What’s the point in the NHS?

And in doing so they leave more and more people to get more unwell requiring more intervention and testing and treatment that costs more in the long term and leaves some not paying tax for longer. Stupid strategy.

I’m not saying it’s perfect but I’ve had good treatment

endo diagnosis and a huge excision surgery with 2 surgeons. Downside was the wait was 18 months

I’m prescribed £500 of injections monthly so I can exercise (allergic to heat, exercise, body temp/pulse increase) and get seen for a check up twice a year

diagnosed with a rare blood disorder and given blood tests every 12 weeks plus a consultant appointment

Levothyroxine to keep me alive plus free prescriptions

free therapy/counselling after a sexual assault

emergency spinal surgery plus physio

I was a prem baby and wouldn’t be alive had the NHS not existed

I hate this idea that we should just accept the NHS as it is because healthcare is more expensive in the US. I spend £250 on NI a month. I would like a better service & don’t see why I should pay that & private on top.

OP you have to be realistic re timescale. My ligament injury wasn't too bad, but took a year to fully heal. Doctors tend to underestimate. I don't mean I was incapacitated all that time. To start with walking was hard but cycling OK. After just a few wks I could walk long distances and drive again, but swimming was impossible. I hardly noticed anything wrong until I got in the pool and found pushing against water impossible. Be patient. Good luck.

If it’s so expensive then why do they give away the crutches instead of collecting them and reusing after they are needed?

My husband had to have 4 bags of blood transfued or he would have died. Good old nhs

Yes it almost certainly would. Healthcare is a very expensive service to provide, but we are almost totally protected from the real costs in the UK and therefore the majority of people are shocked when they either decide to go private or need treatment abroad!

The NHS is currently understaffed, staffing is cut back to save money to save services. A+E is blocked with people who don’t need to be there and social issues. All a persons NI contributions would likely only pay for one admission- hope this helps

Do it yourself then if you know so much

What sort of treatment do you think you need for a sprained ankle with no breaks or severe torn ligaments?

That’s one of the problems with it, there is no consistency of treatment between different trusts. Even within hospitals, some departments function excellently, and others seem to be a shambles.

We went private because otherwise I feared he was going to kill himself. The crippling pain has a cause it’s not just pain the wait was for them to even investigate the cause behind it.

He started meds 2 weeks ago. There are many medication and therapy options for his condition. With treatment 90% see a full recovery to normality. We’re paying £500 a month for them after paying £6k for all the testing and appointments. Our savings are gone and now I have to work two jobs on top of my full time student course (in a healthcare subject).

He is 31. You don’t just randomly get crippling pain at that age for no reason but they seemed happy to leave him economically inactive and spiralling towards hopelessness.

Lol, you've eloquently expressed just what I was thinking. The NHS is our national religion.

Amen.

Are you eastern European OP? I find that people from there, and other parts of continental Europe, have quite high expectations of health services.

In the UK the NHS is mainly for saving your life if you get stabbed or have an RTA. Any walking wounded type conditions (whether chronic or accidental) and you're on your own.

The main purpose of the NHS is, of course, to be a surrogate religion now that we no longer go to Church. Instead it's something we can all band around as "Our NHS" (hallowed be it's name) and enjoy rituals such as banging pots and pans together for it. It also allows us to feel the righteous religious fury against its critics and especially baddies like The Evil Tories and Nigel Farage. The kind who would deprive us of Our NHS and leave us at the godforsaken mercy of some sort of satanic insurance based European style system.

@younknow you seem to idolise the American system, or are one of the increasing number of political activists who post on Mumsnet recently.

‘Is it the I’m alright Jack, forget about you’ profiteering in it? You do know people with diabetes die because they can’t afford insulin in the USA. People caught up in accidents, or even terrorist bombings, go bankrupt paying for their emergency care. And you better save up to give birth in hospital there because if you or your baby need extra care …
Guess what, in the NHS you get treatment.

Plus by all means pay for crutches. It’s the wrong thing to do for long-term recovery from a sprain, but you have free-will to ignore informed advice.

