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?

either lazy journalist or government plant to see if their plans have worked yet and public opinion has turned against the NHS. It hasnt. There is a very clear public perception that the government is deliberately running down the NHS because the rich do not wish to contribute to the health needs of the pr and would rather see them die.

The NHS was the most efficient health care system in the world, its still one of the most efficient. Those who want better are free to pay but wont always get what they pay for. I've paid for a free scan (and btw they did maternity scans, you can pay for some maternity care) and it was "better" than the NHS because the nurse had state of the art equipment so colour not black and white. It was an NHS nurse moonlighting to earn a living wage who did the scan - the private sector dont train people.

Anything you can get in the private sector you could get in the NHS if people were willing to pay more taxes for it.

As for comparisons - compare with Canada where private treatment is mostly illegal. The service is better funded as a result.

OP you'll let me know when you've found the magic money tree that's going to pay for everyone's private treatment, ok?

Yes, private hospitals are more like hotels than hospitals. But they HAVE to be a more attractive option because they are competing with a FREE service.
Bring in a totally private service and watch it change. The insurance companies make money by taking your premiums NOT by paying out more than you've paid in. Therefore, they will try to find any reason not to pay out. This is your health. We won't get a better service, you'll get a business that is more interested in profit than patient care.
HCP will go to the companies that pay the best, so the cheaper options won't have the staff.
Oh, and what happens when a private hospital fucks up your operation?
They call an ambulance and send you to an NHS hospital to sort out their problem. At no further cost to them.

OP you have no idea what you're talking about. I know people who live in the USA and India and they often have to make life or death health decisions based on money. My grandad died of an heart attack that would have been successfully treated in any UK A&E because the Indian hospital refused to treat him until they got the money - my gran had to spead to the bank (not easy in Indian traffic) and by the time she returned he'd had 3 heart attacks and dead.

My cousin in Texas has recently taken the decision to stop treatment for stage 3 breast cancer because it would mean less money for her kids to go to college. Imagine that. Stage 3 breast cancer still has a fairly high remission rate but she CAN'T AFFORD THE TREATMENT EVEN HEALTH INSURANCE.

People like you make me sick with your ill informed comments. Why don't you do some research before littering your idiotic thoughts on everyone?

I think the NHS is a great thing & feel honoured & privileged to have it as a safety net.

However, the funding of it worries me. The principles set out in the 1940's, are totally different to what it's trying to achieve now. Medical enhancements are great however, come at a cost & we are all living longer as well.

Think innovation is needed across all parties to provide a clear pathway for its future. People expecting it to just tick along are being quite short sighted.

Would echo much of what's been said already. And add from the other perspective, we're seeing the inside of a semi-private system somewhere between the US and UK structures. There are many downsides and seeing people evaluate whether they should call an ambulance / go to the GP depending on how much it's going to cost is eye opening.

But also it creates perverse incentives for the clinicians. The whole system costs miles more in aggregate (private & public) per capita and most of the extra money goes to the doctors who are among the highest salary earners in the country. I've not met doctors in the UK who go into it for the money, think of your response to bankers and imagine feeling like that about your specialist consultants. It's a different outlook and not one I'd be glad to see replicated at home.

When I had an NHS dentist I never got seen on time. I now have a private dentist and they rarely run late and if they do it's only a few minutes

Because they can allow longer for each appointment because they charge the true cost of their time so over runs less likely. Also private paitants don't usually arrive with a mouth full of skanky stinking never brushed decayed teeth for a routine appointment!

Oh and as for running late, well I still see my private eye consultant at £150 a go and sometimes he runs late - if he's had a difficult case or something unexpected. Once I had to wait an hour to see him (but I will continue to do so as he's brilliant) and I still had to pay the £150.

Bupa is heavily subsidised by the NHS. Without an NHS we would all pay the true cost of drugs and Bupa's prices would be astronomical. Think £1000/mth or more if you pay 100/mth currently. This is because the UK is a tiny market and like everything else that's private we would pay over the odds for health too.

It's not often I read an OP and actually laugh at the ridiculousness of it.

You can have private medical insurance, but it won't do fuck all if you get hit by a bus. Same if you have an uninsurable condition. In fact most PMI's won't cover private prescriptions, so how about you do the right thing and pay the full price for your repeat prescription instead of relying on the NHS to subsidise the cost for you?

Maybe you're just a GF.

There are heart meds that are over £100/pill, that are available for fucking free on the nhs.The nhs is a life saver in the UK and an envy of the world - the government just needs to get better at managing it without bloody privatising and cutting everything. Our problems only started because of the semi-privatisation elsewhere.

Let's say we did move to a private system.... Are we going to get a massive reduction in tax considering the money is no longer get getting spent on the NHS? Or is there likely scenario that we continue to pay high amounts of tax and health insurance on top of that?

Realistically private ealtchare company is would continue to use the same infrastructure and personel already in place exactly as happens now when NHS services are sold off to private companies so how would the services improve?

I've stood in a doctors surgery in the US with a child screaming in pain and the doctor refusing to touch her for the 20 minutes it took to check we could afford to pay for her care.

I would not wish that on anyone else's child every. Healthcare should be free a the point of need.

