To wonder if perhaps the answer is just to stop paying?

[Resurgam2016]

Listening to the radio the other day and there was a South African lady who was having kidney dialysis in the UK because she couldn't afford it in her home country. Apparently in SA they don't fund this treatment for the over 65's. There just isn't the money. She was a medical tourist but that is another issue entirely.

So what if we contemplated something similar to help 'save' the NHS? No treatment for life limiting conditions over, say 70 years. No treatment for conditions that are not life saving (so fertility treatment or breast rebuilding for example). Making people (or their relatives) pay for all but the medical care they receive (so food etc.). It's a horrible thought but maybe the answer?

FYI I have a chronic illness so might well be 'caught' under these new rules. I'm just wondering if it is 'acceptable' in SA why we don't debate it here.

Where does all the money go? they probably have already spent it all. Simplistic I know.
The NHS isnt what it was when it was set up , i do agree it needs looking at , maybe even starting again, but its an issue that government just cant seem to get a grip on. Probably because they just dont want to, its too complicated and anything too unpopular wouldnt get votes? Who knows.
OAP Tories become ill too - can they all afford a private hospital for treatment, or is just the 'poor; thats the problem ( ie, a lot of us>)

What about age related illness, osteoarthritis, cataracts, things that often start in middle age only to deteriorate as we get older, what then, withdraw treatment.

Before raising taxes, which would probably just go towards funding some more managers, small changes should be made. Like not wasting the doctors time to get a free prescription for Calpol. Every month my GP has a sign up saying how many hours of surgery time were wasted due to missed appointments - it is somewhere in the region of 24-32 every month. If you miss an appointment more than once, you should be charged for it. The trouble with a free service is that people take it for granted and abuse it. We've read all the stories on here about people who waste time going to A & E to have their false nails removed or calling out ambulances because they have their weekly panic attack. Charge for consistent abuse of the system. It would soon stop.

As an aside, my parents live in Africa. There is no reciprocal medical arrangement. They have paid voluntary NI contributions and are not entitled to any free medical care here until they have lived back in the UK for 2 years. I had to pay about £60 for my mother to go to my GP.

Cancel trident, which will never be used, put the money into elderly care,

Sorted.!

Surely what actually needs to happen is that people suck up paying a proper proportion of their income in tax directly and solely ring fenced for health care - 15% would be realistic, plus another 2% or so ring fenced only for long term care.

Or (and this is going to be unpopular) we could stop sending aid money to countries now far better off than ourselves; we could stop funding our defence programme with weapons we realistically will never use; we could pay a civil list to certain members of the royal family and reduce/end payment for the wider circle. And don't get me started on the House of Lords.

A terrible idea!

Problem is that we don't spend what we have very wisely. Far too much goes on inefficient beaurocracy. I'd happily pay more tax if I thought equal effort was happening to make it more efficient. But it's too easy just to say 'we need more money'.

I would also like to see less spent on 'elective' stuff. Why are we all required to pay for this?

Did anyone watch "Hospital" last night. A lovely chap of 98 who was otherwise fit and well needed a replacement heart valve through anew technique where it is inserted via the groin and expanded in place, he got his op but then suffered a stroke immediately afterwards. I though it would be the end for him but they transferred him to another hospital, put another device up into his brain via his groin and removed the clot - amazing!!! I'm sure it cost the NHS a fair bit of money but then he seemed to have made a very good recovery over the next fortnight, he could have been far more expensive to the state in terms of hospital and social care if he had not had the operation.
There are many people who are off down the doctors at the drop of a hat - quite a few in my family. If you add to that the older people who are prescribed loads of expensive medication that they never take, or stuff they could buy at the chemists for next to nothing that the NHS pay excess prices for - sort out those problems and they would save millions. Last week I was at a conference when a fellow delegate said they were "in pain" with a spot and would be going to see their GP !!!!!
I do wonder whether a charge equal to the prescription charge for a GP visit might deter these constant visitors, with exemptions for the very young and the very old.
It is also the case that free prescriptions start at 60 - when an awful lot of us are earning more than we have before and are feeling quite affluent now our children have flown the nest - surely it should be at retirement age that prescriptions become free ( if at all)

Eliza - agree re defence/royals/civil list /lords. Sheesh.

