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?

There are systems that aren't everything free at point of service (U.K.) and nothing at all without expensive insurance (USA). A lot of European countries require you to top up costs and get better health outcomes

Nothing is stopping you from paying for private healthcare if you want to. In fact, please do - it might free up NHS resources for those of us with chronic conditions who couldn't manage without it.

God knows the NHS is far from perfect, and it certainly needs reform. I would be completely against any move towards a US-type system though, which effectively punishes you for being ill. I have Crohn's disease and pre-Obamacare I would have been uninsurable in the US.

Yes this is funny, having had recent experience of the health care system in Poland, although there were some payments to be made, it was much swifter than the UK and affordable for almost all but the poorest in the country.

No we need a properly funded well managed and accountable nhs

The NHS is being underfunded.
If the NHS were properly funded for the increased demand then compare it with other healthcare systems.

The spend per head on the NHS has fallen. Yet demand goes up because more people need treatment.

The NHS is failing because it is being failed by government.

There's a difference between planned CS and unplanned though Want.

The majority of babies in the UK are delivered by midwives and the outcomes are very good due to care in labour.

We are set up differently here and Obstetricians would be overwhelmed if all women saw them as opposed to midwife led care.

As an ex midwife I found what worked best was working within a midwifery team. The mother meets six midwives and knows that one of them will deliver her baby. She would get to know us via antenatal care, meet ups etc. The nice thing is that we have also got to know the Mum and I loved caring for women in labour who I knew. Likewise if the labour ended wi a CS we would go to theatre with the Mum and stay with her.

As a Mum I much preferred this way. I didn't know the consultant who did my CS because it was the one on call. She was lovely though and I felt completely safe in her care plus she also came to see me afterwards to ask if I had any questions about the labour. Yes it would have been nice to meet her before but not essential.

"That’s the standard technique of privatization: defund, make sure things don’t work, people get angry, you hand it over to private capital."
Noam Chomsky,

I wondered about this myself a while back.

I looked up some stories from an American living in England, and a Brit living in the US.

Both parties seemed to think the NHS was a bit crummy at times, but it beat the shit out of the US system.

The NHS are pretty bollocks atm for anything other than A&E of life or death matters
The Tories are underfunding it so that we get to the point where we are simply unable to put up with waiting a yr for an mri scan and then another 6 mths for a consultant appt to tell you what it says

I think that those who can should use private to fee up the resources for those who have no option
I also wish we trained enough staff to not have to pay agency fees which are just money down the pan

I usedto work in nhs admin.

The most common reason for clinics running late is because...

The sodding patients were late. Some even had the cheek to say "oh but everyone knows doctors run late" as an excuse for not turning up on time. Then they'd be expected to be seen still, which would mean the clinic ran even later.

Patents who turn up early are often seen early, as they can jump into an appt someone else isn't on time for.

^The NHS are pretty bollocks atm for anything other than A&E of life or death matters
The Tories are underfunding it so that we get to the point where we are simply unable to put up with waiting a yr for an mri scan and then another 6 mths for a consultant appt to tell you what it says^

Ronald I have a myriad of health conditions. The most troublesome one at the minute being my asthma that has led me to be hospitalised more times than I'd like to be.

I have been categorically told by more than one professional to stay away from A&E, not because I'm a timewaster, but because I don't present like a 'normal' asthmatic. I take all my preventative meds and the precautions around flu season etc. But my lungs still like to misbehave and when they do they put on a show The last time I ended up in A&E was only the second/third time in my thirty years of life I'd willingly walked into adult A&E. My nurses who are part of the privatised part of the NHS now apparently, rightly told me to try not to go through them again. Because I ended up using a hell of a lot of nhs resources that weekend and being hospitalised anyway.

There's a lot more in my experience to why the NHS is struggling than just the tories underfunding it (fair point) but as a patient I've also witness people in my own judgemental opinion misuse the NHS and I dont fancy a Mumsnet flaming at this time of night which makes their already hard job ten times harder.

I have private health care through my company. I used it for my gallbladder removal a couple of years ago as it was classed as urgent. I can't fault the care I received but I was told before I had the operation that, should it turn out to be more involved than planned, I would have to pay extra myself. I had no choice but I was very glad when I came round and it had been straightforward, not least because I wouldn't have had the money to pay!

