What’s the point in the NHS?

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

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.

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.

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

Do it yourself then if you know so much

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

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!

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Because the cost of collecting, checking, sanitizing and repairing if needed is more expensive than new crutches, it’s literally that simple.

Nail on the head. As you say, even within the same hospital. DH is at the same hospital under different consultants, one being a haematologist for his cancer, the other being an orthopeadic surgeon for cracks in his bones caused by one of the cancer treatments. They literally won't/can't communicate with each other, can't access test results undertaken by the other, i.e. x-rays, blood tests, bone marrow biopsies, CT scans, MRI scans. If one wants a new x-ray, they'll just glibly refer him even though he's had the same x-ray for the other consultant a couple of weeks earlier. Same with blood tests, etc. It's always down to DH to "tell" the other consultant what the other consultant has said. Yes, they finally get a copy of the "consultation" letter as sent to the GP after each major consultation, but that takes 4-8 weeks to come through, so often is out of date.

"Best" was recently during an operation to put a pin in his femur. Despite knowing about the op (DH obviously told him), his haematologist asked DH afterwards whether the surgeon had done a biopsy if his bone marrow and the legions on his femur. Firstly, how on Earth would DH know? Secondly, if the haematologist wanted biopsies, why the hell didn't he tell the orthopaedic surgeon to do it? As a result, he now has to go back in for new incissions to be made for biopsies to be taken.

It's really not just lack of money and lack of staff. A lot of it is inefficiency and disorganisation.

But apparently it’s very expensive to give them out as well?

And it can’t be environmentally friendly as well.

I agree. A sprained ankle does not need treatment. It gets better on its own, unless you have other issues.
The main issue is some people who want a bespoke luxury service rather than a medically necessary service.

But things like a sprained ankle are what you'd previous go to your GP surgery to have looked at. Now that getting such appointments are as rare as unicorn poo, A&E is the only place they can have it looked at. Years ago, even if you didn't get a GP appointment (although mostly you could as it was sit and wait), you could get a practice nurse appointment. Now even practice nurse appointments are like gold dust.

I don't think wanting someone to look at a sprain is "a bespoke luxury service"!

GP appointments on some practices are still fine to get. It's the private practices bought up by private equity that are a nightmare. It is nothing to do with the NHS. It's that private equity run as skeleton a service as they can get away with because all they care about is money.

It's expensive because of the unnecessary admin/bureacracy. You'd think that they could just hand them to you, especially if you were in A&E or the orthopaedic clinic, but even there, they have to create paperwork, you hand it in somewhere else, then go to collect it in another place, etc. They make a right meal out of the simplest of things.

Nothing's stopping you from getting private treatment. However, you wouldn't get anything for £50.

A scan alone would probably be 3 times that and that would be without the consultation fee and any other treatment you had.

Our practice is owned by the practice GPs, not some faceless group of foreign billionaires. They're still not keen on providing appointments, seeing patients etc. and run it on a shoestring. The same people own the pharmacy attached, as per Companies House ownership records which also makes them a handsome profit. Some GPs are "fat cats" just like absent billionaire hedge fund owners.

How much would the scan be on the continent in one of the many countries with co-pay schemes or government backed insurance schemes?

We need to stop comparing the UK with the USA or the NHS against our current UK private health offerings.

Why don't we look at what works in various other European countries and transition to how the best of them do it?

I haven’t got a clue nowadays, but if you find out, please share. 🙄

OK I’ll bite. My bloke was diagnosed with cancer last year. He had surgery to remove a tumour, three months later there were two more so those were removed. Last month he had a liver transplant so is now cancer free and could easily have another 15-20 years. Originally he was given a maximum of five. That’s what the NHS is for and it’s done it brilliantly.