Eliza, great ideas, but who will bring it in?
( i do agree with you by the way)

helpimitchy I agree to some extent - quality over quantity of remaining years once somebody is elderly, especially if they have dementia. I know a lady in her mid 80s who has very severe dementia (no longer verbal, lost her sense of balance so in a wheel chair, but still able to feed herself in the sense of pick up food and put it in her mouth, and to express food preferences by choosing how much or whether to eat, and propel herself about using her feet). She is not overweight but certain sweet foods (a square of chocolate, toast and jam, an icecream) are the only thing that seem to make her happy. She is also diabetic, and although she has been enjoying toast and jam for breakfast enthusiastically her care home care manager has now decided she cannot have any sweet foods including toast and jam, to control her blood sugar, unless her blood sugar is low in which case an exception can be made. What is the point in denying this lady one of the very few pleasures remaining to her in order to prolong her life at this stage? I have no idea...

Eliza which better off countries would those be? Does the UK send aid to Quatar or Luxemburg or Singapore? Or is it Brunei or Norway or Switzerland or The Netherlands? I don't think the UK sends aid to any countries better off than the UK itself!

I work in care, my experience is that there are few people in care homes who do not have a "DNR" I quite agree that on an objective basis I'd rather be dead that live the lives that many of our service users live, but an arbitrary refusal of treatment at a particular age will not encourage people to keep well. My grandparents lived healthy and good lives until their mid eighties, then they died quick natural deaths after "funny turns" that were obviously something more serious. Now people don't die at this age, due to advanced treatments, but increasingly are kept alive to have more years of poor quality life.

We need to come to terms with dying. The NHS will always need more money, no matter how much tax we pay. So we do need to change the current model. A charge for a missed appointment yes and anything other than a serious accident or emergency should be turned away from A&E. Fertility treatment should be axed and we shouldn't be keeping people alive just for the sake of keeping them alive. Dying is a natural part of the cycle of life and we have to face up to that.

I think this is a frankly disgusting thought. For all in favour of it, wait until you're 70 and see how you feel. People who've paid in their whole life should be entitled to the best care, and to preserve their life if that's what they want. And if they can't communicate themselves, hopefully their relatives can do it for them. I wouldn't want to live in a place that practiced this kind of euthanasia.

No treatment for life limiting conditions over, say 70 years

When you're 70 you may think differently ...

i have 18 more years left then! may as well enjoy it now while i still can ( if another disease doesnt get me first)

I agree that we need to think about our own lives and deaths in advance. I watched a relative suffer with dementia. There was a point a few months before they died where I realised that if a pet was in that state I would have had them PTS.
I don't want to die like that. I can't figure out the authorisation process but I'd like some form of supported dying.

A DNAR doesn't mean that people shouldn't be treated though. It only means that they aren't resuscitated in the event of cardiac arrest or sudden collapse. They're still kept going with antibiotics.

It's often the relatives who are insisting upon treatment in my experience

Cutting off medical care at 70? Why not go the full hog and opt for Logan's Run at 30? It'd save even more money, and that's what matters, right?

I'd rather pay more tax.

The U.K. Is already a highly taxed country. I don't believe more taxes is the answer the money needs to be better spent. Spend less on foreign aid, defense and benifits, more on healthcare.

Also the NHS needs to be run more efficiently, less administration and management.

Another option is to educate people about common treatments. So more illnesses are treated at home.

Since moving to the US I have learned a lot more medical stuff. DH cut his hand in the kitchen, I stitched him up. It saved a trip to the ER and a $1000 bill!

I am absolutely against ration

Start again:
I am absolutely against rationing by age or infirmity alone.
BUT
I think we do need to talk about what is and isn't acceptable and why.

The NHS of today is not the NHS of post war Britain. It can't be because Britain is different now.