To wish I could stop paying into the utterly broken NHS black hole

Having had a couple of things over the last two years I can understand why you are so angry. Some of the treatment I have had had been excellent, some has been frankly rubbish. The rubbish part was so scary. I felt that there was absolutely no one who would help me. I joined BUPA but I don't have young kids and can just about afford it. It's for peace of mind more than anything else. The NHS is in a very bad state and I think we need different thinking across the whole system from social care so people can leave hospital when they are well enough to be discharged to GP access. I do hope that things improve for you. I am crossing my fingers.

you're being unreasonable and incredibly short sighted

I'm sure the NHS has provided lots of services for you and your wider family.

But in the UK the HPV test is a pap smear, they just don't bother looking at the cells if HPV negative. So an unnecessarily invasive test for women, and just as labour intensive. May as well just look at the cells if you have them.

No gyn professional has been able to adequately answer this for me - if you have HPV infection and abnormal cells at 30, then biopsy (fine) and then HPV negative a year later, what's to stop the cells becoming abnormal again without another HPV infection/activation? I could test negative for HPV on smear but have abnormal cells, in theory?

You're misquoting the process. It's for those in receipt of a letter inviting them for a screen. OP hasn't received a letter.

I get what everyone is saying, but it's important public health screening policy is based on evidence. Otherwise we'd all be having full body MRI's every year.

A weeks wages every month towards the NHS - slight exaggeration dobt you think?🙄

OP, I hear you and often feel the same.

The one time I've needed the NHS - despite paying 30+ years of tax - it wasn't there for me. In fact, not only were the staff not there for me, they made my condition worse to the point where I very nearly died in their 'care'. Luckily, my health insurance enabled me to be admitted to a private hospital which saved my life.

I would frankly rather pay double into a PHC plan than pay towards the NHS. There I said it.

She wants the NHS now. But yes, great, we can always find something much worse to compare it to if we really want to. Always see the positives & all that.

You don’t just pay to the nhs for yourself. Isn’t it nice to live in a country where (for example) young people aren’t dying because they can’t afford insulin, or getting cancer doesn’t mean loosing your house. It’s actually better for society as a whole for everyone to have heath care

The system has been smashed by austerity, it’s been done deliberately. don’t give up on it, fight for it to be properly funded

“That’s the standard technique of privatization: defund, make sure things don’t work, people get angry, you hand it over to private capital”

Noam Chomsky

I had a smear as a teenager because I had worrying symptoms. Never had HPV. Had cancerous cells surgically removed.

Now the NHS won’t give me a smear because I don’t have HPV. Despite the fact I’ve already had cancerous cells without HPV.

The whole thing is ridiculous and dangerous. I want a smear and I can’t access one.

Yes this. Thank you for being more articulate and measured than me 😀

@TheSnootiestFox

Either we have a state funded healthcare system or we don't. Not bothered either way tbh but if we do then it should be good enough for us not to have to pay twice. If we don't, then super, I'll save my NI and again pay just the once.

I agree with this. In principle I want to support the NHS and I have huge respect for the people who work in it but it’s time as a society to face up to how poorly it functions.

Yes it’s great in acute care situations and if you are on a cancer pathway. For everyone else it’s pretty much unusable. Monitoring of general health and chronic care is pretty much nonexistent. It’s so difficult to see a GP in a timely fashion it just isn’t worth bothering with.

The vast amount of money it drains goes into dealing mainly with elderly and social care and chronic conditions many of which could be prevented if primary care was more effective. Meanwhile the cost of Alzheimer’s drugs now being approved would almost certainly bankrupt it. Which begs the question what is it for?

If the NHS can’t do any preventative care and can’t begin to address the biggest health challenges of our generation (dementia, obesity and other lifestyle diseases and mental health issues) what is the point of it?

We have been held back by ideology, nostalgia and lack of political will and Starmer’s government is probably not going to be the one to tackle it. But it’s time to face up to it and consider a different funding model. Enough is enough of the magical thinking.

What makes you think you're paying a weeks wages every month towards the NHS?

@KurtShirty Do you understand the difference between payment (Vs free at point of use) and private healthcare?

The former is still government healthcare. France, Sweden and many other European countries charge for things like GP appointments. That doesn't make them private. It just means that people have to pay for certain things. The same way people pay for prescriptions now actually.

Private healthcare is provision by private providers, with prices often largely determined by market forces.

I agree that the NHS needs more funding, but the country also doesn't have enough money to fund everything solely through taxation. Therefore, people have to pay.

However, this will never be implemented because as shown in this thread. People don't understand the difference and will bring up the USA, ignoring all our neighbours that have working healthcare systems
It would be political suicide

@TheSnootiestFox - yes insurance, and who in the US paid for that? Was it part of your job remuneration? If you didn't have that expensive insurance you would have been hit with a huge bill. If I lived in the US I'd have to get a job to pay for my insulin (I'm now semi-retired). My DD has MS and we wouldn't be able to afford her medication she gets here.
My sister pays for insurance for her and DD and it costs about $3000/ month and she still has to co pay for medicine/ procedures. Her giving birth cost $6000.
Here you could have never had a job or paid a penny to the NHS and still get treated.