Want2b - the lower rate of forceps deliveries in the US has an awful lot to do with the litigation culture... A Caesarean section in advanced labour (particularly at full dilation) can be pretty risky too!

would love to know who the £40 a visit gps are? Fell free to pm me, I'm willing to travel to see one (although not outside England).

robin That hardly explains the standard practice in other European countries to not use forceps.

Also litigation here isn't so straight forward. You can only litigate if something has gone wrong that has or will impact you financially.

We already pay for our healthcare through taxation. Still, when we get that £350m promised to us the NHS will be fine.

I think that there is a lot of fraud going on as well.
I am close to someone who is overhauling a local trust to me. There are 8 consultants who have been billing for work not done/hours not done. He thinks this has been going on for a few years.
This is all being resolved under the radar and won't be made public which I disagree with as it encourages the perception of hospital staff as being 'saintly' or above critism.

I work in the NHS and fraud does go on as well as the infuriating abuse of it by some patients.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/11072805/NHS-heart-expert-and-three-colleagues-jailed-for-1m-fraud.html

This was in response to the poster claiming that no one is ever doing private work when they should be doing NHS.
That is absolutely not true.

Tip of the iceburg, NHS protect doesn't even know about most of it, it's covered up.

www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/3378.aspx

chipped booking should be stand at desk, get a text.
That's exactly as it is in our local trust. Works fab.

Have you ever stopped to think that maybe some people like disabled people or single income families can't afford to pay for health insurance or to go private. Private might sound all well and good to you but there are some things that health insurance will only cover so much for. You might want to try looking in to it before shouting your mouth off about something that you obviously don't know very much about.

I also wish we trained enough staff to not have to pay agency fees which are just money down the pan

Not going to happen now that nursing bursaries have been stopped.

Private might sound all well and good to you but there are some things that health insurance will only cover so much for.

not if you have properly regulated compulsory cover as is the case in many european countries.

Who can prove that the private sector is better at providing universal healthcare?

Who can prove that the private sector is more efficient?

Can someone please provide some independent evidence please?

2016 rankings for healthcare systems.

www.numbeo.com/health-care/rankings_by_country.jsp

1. South Korea

This from Wikipedia:

"The healthcare system was initially reliant on not-for-profit insurance societies to manage and provide the health insurance coverage. As the program expanded from 1977 to 1989, the government decided to allow different insurance societies to provide coverage for different sections of the population in order to minimize government intervention in the health insurance system. This eventually produced a very inefficient system, which resulted in more than 350 different health insurance societies. A major healthcare financing reform in 2000 merged all medical societies into the National Health Insurance Service. This new service became a single-payer healthcare system in 2004. The four-year delay occurred because of disagreements in the legislature on how to properly assess self-employed individuals in order to determine their contribution."

Basically, South Korea moved from what the Tories seem to be aiming for to what we already have in the UK, and significantly improved their healthcare system as a result. In the UK, however, the Tories have absolutely not abandoned neoliberalism, and are still intent on imposing its deeply flawed principles upon the NHS. This is ideologically driven change, not change driven by an understanding of the weaknesses of NHS.

South Korea's universal, single-provider system is funded by the State, by employers, by a tobacco surcharge and direct taxation (they have a healthcare version of our National Insurance system).

Despite our problems, the US is ranked 33, the UK is 17 - our system is both cheaper AND better than what they have in the US. Anyone who thinks we should move to a US system is either very selfish, ignorant or, quite frankly, an idiot. Doesn't mean things can't be improved in the NHS, but let's not forget that part of the problem with the NHS at the moment is the crippling debt brought over from New Labour's experiment with involving the private sector in the NHS through Private Finance Initiatives.

I would like to see a move to the South Korean funding system. Tobacco tax should go directly to the NHS, not just into a central tax pot. Employers should contribute as well, just like they contribute to our pensions. Some of our tax should be earmarked specifically for healthcare. It really is just a problem of money at the moment; we need more of it in the NHS. In Scotland, where spending is higher and the NHS run with less private involvement there are fewer issues than in England and Wales.