to think the NHS is a bit crap

[eyebags63]

And because it is treated almost as a kind of religion nobody is allowed to say anything negative about it at all. And actually just because it is "free" (a mere 110bn a year) doesn't mean we should be eternally grateful for bad treatment.

My experiences are of elderly relatives being mistreated in hospital, non-existent services in some areas, screw-ups, buck passing, treatment delays, being treated as a number with no dignity or privacy, a significant number of staff that appear not to care one little bit. I could go on.

In other health systems people can get referred and treated within days or weeks. Here we accept that waiting for months on end in pain is normal. We accept exhausted staff, lack of access, dirty hospitals, ambulances queuing outside hospitals and restricted treatment resources.

Yes it is "free at the point of use", but isn't that half of the problem? Walk into any GP surgery or A&E and you can witness so many abuses of the system. On the other hand genuine patients are often seem to be treated as a nuisance.

I'm not saying the NHS should be scrapped but surely it is about time we at least looked at different ways of doing things.

YANBU

But it's impossible to have a decent debate in this country because people assume criticism of the NHS implies acceptance of the U.S. system. It's nuts to expect communist-style provision by the government to deliver anything other than the healthcare equivalent of the Trabant. I would take the French or German systems over ours every time.

Anecdotal, but I have never had a GP who was not a total muppet, and my NHS cancer treatment and follow up was piss poor. All the NHS hospitals I have ever been in absolutely stink of piss (and worse) and offer little dignity or privacy. Admin is so shambolic that I once got a "DNA" for an appointment they hadn't even told me about. (They would have to sort the admin before introducing fines).

I have to go private for follow up because the NHS won't offer GA or sedation for the procedure I need, and I cannot tolerate the pain. I wholeheartedly wish there was some political will to switch to a social insurance system, but no government has the balls.

Maybe watch Sick and you'll appreciate what we have a little better.

Go an pay private then. Doctors And Nurses are doing the best they can on limited resources and I understand that people are left unhappy but they're honestly doing their best

If you're not happy pay instead of slating the NHS

One way of bringing money in (not that that's what the thread is about but it might help) is to insist that everyone carries a passport so the hospital can ask for it and draw up an immediate invoice for treatment if the patient is foreign and here on a supposed 'holiday'.

clueless my OH is a doctor (private and NHS). He is bloody good but even he admits there are not many jobs where he could earn 6 figures and be home by 6pm every night. That doesn't include private work btw. His pension is eye watering. I am not complaining (obviously!) and medical staff should be paid well, but I can't help thinking this is where much of the extra investment went.

He is already seeing many more patients than "required" for a NHS consultant.

If everyone is working so jolly hard and it's still crap, then surely the system needs to change?

The NHS can be brilliant if you have the right illness or condition, but get the wrong one and the NHS will be about as useful as a chocolate teapot.

We did end up having to go private for treatment my DH needed, and saw the same consultant that we had seen on the NHS before deciding it was a waste of time. I resent that, it cost us a fortune and although it was worth it, it was just bad luck that DHs problem wasn't one that the NHS deals well with.

I'd rather pay less tax and pay for my own health insurance, or pay the same amount of tax but be able to contribute separately to the NHS to be able to get a decent standard of treatment.

How is £110 billion a limited resource..??

Why should people have to pay twice?! It is grossly unfair that depending on where you live you may get better service!

I'm glad to hear some people have had good experiences but what about those that haven't and continue not to? We should be grateful to the NHS so some people can enjoy the benefits and not others??

"How is £110 billion a limited resource..??"

Well, it's limited to £110 billion by definition. Population of the UK is about 64 million, so that means about £1700 per person which sounds like a lot, but have an uncomplicated hospital birth and you've already used up your quota for the year (plus extra for antenatal care and postnatal care). By and large most of us won't get close to that total in a typical year, but when you hit a bad patch healthwise perhaps you need a few scans, a course of expensive drugs, a couple of stays in hospital, some physiotherapy -- you'll easily go over, and as you get older and develop more long-term conditions your cost to the NHS will go up.

Without the NHS I wouldn't have survived beyond my first birthday.

So for me and my family it's great.

Me neither Tyzer.

But that doesn't make it beyond reproach.

I have worked for the NHS for the past 12 years.
I work within the Cancer Services dept and deal with cancer targets for a certain specialty.
I have a huge area to cover (most of the south west) and we are the only centre to deal woth these particular cases. As the years have gone by, we have gained more and more patients and a greater area to cover but not got the funds to cover extra staff/theatres and clinics.
I can assure you the staff here work extra hard and are at times overwhelmed but we have no choice to try and meet these targets (yes - we know they are people with feelings too) but a queue is a queue.

We find that a lot of patients to pay or use insurance to go privately often come back to us as they just havent got the specialist follow up care needed to support them in the private sector.

Just because I think this might be of interest:

Germany had a rule whereby you had to pay €10 once per quarter if you visited your GP. They introduced this in 2004 with the idea that this would lead to a significant reduction of 'unnecessary' appointments (e.g. a harmless cold in December) and free up resources for people who really need appointments. This programme ran for 8 years, I think, but was stopped in 2012 because it just didn't work. And the €10 didn't pay for the additional admin burden that was placed on doctors' surgeries. I read that in 2004, the fee caused an additional 8.3m of hours of admin...

