...about private healthcare?

[Bebepoor]

DD needs to see a consultant. There’s an NHS waiting list of 16 weeks to get an appointment which could then be a further 16 weeks away. Or we could pay £250 for a consultation next week with the same woman privately.

I am extremely uneasy about private healthcare but I’m finding it hard to stay principled when it’s my DD.

More of a WWYD I suppose.

Think of it this way: by paying privately, you get the peace of mind ASAP and you’re freeing up a spot on that waiting list for someone who can’t afford it.
I went private for an scary ( but turned out to be non life threatening) issue and it was the best thing I could have done.
The only issue is that private and NHS don’t share notes, so make sure you need all of the letters you get from the consultant after explaining everything and be prepared to answer every question under the sun when you get there!

I would check before you book the private appointment that the consultant can slot your DD into NHS scans & biopsies from the private consultation. Some areas have tightened up on the ‘mixed economy’ of private appointments jumping back to NHS investigations. Otherwise you may find yourself facing more expensive for private investigations or still waiting 32 weeks for NHS ones. The consultant’s private secretary should be able to tell you either way.

I know paying for the first private consultation used to effectively jump you up the NHS queue by then getting the next steps quicker (screwing others waiting for treatment) but you can't do that now in my local trust. Unless you're going to pay for all the treatment privately you're wasting your money and you may as well wait to see the consultant on the NHS.

Going private frees up an NHS space for someone who can’t afford to do so. That seems very morally sound to me.

There's nothing morally sound about it. If you have ever spouted off at a dinner party about how wrong a two tier healthcare system is, then you must know that using it is the very thing that props it up and you are now part of the problem.

Nobody says 'I'd rather use the nhs but can afford private so simply must use it to free up an nhs place for a poor person'. No, they use it to buy privilege. A bit like when left wing politicians are against private education until they have children themselves.

It is galling to hear people criticise a system until they themselves need it because 'there's no other option' or a loved one is suffering. Yes, like 90% of other users that you've criticised for years.

I'm not saying op shouldn't do it, I do it myself, but let's not pretend it's an altruistic or moral decision, just own that you are not above buying into a privileged system when it suits you to do so.

Pay and go private.

You're not paying for peace of mind though. You're paying for a medical appointment, the outcome of which is not yet known.

You need to think about the possible/likely outcomes, and whether you can afford to self-fund the whole treatment path.

I would go private but then I have no issue with it. I think that we all should provide a decent standard of healthcare for all but, if you can afford it, you should be able to buy the gold star standard.

I really don’t get people, however, who claim they have principles re health or education but discard them in an instant when it comes to their own family.

When I was young hypocrisy was one of the worst accusations you could throw at someone. Now some wear it as a badge of pride.

If you believe in socialised health care and state education for all but use private healthcare for your own family and send your kids to private school, you do not have principles but are merely virtue signalling. A bit like the old communist party apparatchiks who preached equality but travelled internationally and shopped at special shops.

How is it so cheap? Do you already have a plan through work? If this is just the consultation, how much will the actual treatment cost? And yes, I see why you feel uneasy, it is an NHS consultant, using NHS funding. Really really unfair.

The NHS isn’t free, we’re all paying for it. If you go privately you pay again, your choice. The other side of it is that not everyone can afford to pay again.

I’m a massive fan of the NHS and you will get safer treatment in an NHS hospital. Sometimes though, it’s worth paying to go privately. I did this when I couldn’t get anywhere with a referral for a painful shoulder. I paid and the consultant knew immediately what was wrong and that an operation would cure it. He also said he would do it on the NHS as I didn’t have insurance. The consultant was right, my GP was an utter twat.

Go for it OP. Sometimes it’s the right thing to do.

The ‘system is broken’ is a load of crap. It is an inevitable outcome of research that, at the beginning, treatments will be found which are effective but too expensive for all.

I do think that pioneering operations and drugs with those who can afford it allows data to be gathered and efficiencies to be found. A few years later the process is cheap enough for all.

