AIBU to think the NHS is bloody brilliant sometimes?

They can. I had a long term off-label prescription from a GP.

Jesus wept, you sprained your ankle and had it checked and were signposted to where you could get further information and were also able to self refer to physio. I on the other hand, broke my ankle six months ago, an open fracture and a dislocation too. I was in surgery five hours after it happened and was signed off from physio yesterday. I have had four X-rays, one operation, three plasters and a boot and crutches, a wheelchair and a walking frame and a shower stool. They couldn't have done any more for me if they'd tried, even the ambulance was quick because of the open fracture - I got my first dose of antibiotics in the ambulance and fantastic pain killers. I even spoke to another doctor recently on an unrelated matter and she'd read my notes and asked me how I was coping now because the break was so bad and offered me a bone density check. That is the difference between a serious injury and a non serious injury and neither of us paid a penny at the point of contact. Lucky us.

Anything you can get done in the NHS can be done in the Netherlands, France, Germany, Switzerland, Singapore etc

They have better healthcare

sk the German and Dutch healthcare system is crap because they just have the same services as us??

Can’t say anything negative about the recent experience with DS a couple of weeks ago. DD’s treatment however does leave a lot to be desired.

I had pre-eclampsia, my daughter was born early and very small.
My dad has had prostate cancer for 11 years.
None of us would be walking the earth without the NHS. I’m very happy to pay towards it.

Also I’ve been a cardiac patient for years. My brother had to have chemotherapy quite a while back. My mum has needed support. Imagine our medical bills if we had the USA insurance model!

I once read an amazing story how NHS took to court a wife of a young man who wanted to switch him off, because NHS doctors felt he had a chance to recover, whilst she 'wanted to put it all behind her and get on with her life'. I was so impressed, especially after reading all those stories of Alfie and other children who the NHS wanted to 'switch off' from life support.

But we wouldn't pay that if we had a European/Nordic style system. How is that so hard for people to grasp ...

And it's not moaning, it's saying it's not good enough. The UK deserves better.

I'm not advocating for the US system. It's wasteful and leads to perverse incentives like people staying in jobs or marriages solely for the healthcare.

I just feel we should all be better informed about the different ways of funding healthcare.

$2050 billion spend on Medicare and Medicaid p.a. I think that averages to about $6,000 per American if I've done my sums right, although only about 40% of them qualify.

Much less of US medical care will funded after the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Insurers refuse to sanction medical treatments that doctors prescribe, even in the most blindingly obvious and critical cases.

YABU and for the following reasons
It isn’t free - we pay for it with taxes.
That’s a good wait time but by no means standard across the board. It should be standard.

Quite a bit of US care is state funded. Medicare and Medicaid are government programmes. The Affordable Care Act wouldn't have happened without the Obama administration pushing it through. I'm certainly not advocating for their system, but it's not entirely private.

I saw some Financial Times figures a while back showing that UK out of pocket spend on healthcare is rising sharply. That's certainly been my experience. I just couldn't wait any longer for DH's skin cancer to get sorted. The NHS had already been fobbing him off for nearly a year.

Course there is. Limited budget, NICE rations healthcare from the level of funding it gets.

Funnily enough I read about the case of a woman in the USA who actually survived a glioblastoma thanks to the advanced trials they have there and used CAN-3110. Had she been treated on the NHS she would have died.

Because it’s privately funded. It’s not bloody rocket science, is it? There is no rationing of care in the NHS.

The NHS has to ration out care. The USA is not perfect has so many issues but there are states who have good system. My American friends in Boston are happy with it.

The United States has roughly 4.5 times more proton beam therapy centers per capita than the United Kingdom.

I've had world class care from the NHS - but also I and family members have had care so bad it was life threatening and with Dad almost torture certianly extreme neglect and a lot of care that's in between those extremes.

How good they are depends on what is wrong with you, where you are - age (which I find worrying) and yes sex you are and when you have problems - FIL fell down stairs at peak time so had to wait an hour in and out of conciouness - another day they'd have been striaght there.

There are systems between NHS and US system and I do think we should look at best pratcise round the world and see how we can improve the NHS - and yes comend what they do well and try and replicate it wider.

I love the NHS. My sister had a ruptured brain aneurysm last year and she’d be dead if it wasn’t for them. Ive always worked for them and they’re great to work for

Yes, 'sometimes' is the key word here.

I've just spent six months chasing my surgery for something they should have done in a week without requiring my involvement at all.

Yes the NHS is fantastic at times

Far too often service provided is poor, disjointed with poor outcomes

We deserve and should expect much better overall, that why we need to move on from the NHS to an insurance based system like Germany/France healthcare system that has much better outcomes

Being free at the point of service is not something we should be grateful for when the serive isn't up to standard

The problem is, it's not called the National Emergency Care Service, and to stay healthy, a population needs a lot of preventative and ongoing healthcare (which if done well, ought to reduce the emergency admissions anyway). I'd love to see a cost benefit assessment of self referral physio, for instance. That's another thing, along with eyes and teeth, that's been largely privatised.

I think the NHS is completely brilliant at emergency care. Last year my dad had a life threatening emergency. Ambulance was at his door in 8 minutes, he was blue lighted to A&E where a team met him at the door. We raced up and were taken straight to a relatives room and once they’d got him stabilised, the care in Resus was utterly amazing.

He was in ICU for about a week with 1-2-1 nursing and I remember looking at all this amazing equipment and care and thinking how much all of that would have cost if I was footing the bill (beyond taxes). Thankfully he made a good recovery and I’ll always be thankful for the incredible care he got that night.

I mean… great. But it’s a lottery. What the NHS does reasonably well is follow protocols and pathways. If you turn up at the emergency department crying in pain, but it’s not immediately clear what it is, you can find yourself lying on the floor in the filthy waiting room for 4 hours because the health care assistant just took your initial obs and apparently you are fine and theres no urgency… There are no doctors in sight until they let you through the system of waiting areas.
( And no admission of fault after emergency surgery happens 2 days later).

It’s also not brilliant if you are old or vulnerable in any way and on a general ward. Care can range from mildly competent to downright negligent.
And we have all read the harrowing experiences of women on maternity wards, and the reports in the press of actually cruel and negligent behaviour by midwives and nurses that led to the deaths of babies.
On balance, I would take a sledgehammer to the whole holy mess and start again. If most of Europe can manage better health care for ALL then why can’t we?
It’s not a choice between the US system or our utterly dysfunctional one.

To add, I know they're a franchise so don't come at me saying your Specsavers are dreadful!