The NHS is a mixed bag. I worked in the NHS from 2007 to 2014 and at that time it was pretty much reaching all targets.
I've had my fair share of treatment as well. The full works for breast cancer. 15 years ongoing care for rheumatoid arthritis and much more besides. It's very stretched now. In the last year I've been seen at A&E and an SDEC both times I was seen, treated and discharged in five hours. Can't fault it.
Two close relatives have had very bad fractures requiring surgery and been seen, treated, operated on and had follow up physio. These were urgent so dealt with quickly.
More recently I have been referred to two different specialities. The waiting time just for an initial appointment is ten months for non urgent referrals. If they were scanning sprained ankles I can't imagine how much worse the backlog would be.

This is exactly what happened to me, except that the swelling and bruising took longer to appear, and it took my ankle five months to fully recover. A doctor told me I was fine to walk on it as it wasn't broken.

I struggled around with a walking stick for the first few days as it was very painful. But I never expected the NHS to provide physio; I just had to wait for the healing process to take its course.

It appears that I’m not eligible to use the nhs, or at least not able to access it in any way.

Moved house, registered at local Gp. First thing they did was to immediately stop by prescriptions until I’d been in to see them. OK but having tried several times to get an appt despite explaining the situation, no availability. I had to arrange to get the meds privately, which I still do as the meds just can’t be stopped suddenly.

Im told I’m not entitled to anything other than an over 40s health check (never heard anything, so I asked but was fobbed off again) and a smear test. Again no appointments. Ever. Private again then.

Father in law was having a stroke when we were out shopping - with pretty severe symptoms - we were refused an ambulance and had to try and get him to hospital ourselves (two small women trying to get a 13 stone man through a shopping centre who is barely able to walk, had lost power down one side, wet himself and vomitting) On eventual arrival at hospital no one would help then either. It’s a miracle he’s still here. He is alive in spite of, not because of the nhs. Just putting him to bed at home would probably have had the same effect.

I could go on. So no, I don’t know what the nhs is supposed to provide or what the point of it is, as it’s currently providing nothing for me or my family.

Well is it before you know it's sprained and may be broken etc
Even then I wouldnt call it an emergency. It's not life threatening.

I agree with OP. Two weeks ago I knew I had torn by Achilles, went to A&E saw a PA, they wouldn't refer me to a doctor. Patronising, rubbish PA told me not to be a dramatic woman and it was a sore muscle. Knew he was wrong, paid for a private MRI, torn Achilles back to A&E put in a cast two weeks later.....now the hospital say my recovery is much more complex and will probably need surgery.

If only they had listened, can see why the BMA is so worried about PAs. The very good A&E doctor I eventually got to see told me to complain as it's happening too often.

My DH is still waiting for physio, six weeks after being discharged from hospital after a major leg operation and being promised he'd get a physio home visit within "a couple of days" to show him how to walk (he came home on a stretcher by ambulance). He can't walk, can't put weight on it, still mostly bed-bound, just "hopping" around to move. The orthopaedic surgeon said he'd be "up and about" within a week. Impossible to contact anyone to ask whether it's just a delay or whether the referral for physio was even made, or lost. We've phoned the orthopaedic dept several times, gone through the "story" about the op, etc., and promised someone would call us back, but they never do. Even the promised orthopaedic 6 week progress review appointment hasn't yet been made.

That's the problem with the NHS. It's all haphazard, some things good, some things poor. There needs to be some consistency.

Yes, and I'd say the main problem in the UK atm is that people want Scandinavian, German, Benelux etc. level standards of public services, in exchange for US levels of taxation.

It ain't happening.

It really isn't. Even cancer treatment/care is hit and miss.

Things have definitely got worse in the last ten years. But that's because the population is older, fatter, and sicker than it was then. We spend a fortune on the NHS but it is nowhere near enough to guarantee very high quality private standard care every time. Like everything else we have a choice between

A) The NHS - a very imperfect service for everyone, that is about 6/10 mostly but is sometimes 2/10 and sometimes 9/10

B) Some other type of model that provides a 3/10 service for the poor and a 8/10 service for the rich.