Will the NHS recover? What happens if not?

[ilovemykids1]

As somebody with extreme health anxiety, seeing the collapse of the NHS is horrible and I get so scared of what's going to happen.

Do you think it can ever recover? How many years would this take? And if not, what would happen instead!?

So you think some politician should be in charge? Who could’ve been at justice, treasury, foreign office yesterday but is now supposed to be an expert in healthcare too?

And how has that system worked so far, would we be having this conversation if people felt like the system was operating well?

Spot on, especially the point about sleep walking into a US style system.

The idea it will collapse and suddenly not exist is absurd. I think it’s just gonna creep on in its even more inefficient and creaking state.
No party is going to ‘save the NHS’ as it needs radical reform and can’t just have money poured into it. So far no one seems to be willing to make the reforms. But even as it is now it is better than other systems. Yes, there are terrible case of people having to wait for all sorts of things, but then they really pull it out of the hat and fly at other times.

If you feel anxiety get some private health insurance. Or start saving so you have a little slush fund of money for if there is some procedure that you think you may need to have in the future.

It's going private by stealth.
I guess some tiny part will remain free of charge for those who have nothing else in place but most of us will be paying in 20 years.
Twenty years ago nobody routinely paid for a private GP appointment. Now it's pretty standard. No one normal had private dentistry now we all do. Hardly anyone paid privately for speech therapy, physio or a hearing aid. Now if you want a good service, you just have to pay in most cases. I work in SLT. I could not recommend the service I provide. It's not good enough.
It would be much better if we moved in a coordinated way to a European style service. But we won't. So we will end up with a small shite service for the destitute, with the rest of us having ad-hoc insurance, paying for things as we can afford them and in many cases, like now for dentist, simply going without.

DH had bowel cancer symptoms and was referred for a colonoscopy. Took 10 weeks to get it and was diagnosed with stage 3 cancer. Treatment after diagnosis was fast and faultless but the waiting time for diagnosis was ridiculous l.

If the NHS was a patient, I think we would be turning off the life support, having worked in it for my whole career and DW who still does, have seen it steadily declining for years but the decline has become more rapid over the last few years and I cannot see how it can recover

If something is free then people are likely to value it less than if you have to pay for it because they know it’s not coming out of their pockets.

I think a lot of the issues relate to A&E and GP appointments, though personally I've never had an issue with that. I've never personally had an issue getting a GP appointment, and my A&E experiences (for elderly and young family members) have been in and out between 1-4 hours.

There have been pockets of delay (one of which could have result killed my daughter had I not been persistent), and other delays that have been stressful and frustrating, but overall it's been great.

Yes, there are issues, yes they need solving. But we also only usually hear the bad stories, the delays, the poor treatment. We need to start praising the good as well as complain about the bad.

I'm being investigated for a health issue and I have to say, I've found the care to be excellent. Maybe I'm just lucky in my area but my GP has been really on the ball. Had numerous tests done at the hospital and am seeing a really good consultant. It's a relatively minor issue in the grand scheme of things, it's not going to kill me! But I haven't been fobbed off, they're really working with me to try and get to the bottom of it.

I'm in my 50s and it's quite reassuring to know the majority of my organs have been thoroughly checked and are all fine!

It’s free here though. Had you gone private for your birth here, it would have been much better.

The UK system is broken but most people here wouldn’t want an American style healthcare system either. Somewhere in between would be the ideal.

I think the poster was meaning that there are so many people here now that the we are bursting to the seam in every respect. No houses, no healthcare….

Will adding more people to the mix make it better for everyone? You say about them being younger and fitter which I do agree with, however being younger means they’re likely to have kids and as a pp upthread pointed out earlier, unless you’re earning over about 35k then you take out more than what you give.

A population increase isn’t the only reason of course but it was never created for the sheer number of people in the UK.

@Ponkeypink it isn’t free here, though - we pay for it via higher taxes than in the US. Personally I don’t think it is good value for money in that I am paying for healthcare that is increasingly difficult to access when I really need it.

agree that there are more than two choices when it comes to healthcare systems, though.

I was very impressed when I was seen in A&E/Urgent Care when I’d broken my shoulder. I went in Sat am around 9am. It was empty. I was the only patient there! A few nurses chatting. Seen immediately. Sent off for x-Ray. Waited ten mins for x-Ray. Straight back to urgent care for results. Seen immediately while nurse looked at x-Ray. No waiting at all. This is a central London major hospital. Again, a week later, appointment at fracture clinic. Seen immediately on time. Referred for MRI. Appointment three days later for MRI. On time. Seen at fracture clinic less than week later. Saw consultant on time. Referral to physiotherapist. Saw physio there and then! No waiting. Amazing. Booked in for a course of hydrotherapy starting the next month after the bone healed. Phenomenal. My treatment for breast cancer was far less impressive, though, at a different hospital.

The sheer number of older people.....the probem is demographic not immigration.

No

Wild West of privatisation is coming

Private HDUs are rare but they do exist - if things came to it then your DH would have the option to travel elsewhere in the UK to access this service. We had to travel from Belfast to London for DD to have major spinal surgery due to a lack of private HDU here. Getting on a plane home 5 days post-op wasn’t ideal but it was a far better alternative than waiting years on surgery.

It's going private by stealth.

This

Maybe a huge part of the issue is the number of people who aren't earning £36k.
Millions of jobs that are NMW or just over NMW which just shouldn't be. People with college certificates should not be scraping by on low wages.

But we also need to look at the numbers of people arriving into the UK. Why is the UK much more attractive than France, or Germany?

We have small cities worth of people arriving every year - the infrastructure cannot keep up, schools, hospitals, housing?

Maybe a huge part of the issue is the number of people who aren't earning £36k.

The issue is we used to have 5 workers to 1 pensioner (60s), now it’s 3:1 and not far off 2:1.

This is very true. Also life expectancy has increased significantly. Which is great, but comes with a thumping great healthcare bill. When the NHS started it was insurance based and you only got 6 weeks worth of cover. We’ve massively changed the service provision (rightly, in my opinion) but not changed the funding model. Hardly surprising we’ve come a cropper.

And whilst life expectancy has increased healthy life expectancy hasn’t changed much in years.

What do you mean people only got 6 weeks of cover?
First I've heard of that one.

It’s a long time since I’ve read about this so I might not be 100% correct but under the original National Insurance Act there was definitely a limit to the amount of healthcare you received. it wasn’t a free-for-all like it is now.

I’m not suggesting we bring that system back, just that it would be nice to have an honest discussion about the future of healthcare in the U.K. Can’t see that happening tho.

I think, in a few years, they'll only provide emergency care then you'll be expected to be shipped off to a private hospital via insurance. They might offer free treatment for under 18s, as it looks bad to have children dying from treatable conditions. Obviously a lot of people won't have insurance due to cost, age, previous conditions etc. The NHS will then offer euthanasia to those who can't afford to be old, sick, disabled etc. As with dentistry, those who can't access treatment will have to go without or deal with it themselves somehow. There will be a lot of deaths and population levels will drastically decrease.

I’d love to know what I can do, as an individual to help. Unfortunately, I was born extremely early and was in the NICU for three months. I’m asthmatic and have MH issues, so I’ve taken far more from the NHS than I will ever pay back. I have even been rushed into hospital due to a severe asthma attack because I was not able to breathe.

Like previous posters, I would not dream of accepting paracetamol on prescription. I vote for the party who I feel would be best for the NHS, but I really don’t know what else to do…