NHS Access, Learning Disabilities, The Forgotten

I really am starting to despair about the National Health Service and how difficult it now seems to access it. There seems to have been a massive and very rapid shift over to digital access to services and it now seems just so difficult to get to speak to, let alone see, a doctor.

I find the whole experience very off-putting as the whole thing seems to have now been designed to prevent people accessing services rather than helping them to access services. We are both (currently) reasonably au-fait with the use of technology for many of the things we now access and generally things run smoothly where they have been designed for digital access from the ground up. The NHS is different, it just seems to have had technology forced upon it and things just seem to be bolted on without real consideration for the users of the service.

If we consider my sister who had a learning disability as well as many other problems. It was impossible for her to use even telephone services and she would simply put the telephone down if she was faced with a system where she has to choose between various options. If the option exists, which it doesn’t always, to wait to speak to someone she would give up if nothing happened, even if she could hear properly. Faced with a twenty minute wait for someone to speak to her my sister would simply give up, there are many thousands like her.

It seems to be forgotten that there are many people who cannot and do not want to deal with largely mechanised and digitised service provision. There are still many who cannot use and access online services and these people are becoming the forgotten members of society when it comes to accessing today’s health services.

I think far more thought, care and planning needs to be given to the introduction of automated and online access to health and social care services. The needs of the struggling and the vulnerable need to be at the front of the minds of the systems designers. If the vulnerable groups can use services and access them conveniently then the able will have no problem, the reverse is not true.

Borrow From Yourself

There is an increasing trend these days for people to pay for things like house insurance, car insurance, maintenance contracts etc. etc. using a twelve monthly payments system to spread the cost of household and other bills. I think, in fact, that this has pretty much become the default option for many people, it is certainly convenient and can take the sting out of household bills.

The problem with these arrangements is that they are essentially credit agreements and as we all know they almost always end up costing a lot more than a one off payment with the difference between the one off payment and the 12x monthly payment going as profit to the credit provider. We may not like this arrangement but that doesn’t stop us using it.

In these days of low interest rates for savers, taking out a credit agreement to pay for these things does not make sense if you can afford to pay the cost up front though I do of course accept that this may not be an option for a lot of people. However, it may be an option for more people than may think this to be the case if you borrow from yourself instead of borrowing from a credit company.

In order to do this you need to have available at least some savings but these savings need be quite modest, just enough to cover the cost of the initial payment. Remember, this IS worth it, depending on your car insurance premium and credit history for example, choosing to pay monthly can add up to an extra 20% on the cost of your insurance over the year.

In today’s climate let’s say you have managed to put away £1000 and that you have this in a typical savings account, this might pay 3% interest over a year, £30. If you can reduce the costs of your various policies by more than £30 by paying up front from your £1000 you are always better off.

A far better thing to do when your bill comes in, if you do have a little bit saved up, is to borrow from yourself. Once you have found the best deal for your insurance or whatever, pay it up front from your savings and completely avoid credit charges, arrangement fees etc. This might feel like a difficult thing to do but financially it is a far better approach.

What you then do is divide the cost of the insurance you have paid up front into 12 equal instalments and transfer that monthly sum by standing order into your savings account from your current account. So, at the end of the year you have paid 12 instalments from your current account and your savings account is replenished but you have not paid any credit charges.

This way you are borrowing from yourself and still paying off the premium monthly from your current account but not paying credit company charges etc. This approach can save hundreds of pounds if you are able to apply it to a number of payments which you might have in the past paid by monthly instalments using a credit agreement. It really does pay to use your own savings, however modest, to avoid credit agreements, you just pay yourself back instead of a credit provider.

Sainsbury’s - When Is A Bargain A Bargain?

Who do you think you are kidding?

This is the coffee we buy regularly and a little while ago we were buying it at Sainsbury’s for £5.50p. Then the price went up to £6.50 and we thought that was pretty steep so we tended to buy it elsewhere, things stayed this way for a while.

Then came “Nectar Pricing” and lo and behold the price to non-cardholders was £6.50p but we lucky few who held the cherished card were then able to buy it at £5.50p and that made us feel great - we were now only paying what we had been paying in the first place!

Whoopee!

The latest is, as you see here, the price has now gone up to a massive £7.40p for those poor souls without a Nectar Card but Yes!, the lucky ones who have a Nectar Card can now buy it a whole 25% cheaper than the full price, just how lucky are we!

Am I alone in thinking this is cynical, letting people think they are getting something 25% cheaper, when in fact it is the same price as it was not long ago and of course, Sainsbury’s will still be making a handsome profit. Do they think we are stupid?