To think a privatised health service would be an improvement?

[WhiteStars]

At the moment we all have to be grateful for the overstretched and often inefficient service we receive. I had a 9am appointment today with a nurse practitioner. At that time in the morning she was already running 25 mins late on her appointments- how?!

She also couldn't use her computer system so I had to then wait for a doctor to come and issue the standard repeat prescription (I couldn't get this over the phone as needed a blood pressure check). The doctor then issued the wrong medication and only corrected it when I noticed she had done the wrong thing on the screen.

All very minor but not a great service at all really. We all know how over stretched the service is and everyone says it's at breaking point. Why is everyone so against paying for health insurance and getting a better service or going private?

It's not uncommon to hear of people waiting weeks to get an appointment and not being able to book in advance. The government would save an inordinate amount of money that could be ploughed into schools whilst subsidising some health services but with people paying an annual health insurance fee. We already pay for prescriptions in England. I would rather have a better private service than the NHS as it is now- on it's last legs and not really fit for purpose any more. AIBU?

In a wholly private system, a properly run company has a long term incentive to ensure the supply of talent coming through, and retain them

Arrgghhhhhh!

This is exactly the same sort of pie-in-the-sky thinking that led to you being oh-so-surprised that NHS contract letting managers behave like... all other contract letting managers.

And you'll roll your eyes in astonishment when you discover that gosh, management in private companies are such a disappointment. They just don't live up to your expectations of being "properly run" and instead, they poach from each other and shit on their staff every time the quarterly figures are bad.

Yes, it's bad for the industry as a whole; no, that doesn't stop each individual company doing it.

I've just deleted a long rant about training and staff retention (ahahahah, aha, hahaha) in a particular private industry I've had slightly too much contact with.

And you know, countries like the US do manage to train doctors, so it must be possible in the private sector.

But working from the delusion that the private sector is a bastion of longterm thinking and dedication to staff development... Oh my, pull the other one, it has bells on.

I've moved from the UK to Canada, and although health care is a little more accessible than it is in the US, realistically you still need health insurance.

You see a lot of people on the street with clear mental health problems, or with physical disabilities that clearly have not had the treatment they would have had in the UK.

My partner doesn't have the best teeth because, when she was a kid, her family could only afford one of either (a) education, or (b) braces - she opted for the former.

American friends and colleagues assure me that it's much better here than south of the border.

Seeing people without access to healthcare is really depressing tbh.

Ewan under a self-refer system you would have been able to see a gastroenterologist without having to convince/bypass your GP gatekeeper at a much earlier stage. Perhaps after the first dismissive GP appointment.

Might have to wait a while to see the gastroenterologist, while she deals with the thirty people with IBS in front of you in the queue.

Sorry to hear about your experience with the GP tho Ewan :(

But working from the delusion that the private sector is a bastion of longterm thinking and dedication to staff development... Oh my, pull the other one, it has bells on.

I've lived and worked around the world, including in places where everything is delivered privately - usually much better than here. What you've described is recognised in universities across the world as a British problem, rather than a private sector one per se.

If we want the French or German or Swiss system (as I'm sure has already been mentioned), we need to spend an extra 2% of GDP on it.

• Cheap
• Good
• Fast

We have Cheap and (honestly!) Good. If you want Good and Fast you can't have Cheap as well.

We could always just spend that 2% extra GDP on the system we've got rather than the extra billions it'll take to contruct the insurance system to underpin the French/German whatever model from scratch of course...

Ah yes because a system where a business is making money and a profit out of healthcare will work out much cheaper than the NHS.

The more people who are healthy the more people can keep working and pay taxes. Therefore it's in societies interest to keep us fit and healthy and paying taxes.

Really.

And, having recognised it as a problem in Britain - whether a "British problem" or a "private sector problem", you are proposing to stake the future of Britain's health care on the problem that you agree is a problem and that universities across the world agree is a problem, NOT being a problem?

There's an obvious last line to my post above.

But I didn't want it to get deleted.

At what point did the existence of a problem in some companies, in some countries, automatically translate into there always being a problem in every situation?

The private American system seems to produce enough doctors and nurses. The public British one doesn't!

In the UK, government involvement in services and - particularly - infrastructure is a litany of short-termist thinking: runway capacity in the SE and new electricity generation being two current ones, but added to water/sewage, railways and everything else which has been chronically underfunded over the years.

I know other countries where a system based on health insurance works ok, so in principle it might be fine (needs to be a compulsory system to work, tough, because you need a bigger pool of people paying in than taking out IYSWIM. Needs to take lower incomes into account, not exclude chronic illnesses etc etc).
But how would you make the transition from a tax based system in practice? It's unlikely taxes would come down to free up money in people's budgets to pay for this. It would in effect be a massive tax hike and saddle everyone with hefty extra bills. From what I read on here there are lots of people who would find it really hard to cope.

Having lived in 3 european countries with private systems, i LOVE the nhs. cheap, waitingtimes similar to the other countries, and fully adequate.
i have friends in well-paid jobs in one of these countries that csnnot afford to go to the doctor although they pay about £500 per month in health insurance for a family if 3. because there is a deductible (the first £800 you pay yourself) and because you have to claim from the insurance after you paid your doctor. this takes about 2 months. i'm so glad to live in the uk now!

The NHS may not seem fit for purpose now however should you or your family need emergency life saving treatment this will be delivered, at no cost at the point of delivery. We take this for granted however travel overseas and there are many places in which people will be amazed by this fact. Health care has moved on since the implementation of the NHS and unsurprisingly this means it struggles to keep up. However the safety net it offers is not widely available outside the UK and I personally feel that this is something that we should be proud of. As others have mentioned it is actually incredibly cost effective in comparison to many countries, in part because it is not privatised.

maggie Yes. You would get 'paid' for attending your annual physical and turning up to your scheduled appointments. If your weight was in the normal BMI you would get money for that too but obviously with a chronic condition it might be a symptom.

