Buying things costs the NHS money

An ambulance service has spent nearly £10million on specialist vehicles to transport obese patients.

Over the last five years, 85 new ambulances have been bought by Yorkshire Ambulance Service to deal with the county's growing obesity problem.

In this article, the Daily Mail reporter and most of the commenters completely miss the point and just go for the easy option of having a pop at fat people, big easy targets that they are.

The new vehicles have the capability to carry oversized patients as standard.
In addition, 79 heavy duty stretchers have been bought - costing £8,075 pounds each. Six wide stretchers have also been purchased, costing £13,741 pounds each.

So fat people cost the NHS money do they? I put it to you that it's the people who choose to spend £8,075 of taxpayers money on a stretcher that are really costing the money.

Ambulance stretcher. £8,075 paid by NHS

Hyundai i10. Book price = £8,145

They are paying almost as much per stretcher as it costs to buy a small car. And we blame this on fat people? It's not the fat people that are costing the NHS money, it's the NHS supplies officers (or whatever they are called) who have clearley been sold a lemon by some slippery salesman who's probably pissing his sides all the way to the bank.

By the way, the stretcher in the picture above is listed at $547.40. The more expensive 'wide' stretchers bought by the NHS are costing similar prices to a small family car.

Diverse NHS supplies officers

The spending comes as experts predict obesity levels in the UK will nearly double in the next 20 years, costing the NHS an extra £2bn a year.

If obesity rates do double in the next twenty years, which is a questionable assumption in itself, it won't cost the NHS an extra two billion, it will cost the taxpayer, the people who pay for the NHS at gunpoint, an extra two billion, and it won't be the fatties causing it, it will be the managers who beleive this kind of expenditure on equipment can be justified.

Remember, the term 'taxpayer' includes fatties, smokers, drinkers, the unemployed, in fact everyone who is forced to pay NI. The NHS takes NI by force and chucks it down the big money hole. They are the Knights Who Waste NI.

Between April 2006 and last March, Yorkshire Ambulance Service bought 85 of the new fat-friendly ambulances, which cost £108,743 pounds each, amounting to £9.2million.

Firstly, £108k? Are ya kiddin' me?

Porsche 911. ITRO £100,000

Secondly, it's not as though these ambulances are exclusively for the use of fat people. They are for all people, the just accomodate the heafty of arse better than the old ones did. Ambulances are replaced all the time as they get older, and this is just part of the process.

A spokesperson for Yorkshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust said: 'Our priority is to deliver high-quality care and transport for all our patients and this is just one way that we are developing our resources to meet the needs of people we serve.

'All new AandE ambulances purchased as part of our routine cyclical fleet renewal are designed to a national specification and one of the features of these vehicles is they have bariatric capability as standard.

See.

This spokesperson also seems to be under the impression that the NHS is all about equal treatment for all. Good for him, but the way things are going with all the talk of denying treatment to smokers and the obese (another word that's lost it's original meaning), that impression does not seem to be a universally held one.

Some [other]equipment was also bought with £9,300 going on wheelchair, 5,000 pounds on other types of chairs and £1,750 on an examination couch for large patients.

£1,750 on a couch! ON A COUCH FFS!

A spokesperson for Leeds Teaching Hospital NHS Trust said: 'It's important to ensure we have the right equipment to treat all our patients safely and appropriately whilst they are in hospital.

A spokesperson for this blog said it's important to ensure you are not being duped into paying over the odds for this equipment. There's high prices and there's just plain silliness.

Those who get conned into spending over the odds on a couch have usually been to DFS. I wonder if they have a supply contract with the NHS?