The US is about the worst private healthcare system in the western world - if there was only the US system and the NHS, the NHS would win hands down, but there are other options. We live in Germany but have Swiss private insurance (it's complicated) so we've seen a couple of other systems and they're both much better than the NHS IME.

I'd say the Swiss system has the edge, the hospitals are usually better kept up and there are shorter waiting times for non-urgent treatment) like for instance the kids go to a paediatric GP surgery, they have facilities for some blood tests and stuff that you'd have to go to hospital for in the UK, so when you show up with a kid with a fever they just test them rather than giving you the lecture about antibiotics for viruses and sending you home for 5 days to see if they get any sicker. It's much easier to get a GP appointment than it is in the UK, paediatric A&E runs alongside an emergency paediatric GP clinic, so you've got really straightforward access to 24 hour urgent care. IDK that much about the situation for adults as it's always the kids who're getting ill/falling off of stuff, but I have found it much easier to get specialist referrals than it is on the NHS.

It's not cheap. In Switzerland we pay 300CHF per adult per month and in Germany it would be about 300 euro for my DH - but they're both highly regulated systems with mechanisms for making sure that people on low incomes can afford healthcare. In the German system the payment is capped at 15% of your salary up to 750 euro/month whichever is lower, and about 50% is paid by your employer. In Switzerland there's subsidies for people on low incomes (so when we were living on one postdoc salary of about 24k, we only paid about CHF 60/month).

In both systems it's an advantage that there is a market for services - e.g. in Switzerland you often see English speaking GPs setting up shop in the big cities where they attract all the expats, if that was the NHS you'd have no option but to go to the local GP in your catchment, and if you needed a translator you'd need to arrange one etc. And if you just can't get on with a certain doctor you can always go to another. But the main difference is the amount of money spent on it. If you can combine near US levels of healthcare spending with a regulated system you end up with very good quality healthcare coverage for the whole population, even those on low incomes.

Aren't private U.S hospitals famous for providing the most medicalised birth and obstetric service? As the default position?

I think a privatised system would be a disaster! The system in the US is known for being grossly unfair. At least here if you arrive at hospital having broken a limb or had a stroke you will be treated the same by the NHS whether you are poor or wealthy.
The NHS needs more funding (getting the money owed by tax dodgers would be a good start) and the staff need to be treated better by their employer ie. the government.
Slightly different but my cat has had a lot of veterinary treatment in last couple of years and seeing the costs of that has made me realise how much medicines, equipment etc costs so dread to think how much we'd need to pay on insurance!
I don't think you can complain about appointments running late, it's unavoidable. Computer systems can crash irrespective of whether private or not.

Jesus, I pay for private healthcare herein the U.K. and still have to wait. I had a scan at the Lister Hospital recently and had to wait an hour for my appointment. Cost me £1,000 for the privilege. But I was greeted by a man in top hat and tails at the door when I'd much rather have had a timely appointment!

And have equally waited at the Cromwell Hospital when having treatment there.

Toomuch: that is a lot to pay, though.

myfavouritecolourispurple

When a consultant rolls into outpatient clinic at 9:30 it may well because they've been delayed on the ward. I work in a hospital and the consultants will often be reviewing patients at 8:30am trying to see them before clinic.

My experience of US healthcare was that I waited far, far longer to access GP/Emergency care in the US than in the UK.

Friends also said that getting GP appointments was equally difficult in the US (you have to make sure the doctor is "in network" or something).

I live in Europe and pay €400 per month for private health insurance with a €2500 annual excess, which is too high, but keeps premiums low. Were I employed, my employer would pay half the premium.
I hardly ever get ill, luckily, so the only thing I fork out for is the dentist. Should I need to see a doctor I can usually get an appointment within 24 hours and am entitled to go straight to a specialist.
Were I to reduce my excess, the monthly premiums would shoot up by at least €200, which is unsustainable in the longer term.

What happens if you don't have 15% of your take home pay to spare too much ?

No to privatisation but The NHS should start charging for appointment with GP and a&e visits except for children and people with chronic conditions. I think people clog up the system with simple colds they could treat at home and they might think twice if they were charged. Other countries do this.

There are a lot of comments on here which show how difficult it is to have a serious discussion in the UK about how health services are funded. Personally I'd rather have a social insurance system like the Dutch or German one, which pools risk and ensures that everyone has access to care regardless of ability to pay, but which introduces an element of choice and competition. But I accept that the prevailing sense of opinion is that there should be a single state funder of healthcare.

What I cannot accept is that this should mean the state must be the monopoly provider of care. There is no reason that private hospital operators should not deliver NHS care at NHS prices. If they did, and operated in a competitive market where state money follows choosy, discerning patients around, they would deliver much better efficiency, less wastage, and a far better patient experience because there would be consequences to not doing so.

Such a system was, indeed, introduced on a limited basis to the NHS in 2003 by Tony Blair's government when Alan Milburn was SoS for Health. And where it has been allowed to work it is FAR better than the state provision with which we were previously fobbed off.

Yes, Alyosha I went to University in the USA and my father's health insurance covered me but not in the State that my University was in - I had to travel back 600 miles to the State where my Father lived to have medical care / see a GP and be covered on insurance. Thankfully I was never sick.