having searched around the World Wide Web  for days and not come up with any simple answers, I have put down my iPad, stepped back a century or two and bought a book on benefits.    It’s shorter than the 5772 pages of Government advice on their website.    It’s only 116 pages.    That should be easier to understand for an older person who hasn’t yet become a technology geek !     How difficult can 116 pages be ???????

The first problem is that the benefits in the book are not just for pensioners.   It has details of all benefits for all ages.     As I don’t qualify for child benefit anymore that’s a bit of a nuisance.    Nor am I sure that I’ll be able to claim for full time education at 71.       Still I wade through the book and cross out 38 pages straight away.   That only reminds me of how much I might have missed out on in the past.

Next we come to benefits that only apply exclusively to pensioners.    There seem to be a lot less of them —— only 23 pages.    They are about the State Pension, Pension Credit and Cold Weather Payments etc.    All of which I’ve talked about in my earlier blogs on this subject.    So I won’t repeat myself.

Finally, the most difficult section is the remaining pages, which are benefits that could apply to young or old people.    Some of which are means tested and some which are not.   That’s going to take more figuring out😩

You have to wonder if Governments who dream up the bewildering multitude of benefits, really want people to receive them.

I have decided I should go back to school and do an A level course in welfare benefits to begin to get my head around the subject.   Perhaps I need an education grant after all 😀

TO ENABLE ALL OLDER PEOPLE IN NEED TO GET THE BENEFITS TO WHICH THEY ARE ENTITLED, YOU NEED TO CUT THROUGH THIS  UNHELPFUL GOVERNMENT ‘so-called’ INFORMATION.     YOU NEED A MAN OR A WOMAN WITH A MISSION TO RECLAIM ALL THE YEARS OF CONTRIBUTIONS.

A RED TAPE CRUSADER

FOOTNOTE – Please note, I hasten to add that I am no expert and anyone reading this should not take my observations or figures as fact.    Hopefully before I finish this series of blogs, I will have raised awareness of some of the issues in the welfare benefits system.    If you’re intending to make a claim, you should go to one of the trusted agencies like Age UK or Citizens Advice Bureau.    

Posted in ELDERLY UK POLICY | Tagged | 1 Comment

GP Satisfaction Levels

Posted on March 4, 2018 by john graham

I have written quite a bit about GP’s since I started this blog.   They are the doorway to health services in the NHS and they are gatekeepers to NHS Services.     They were once universally venerated members of the community, but that view seems to be changing.

A recent report by the British Attitude Survey showed that satisfaction with GP services had fallen from 80% in 2009 down to 65% last year.   This is a substantial drop.     What could it be about ?

  • Difficulty in getting appointments ?
  • Time taken to see the doctor ?
  • Not seeing the same doctor ?
  • Shortage of time with the doctor ?
  • Too many pills ?
  • Not enough pills ?
  • No pills ?
  • Not enough GP’s ?
  • GP’s not available at weekends ?
  • GP’s excessively using Locum doctors ?

It could be any, all or none of the above things and every GP practice is different.    My own practice is excellent, but from press coverage in the last few years, not everyone’s is a good.   This survey seems to confirm that.

In comparison with a commercial business, even 80% customer  satisfaction would be worrying, but 65% would be disastrous !

 

Obviously, the service they provide is not entirely in their own hands.   The endless problems of the NHS undoubtedly impact on how GP’s are perceived.    Equally the increasing numbers of older people will be placing more demands on GP’s.

Posted in HEALTH | Tagged | 2 Comments

Death Benefits ?

Posted on March 1, 2018 by john graham

This is a continuation of my last blog on welfare benefits.   ( You can see all the posts on this subject by clicking on “Welfare Benefits “ in the Tag Cloud )

After a good night’s sleep and suitably admonished about my mistake over Bereavement Allowance, I return to the subject of  death benefits.   There seem to be quite a few of them, but I will start again more carefully with Bereavement Allowance.

It turns out this is one of the most puzzling groups of benefits.    At first glance there seem to be a lot :-

  • Bereavement Allowance ——- was previously called War Widows Pension, it has now been correctly extended to include widowers and civil partners.   You would think if you lost a loved one in defence of our country you would be reasonably compensated, but the award is very limited.   It does not compare well with generous divorce settlements or compensation for losing your seat in Parliament.    But hold on, it has now been replaced by Bereavement Support Payment.
  • Bereavement Payment —— replaced by Bereavement Support Payment from April 2017.
  • Widowed Parents Allowance —— also replaced by Bereavement Support Payment.
  • Obviously a tidying up exercise here, one benefit replaces three others to make things simpler 😀     So what is Bereavement Support Payment ?   

WELL, HOLD THE EXPENSIVE FUNERAL HORSES; CANCEL THE FLOWERS AND FORGET THE WHITE MARBLE HEADSTONE.    PENSIONERS DONT QUALIFY FOR ANY BEREAVEMENT BENEFITS.

At you approach the age of the Grim Reaper in you retirement years, when you or your spouse are most likely to need a death benefit, the Government is nowhere to be seen.    The classic benefit illusion.     Through all your younger days, you are entitled to death benefits, but when you come closer to your maker, the pot of gold disappears 😂

FOOTNOTE – Please note, I hasten to add that I am no expert and anyone reading this should not take my observations or figures as fact.    Hopefully before I finish this series of blogs, I will have raised awareness of some of the issues in the welfare benefits system.    If you’re intending to make a claim, you should go to one of the trusted agencies like Age UK or Citizens Advice Bureau.    

Posted in ELDERLY UK POLICY | Tagged | 1 Comment