Yes, I do wonder whether there might be an argument for just doing the HPV test and recalling anyone positive for a smear in terms of take up. Especially if you introduced home testing kits. You might need to balance that with the need for some people to then have two appointments. I think a similar argument about invasiveness could be made about wanting more frequent smear tests vs a less invasive more accurate test.
The labour intensivity is to do with looking at the slides though rather than the testing itself.

On 30k a year you wouldn't be able to afford healthcare without the NHS.

It has been massively run down by the Tories though and this needs to now be reversed.

YANBU regarding the changing to smear tests. I was told they needed to keep an eye on me via smears due to symptoms, but the system changed, I don’t have HPV so my cells have not been checked since (and the change happened earlier here than in England so they haven’t been checked for a long time). A relative had treatment for CIN and they did not have HPV. Stats are not reassuring to me because what if you’re one the unlucky 1 in 100 that has changes despite no HPV (and the CDC states a different percentage)?

OP I'm sorry you are having such a difficult time.

The NHS saved my life 2 years ago and I have found patient understanding from HCPs ever since. None of this has cost me or my family anything except the taxes we would normally pay anyway. It's not perfect but I cannot imagine an alternative which would offer decent health care to those who are not financially comfortable.

Me too and I can't afford to go private.

It's terrifying that those of us that were too old for the vaccine when it was introduced, are being ignored as if we don't matter. I've had friends in this category die from cervical cancer in their 30's! All because the NHS simply don't care.

I think the old smears should be available to everyone that didn't qualify for the vaccine, and the newer hpv test should be for all those that did. It would save much more money and lives in the long run.

The vast vast majority of uk citizens are not contributors, and will never ever in their lifetime come close to paying in anything near what they take ‘out’ in services a large part of which of course are NHS services?
So for all of the frustrations vented atvthe NHS most of us wouldn’t have a hope in hell of affording a tenth of what we need.
I also object to the Bashing of nhs staff, saying they are not fit to care for dogs! With that attitude I hope OP takes her credit card and sources Care well away from me and my colleagues! I am on ‘leave’ this week but have spent time every day catching up with work I do not have time to do whilst I am actually paid to do it as I prioritize patient care and will not rush people. That being said there is a years waiting list for patients to see us as demand far exceeds the capacity of the service.

@piccolorhinoceros
But this is because we have an NHS, and aren't set up for acute private treatment..? If we moved to a private/insurance model your A&Es, ICUs etc would be private and staffed by (current) NHS staff. It's not comparable to the current private situation which is basically for elective treatment, and diagnosis.

But the private sector model works for elective procedures because this is a lucrative area. This makes money. A and E is unlikely to make money and neither will end of life care or a multitude of other areas.

Insurance companies hike up costs as soon as you start claiming. Most people I know in their 60s are paying large amounts of their income to maintain their insurance.

It's interesting though. The OP seems to have seen a gynaecologist who doesn't agree with the OP's concerns about recurrent cancer. As many have said, she can ask for a second opinion. The perception of the OP is that she's not being looked after because she's not getting a colposcopy or was it a smear, she felt she needed. In the private sector, if your doctor feels you don't need an investigation, they won't fund it. If your doctor feels you should have something which isn't standard treatment, the insurance companies make their own decisions around the literature and may say no. Either way, it's unlikely that a private system would give her an investigation to alleviate her anxiety. Tbh, I've only really seen this in the NHS..

Private insurers rarely pay for transport, have varying levels of insurance, leaving many with situations where they are afraid of being admitted. The best insurance I have seen is those with a corporate package (more buying power). But then, when people retire (when they need the healthcare the most) it either stops or is extortionate to take on as an individual.

Private healthcare is no panacea in my opinion. Replacing the NHS with a system that requires a profit is always going to be tricky because a lot of healthcare is run at a loss.

"I also object to the Bashing of nhs staff, saying they are not fit to care for dogs! With that attitude I hope OP takes her credit card and sources Care well away from me and my colleagues!"

Look - you may well be the most caring HCP ever. And maybe your colleagues are too but I can guarantee you, not all are. I personally / or my close friends and family have had MANY experiences of both neglect and contempt/ incompetence from doctors and nurses.

I could list examples if you like.

@SundayBloodySunday But the private sector model works for elective procedures because this is a lucrative area. This makes money. A and E is unlikely to make money and neither will end of life care or a multitude of other areas

That's true, but isn't really relevant to the point I was making. The PP I was replying to was implying that private healthcare is inferior to NHS because they can't handle acute cases or emergencies. In the UK that is the case but only because of how we're set up.

@Prawncow, I'd love to see the whole of the graph you posted, but unfortunately it can only be opened by taking out a subscription to statista.com, so I shall remain unenlightened