The idea that someone lives because they are richer is not that palatable but it happens in many less visible spheres of life. And the alternative, the socialist paradise, ends up benefitting a tiny few at the rest of the population, far worse than what we have.

Oh I see, the socialist (communist?) thIng. I’ve never understood that and certainly not why people prefer it to detriment of their children or selves. But each to their own.

OP, if your political beliefs say don’t go private, don’t go. What are you doing with the money you have spare? Giving it to the food bank or homeless?

I also don’t get why anyone would begrudge an excellent practioner doing private plus NHS

Out of anyone in society I’d want the person about to operate on my / any child to feel happy with their remuneration and also to be attracted to the profession over other things they could do

I’m so grateful for this when I’m using private or NHS

If I didn’t have the money to see a private specialist and I, or god forbid my child, had to wait, I would be angry.

However I wouldn’t be bitter enough to react by banning everyone else from seeing them either!

I would do what I did do, get a second job in the early days and now choose to do without other things to afford good healthcare. It’s a priority, after my mortgage, in my life. (No big tv, skyboxes or xboxes or whatever, don’t even know what they are!)

People on this site talk about handbags and shoes and buy new things to wear for someone’s wedding, as is their choice, but that money could pay health insurance. It is a choice for some but they would rather have a handbag lol!

You're not jumping a queue. You're paying for a consultation outside of the time the consultant works for the NHS, so you're not negatively impacting those that can't afford or choose not to have private healthcare. Being able to go private is a choice, frankly I don't see why as a consumer we shouldnt have that. In other areas of life we get to decide. If the NHS is a nice solid family run 2 star hotel, going private is a glitzy five star one. Youre not hurting those staying at the 2 star one by not going. In fact some would argue that given that you've already paid to stay there (via your taxes) then you're freeing up your resources for someone else.

Frankly I value my health above pretty much all else in terms of what I would choose to spend money on and will always get myself the very best healthcare that my money will stretch to and I would certainly do the same for my kids.

If you have insurance or can afford it why not go private it frees up that appointment for someone who can't.

If you can afford to go private why would you not?

Would I leave my child to suffer for 16 weeks when I had the money in the bank. Of course I wouldn’t!

Depends if you are having everything done privately. In my area you can pay for a consulation and get that quicker, but if you are having the treatment still on the NSH you will still have to wait the allotted time so it won't actually get sorted any faster.

There’s nothing wrong with private, it frees up a space for someone else. I think we’ll have to accept the intermingling of nhs and private much more going forward. Go for it

Private practices are taking away nhs staff at a huge cost to the nhs. IMO private practices are destroying the nhs. The government is allowing, infact encouraging this.

I agree. The issue is whether the OP's ethical responsibility to her DD in the short term is more important than her ethical responsibility to everyone (possibly including her DD in the future). Shitty choice.

Sorry irrelevant but couldn't help giggling at soapbox's faux naive comment 'Socialism? Well, each to their own'

A system in which you need to wait 16 weeks for an appointment is already broken. Do your daughter a favour and go private.

It can only be a matter of time before we go over to an insurance-based system such as already exists in France or Germany. It would have happened sooner were the NHS not such a sacred cow that no government dare touch it.

We're living in cloud cuckoo land if we imagine that the NHS can continue to be free at the point of use for evermore. It is simply not sustainable.

As pp stated NHS consultants are perfectly entitled to do private work in their own spare time. Not doing private work wouldn't mean they would do more NHS work at all, they already have to fulfil all their NHS work before they do private. My DH works an average of 50 hours a week for NHS, his private work is on top of that.

OP get the private consultation, it may be that your dd doesn't need any treatment or perhaps just a prescription, or you may be reassured that it's OK to wait for NHS treatment. Either way it's about peace of mind.

I'd never considered PHC, until one of my DC needed tests and I saw how long the wait was!

We now all have healthcare and wouldn't want to be without it. No way would I leave my child to suffer while I had health cover, that makes no sense to me.

We've never 'jumped the queue' and only used private hospitals, but tbh when it comes to my babies and their health...