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Mind sharing in your own words why you support UHC Lash?
Mind sharing any thoughts on how we may increase support among your conservative colleagues?

Source: The People's Assembly (The one organiser the demonstration)



Source: Health campaigns together - a coalition to defend #ourNHS (The other organiser)

So both groups who organized the protests support the NHS. Most all of the people who protested support the NHS. And the protest was against the groups who don't support the NHS.

Does that about sum that up?

Correct. (Even some from the Ministry of Defence/Guy’s & St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust Germany joined the demonstration, in Birmingham, however.)

You and Lash are both right.

These demonstrators aren't calling for the NHS to be abolished because they despise it, but neither are they celebrating its efficacy. The two things can be true at the same time.

I think your analogy concerning children wanting candy for breakfast is quite apt, however, I doubt you will agree with why I do.

If the NHS is broken, and it appears clear that the folks demonstrating on the UK streets think it is, it would seem that, broadly speaking, only two possible reasons can exist for its current state

1) Insufficient funding
2) Administrative malfeasance and/or gross incompetence.

If it is because of #1, the obvious question is: Can the UK afford the system these folks want?

Currently, the Democrat-dominated state legislature of California is debating a bill that, if passed into law, will create a single-payer health care system costing Californians at least $400 billion a year. This is over $100 billion more than the state spent in total last year. Now everyone in California may want this bill to pass, and once it goes into effect they may all love it, but Californians have a history of wanting candy for breakfast or, more precisely, wanting very generous public services without paying for them (or at least not paying what they cost).

The Californian legislators have a history of giving Californians whatever
they want, even if it's candy for breakfast and then kicking down the road the can labeled "How to pay for the candy."

It's quite possible that the bill will be passed, the system established, and the people of Califonia made happy with their free healthcare for many years. It's quite possible, as well, that after years of being happy, Californians will become unhappy with the tax burden they have been asked to bear and the economic environment within their state that has been shaped, in large measure, by state government spending, and debt.

At some point, they may even be unhappy enough to elect representatives who promise to get the state's financial house in order. Regardless of whether or not the new batch of representatives are sincere or competent, it will be very unlikely that they would lead with increased taxes to pay for all the candy their voters so love, and thus in some ways, services will have to be cut back. As is most often the case, the representatives may very well attack the fiscal mess with a cleaver rather than a scalpel and if that happens, what are the odds that we would see Californians out on the streets demanding their candy back, and just as sweet as it ever was?

I don't know enough about the UK NHS situation to know the full extent of the underlying problems, but I've heard or read plenty of Brits who are not pro-Tory, blaming insufficient funding for the decline in services

(I do find it amusing when these folks almost simultaneously insist that the NHS is a wonderful system that is operating grandly. Either it is and the people in the street are nit-wits and cranks or it isn't and needs to be fixed. Those two things cannot exist at the same time.)

I would be amazed if there isn't some component of administrative incompetence involved, but let's assume the problem is due solely to funding:

Where is money that the NHS needs? Has it been redirected to other services? Has it been returned to the tax-payers? Is it going into the pockets of the Koch Brothers' British cousins?

Does the NHS still have all of the money it's been promised, but needs more? Where is that money going to come from? Do the British people all agree that they need to pay more in taxes to fund the NHS? If they do, then what is the problem? Even conservative politicians wouldn't have a problem passing legislation to increase taxes if it didn't jeopardize their re-election prospects.

Clearly, there is a complexity to the problem that I am not addressing in detail, but often that complexity is used as a means to obfuscate and misdirect focus. In any case, when tackling any problem it's a good idea to move from the simple to the complex rather than immediately diving into the thorny hedge.

I may simply be ignorant on this specific matter, but if the simple questions I've posed can't be simply answered and with a general consensus on the accuracy of those answers, there's very little chance of whatever problems exist being solved

Not kicked down the road, but solved.

Not really, there aren't any groups who don't support the NHS, not publicly anyway.

The protest was against the Tories underfunding of the NHS. (Not just the NHS, the entire public sector. The NHS is the one thing everyone can rally around, unlike say the pay of civil servants in the DVLA.)

The New York Times argues that President Trump lowered the shield of secrecy surrounding documents related to the wiretapping of Carter Page, a onetime Trump campaign adviser.
The Times Asks Court to Unseal Documents on Surveillance of Carter Page

You are misrepresenting the protestors. You are lying about the protestors. You are parroting Trump.

Stop trying to take me for a bloody idiot. I'm the only one here who's had actual experience of the NHS, (except possibly Walter.) You know nothing about it and you're talking ****.

Wow! Sofia Lash Goth is in the worst melt-down I've ever seen here, since Tantor sent me a death threat. It goes on for pages and pages.

Wow!

I have just experiences with "ambulatories" in the 1960's and Health Centres more recently.

I've joined a friend going to a walk-in, been on hospital wards and nursing home rooms as a visitor.

I put together a spreadsheet with pertinent facts, but I don't know if there is a way to share it in any form other than a screenshot jpg image. I would prefer to allow others to be able to sort and calculate etc rather than simply view a static image so if you or anyone else know if A2K can handle it, let me know how. Otherwise, I'll post the image (with sources of course )

Just to set the record straight on Finn's squeal, he is practicing willful distortion. According to this article in the Los Angeles Times, it would indeed cost $400,000,000,000--but only $163 billion or $200 hundred billion in additional funds would need to be found. That could be financed by a 15% payroll tax increase--which is the capital gains tax rate by the IRS (after all, capitalist fat boys shoudln't have to pay as much tax as construction workers).

Furthermore, California's budget last year was $183 billion--but the increase needed to fund the proposed single payer system would only be $200 billion at the most, and according to one projection from the article linked above, only $163 billion--the characterization that Finn used is a distortion because he's fiddling the numbers. As the article linked above shows, the proposal calls for tax increases to supplement Federal funds (which I'm sure the fascists in Congress would love to cut off).

Article in the Los Angeles Times about the budget approved by the governor in June.

Of course, this is Chicken Little material. The Democratic Speaker of the State Assembly shelved the proposal on the same day that Governor Brown approved the budget in June.

Remember kids, these are complex issues, and require a good deal more study than the simplistic polemic employed by our neighborhood right-wingers.

I wish I could help but I'm not sure how to do that or if it's possible.

See the L A Times articles I linked above, Boss. I trust the Times more than I do Finn's narrative, which is why I did the research.

And, of course, that proposal is not on track to approval, as is also shown by the last linked article. I urge you not to consider Finn a reliable source on these matters. I don't ever see him linking supporting material for his claims.

I suppose you could email with the spreadsheet as an attachment, but only to individuals.

It can be located on a web site and then the URL posted.

I'll be happy to discuss anything policy related with just about anybody here. Finn included. If he thinks UHC is a bad idea and can present his reasoning and we can have a discussion about it, that would make me quite happy, even if neither of us changed our minds (which we won't).

I won't consider Finn a source on anything except his own opinions and reasoning, which can be pretty interesting.

Fair enough--Finn was talking about a spread sheet based on "facts," and in my research, I did not find his claims about the proposed one payer system in California to be factual.