YABU - I was in hospital for two months at the end of last year and couldn't fault the NHS. The nurses, doctors and other health professionals were fantastic and that continued after I left hospital with occupational therapists and physios. I could not have wished for better treatment.

If you don't like it pay and go private, problem solved.

No government will really come clean because they know they would be deeply unpopular . I agree with Frank Field that unless something radicle is done then the NHS in its current form will implode . It can't continue as it is no matter which gov is in charge.

I can't complain at all. I went to Gp about me back problem and i for am MRI within 12 days of my initial appointment. I'm very impressed with my treatment.

Yes I agree, why is the topic of the NHS decreed, 'beyond comment'. I no longer have a GP as my notes have been lost- I've been through 2 pregnancies with them and 'was' a patient at the practice for 10 years but apparently I don't exist!

My daughter had an allergic reaction to some food when she was two, we were told that she would be a priority for allergy testing as she was young and her breathing was compromised at the time of the reaction. The appointment was to be given within two months of the GP referral. It is nearly 2 years on from that time and we've heard nothing. Her asthma has improved enormously since I eliminated milk from her diet. However, we will probably get this done privately, the only reason we haven't is that throughout this time they have continued to send us letters about letters, suggesting that some time soon our day will come!

Nicknacky an MRI in 12 days is impressive. DH has been waited 3 weeks just for the GP surgery to sort out the referral letter.

The NHS is no longer 'bloody amazing'

It isn't amazing how my mentally ill husband got his community nurse taken away because they don't have enough staff, so now he doesn't have the one thing that really helped him and us as a family. It isn't amazing that they transferred most of his care to a gp who knows very little about mental health and always ends up referring him back resulting in it taking weeks to change his meds.

It isn't amazing that I have to wait months and months for CBT.

It isn't amazing that my son had to wait months when he needed therapy after his dad died.

Or that we can't get appointments with a gp for days and when you get one they rush you out of the door because they are running late and just don't have the time to spend the 10 full minutes with every patient.

It isn't amazing that it took the nurses hours to get round to my kid's dad's house to give him morphine on the day he died of cancer and his wife had to watch him scream in agony and become delusion and a bit aggressive as it has then spread to his brain.

I don't get how anyone can say that the NHS is amazing; it simply isn't. I am very grateful we have it, I dread a world where we don't have it, but it has some very massive faults and it is getting worse. People who refuse to say a bad word about it amazes me. As for the 'go private' comments, well that is helpful! I am sure most would if they could afford to.

I am glad I don't have to worry about ££££ when my kids are ill, or when I gave birth and so on, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't expect better than what we have now from the NHS.

I have no idea what the answer is though.

YABU the nhs is on its knees, it's being abused left, right and center. Successive governments have been systematically destroying the nhs, along with certain right wing publications who smear the NHS and its workers at any given opportunity.

Look at where private companies have overtaken chunks of the NHS, then look at the treatment of patients in those areas.

I have back problems and am part of a forum where many people are from America. People are not getting treatment, are not calling ambulances, are not going to their Dr because of the cost (even with insurance) and that is scary.

why is it always assumed that scrapping the NHS means we must adopt the U.S. example?

I can't work out if people who can't see the other, non-US alternatives are parochial, daft, mendacious or all three....

Where as in this country people don't go to the doctor because they can't get an appointment. They don't get treatment because cost-cutting guidelines say they can't or doctors deny any exists. In this country people can call an ambulance and then die waiting for it to arrive or in the back of it while waiting for A&E to actually admit them.

Why is anyone who critises the NHS accused (directly or indirectly) of being some kind of "right wing" daily mail supporter? It is exactly this type of mentality that stops any progress being made.

Mental health services are a real problem. I suffer from mildish depression and have done for a long, long time. I went to see a CPN and lovely and helpful though he was he told me that really mental health service could only deal with people in real immediate crisis at that very moment.

I think there is a big problem with health tourism now and we really have to deal with that. I was in hospital during my pregnancy. There was an Iranian woman whose husband was studying here and she had come over purely to access the free medical care during birth and pregnancy. She'd sadly had a miscarriage so had decided to return to Iran as she no longer needed the care. She and her husband turned up late at night at the gynaecology ward to try and intimidate them into fitting a coil for free because it would cost her money back in Iran, it wasn't a service they offered anyway but they kicked up an almighty fuss, it was really unpleasant. Similarly a member of my extended family brought a relative over from abroad for treatment which was never paid for despite the family having two six figure salaries coming in. And another section of my family are British but have worked abroad most of their adult lives and barely pay tax here but will come back if they need minor procedures or treatment.

People coming on to talk about their good treatment are really missing the point.

So you have had nothing but good experiences? well good for you, but that is not everyones reality. If you haven't received bad services than the NHS must be above reproach right?

I have multi lipomas.. hundreds and hundreds of them but will the NHS help me out with it? no they won't because it is just cosmetic. Walk around covered in lumps that are painful is cosmetic apparently. Because I have so many removal of the painful ones would be an expensive procedure, so I am not entitled to it.

While I sympathise with your bad experiences OP, I am not ok with the way you keeping making references to people having been brainwashed or comparisons with cults, so yes YABU.

My experience of the NHS has been fantastic. There's been no brain washing, just bloody amazing experiences. I'm sorry that you're have been the opposite and yes I believe more needs to be done to help the NHS. Personally I believe that involves more money, fewer cuts and a different government.