You would still get a reward for being responsible with your healthcare.

After the abismal way my father has been treated I don't see the value for money in the NHS in our area. No cancer patient should have to wait 2 years for a diagnosis. He is now on a wait list for treatment. Thank goodness we have the money to PT for private care in the US. It's a disgrace that we must do this though.

The NHS is great, it's just that people have unrealistic expectations. I speak to so many people who expect an on the day GP appointment for a (often unnecessary) consultant appointment, whom they expect to see within a week or two, oh and can they have a prescription for paracetamol/ibuprofen so they don't have to pay £0.32 for it in the supermarket as their prescriptions are free?

And don't get me started on people who are usually perfectly mobile wanting a home visit because it's cold/they don't want to drive/get the bus or pay for a taxi.

We need to bring in a nominal charge for GP appointments so people don't book them for every little ache and pain and then DNA them because they feel better or just can't be arsed to go. And people need to get a grip and stop wanting endless referrals and prescriptions for every little thing and just accept that sometimes you will get a cold or a stomach bug!

Oh honestly.
I spent the day running an NHS clinic run by a private company. It took me 6mins and 5 logins and passwords. to log onto the appalling IT to get some blood results the first time. I frequently run into problems where a patient has had an ultrasound elsewhere arranged by the GP. Can I access this? Can I hell. Outsourcing creates many problems and frustrations. Once a patient had had a scan in the same building I was in!!! Yet no-one was around who could get me a report, nor could I view the images without abandoning my clinic going to another floor, and thereby increasing the wait for the next patients
Is this efficient? Hardly!
I run my in house NHS clinics way way more efficiently.
And if NHS is failing - blame the commissioners, STPS, and the ever increasing demand!

Genuine conversation with a patient:

Him: I need a doctors appointment today, my stomach hurts.
Me: Okay, is it an ongoing problem?
Him: No, it's started this morning.
Me: I can do 16.30 today with your usual doctor?
Him: Well it won't give him much time to get me in to see the consultant, will it?
Me: Are you already under the hospital for this problem?
Him: No, but I want to see a consultant today in case it's serious.
Me: Well the doctor will see if he can diagnose the problem and then if he thinks you need hospital treatment he can refer you.
Him: But will I be seen today?
Me: Well it depends on the seriousness of the problem, the doctor will probably be able to treat you in surgery.
Him: Oh this is a waste of time, I'll go to A&E and they can send me straight to the consultant, I'm not wasting my time with a GP.
Me: Do you feel it's an emergency?
Him: No, but I want to see a consultant today slams down phone

The government is deliberately under funding the NHS and trying to control the debate by issuing press releases to give the impression that the system is failing and should be restructured. What is really happening is that we are spending a significantly smaller percentage of our GDP on health care than most other European countries. See this piece in the Guardian.

Despite the fact that only certain groups, those eligible for Medicare for example, are covered by the state, with most people having to take out insurance, the USA spends more of its GDP ob health care than any other nation. It's a hugely wasteful, inefficient system.

If we spent 9% of GDP like Germany rather than 6% the NHS would be transformed. (I think those are the right figures, I'm on my phone and checking is a bugger. Right ballpark, anyway.)

Madison, I agree. I have seen so much abuse of the system since working in the NHS. People want their healthcare when they demand it.

Things that arent a NHS service they dont want to have to pay for.
They expect referrals to be almost instantaneous.
They suspect they've broken something, want a GP appt, despite a GP not being able to do anything, because they dont want to go to A&E.
And when they miss appointments, some people just dont see it as a big deal. Surgery are getting tougher with missed appts by doing 3 strikes and you're out, but its still not enough.

otherpeople
The private American system seems to produce enough doctors and nurses.
THE US medical system costs the country three times as much as the UK one and STILL does not cover all of the people.

THose without private healthcare get crap like a transplant but no anti rejection drugs

the NHS is underfunded

The British want the comfort of a Rolls Royce but want to pay for a Mini

Prawnofthepatriarchy

Good post.

The NHS offers an amazing service and has the best professionals - it is struggling because of cuts and the outsourcing to comercial companies that are in to milk it dry making as much profit as possible.
And that's what you get with private healthcare : service providers and partners looking for profit - its pure business to them

Here in Britain we seem to delude ourselves that we can have world class health services on the cheap. We can't, but no-one is willing to pay more. Personally I'd be fine with a two-tier system, with a basic level of care provided by the state which individuals can top up. A bit like Germany in fact.

Adelie you have my sympathy with the monstrous IT interface issues. However, I can tell you from my own experiences in an NHS trust which received many patients from privately-run NHS assessment/diagnosis services - the private sector provider did EXACTLY what it was supposed to do with images it took, uploading them to a shared space which the NHS could then access in the next month or so. The reason they weren't available at clinic in the Trust? Sheer determination on the part of the radiology manager in the Trust, who simply did not do it within the specified timescale. She probably thought she was protecting her department, and to hell with the patient who had to wait another six weeks to have the scan repeated in the Trust...

One of the local GP surgeries has been brought by a private company and is an total shambles. It's run by locums who on a grand day. Most of the staff quit. Patients cant get appts because they only have 2 GP on at a time for about 12000 patients.

Fracturing and selling the NHS will kill it off and that is what Jeremy Cunt and the other idiots want. It dont effect them, so they do care.

One of the local GP surgeries has been brought by a private company and is an total shambles.

Er, you know that pretty much all GP practices are private businesses, don't you?