to think that the NHS is really quite shit and that not everyone who works in it is an underpaid hero?

[Adenosine]

There is a strange British preoccupation with the NHS which I think prevents honest public dialogue about its many shortcomings. At the time it was set up it was innovative, but now there are many other universal healthcare systems most of which are better than the NHS and many of which cost less money.

It's ranked low globally and really quite shit yet few people dare criticise or. AIBU to think that we really need to be far more critical?

Wish people would stop acting like the only alternative is the American healthcare system. It’s not. There are far superior healthcare systems out there and it’s about time we started to use them. The NHS needs fixing.

There is no doubt that parts of the NHS is shit, but it’s because it’s being run down deliberately.
My DH and his colleague set up a service for their trust. It was very successful and saved so much money, kept people in school or work, out of hospital and those who were admitted had far fewer bed days. Not only was this good for the individual - even if you’re only going to look at results at an economic level, fewer sick days (weeks) and lower bed occupancy is obviously an advantage. The results were so good more funding was offered, along with the research money which it attracted.
Then we had a change of government who decided to cut funding year after year and to cut a long story short, the service is no longer there and the trust is struggling.
In the end my DH decided he could no longer provide a safe service and didn’t want his professional reputation damaged, so we’ve moved to Australia where he can work in a well funded and staffed service (he also earns 3x his uk salary, but we definitely would not have moved for this alone). He finds Medicare a bit ‘clunky’ and not very efficient in comparison with the NHS and it’s open to a fair amount of abuse, but from a patient’s perspective, it’s great.
I’m not surprised that there are so many vacancies in the NHS now - there are a lot of us here!

The thing I hate is the fierce irrational protectiveness around frontline NHS staff which makes it so difficult to hold them to account. A paramedic was an absolute cunt to my grandmother who has dementia. When I dared point this out as part of a wider discussion on another forum, there was a furious outpouring of "how dare you, don't you know these are the unsung heroes saving our NHS, working for practically nothing, and absolutely must not be held to account for their conduct!"

And you can’t even blame the NHS for there only being one other person to cover me. We have 3 empty posts with funding for permanent positions. Nobody is applying. Nobody wants to work for the NHS anymore it seems. And who can blame them quite frankly

Would there be enough applicants if, to give a silly example, they tripled the salaries on offer? But I guess they can't do that because payscales and/or budget. Neither of those things would be a constraint in a less socialist (for want of a better word) system, they would just pay what they had to to get people and pass on the cost to the customer.

And of course if there were no shortage of workers to the extent no-one worked unpaid overtime, or any overtime at all that they didn't want to, the customer service would improve to the extent most complaints were eliminated.

I think what you've described (long-term empty posts) is actually an example of an intrinsic flaw in the NHS model.

If we kept the system but increased the budget by say 20% then some of the pressure would presumably be alleviated, but I'd guess there would still be misallocation of resources that is intrinsic to large organisations, and lack of customer service which is intrinsic to a monopoly supplier.

I think the NHS is good for some things though, e.g., universal vaccination, free contraception, emergency care. I think it’s less good at managing patients with multiple issues in a coordinated way and could really do better with some IT investment (just my impression as an outsider but with some family who work in the NHS). We can’t operate as if the GP or matron knows everyone personally any more so IT and some kind of care coordination needs to fill that gap. I also don’t think that the management of long-term conditions is very patient friendly resulting in workers having to take multiple days off to get fairly routine checks done for regular prescriptions.

I don't think it's shit, but I do think it could be a lot better and that many people will simply refuse to acknowledge this or discuss it.

I get really annoyed when people immediately shut down any sensible discussion with "well I think the NHS is amazing because they saved my life when xyz happened and it was all free". Well, great, but you'd hope that would happen really wouldn't you, that's sort of the whole point of the NHS.

It doesn't immediately cancel out all the other experiences people have of substandard care. And it's not bloody well "free"!

We are one of the very few countries to have fully socialised, free at point of delivery healthcare.

People don’t value what they don’t pay for - it’s seen in missed appointments, abuse of services including ambulances and A&E, seeing GPS for the most trivial things

As others have said, it’s not the NHS or America. Most countries have a blend with healthcare not for profit/mutuals playing a big part. IMO their systems are better.

Seriouly sick of this tory bot shit.

A few weeks ago I developed severe breast / chest pain which had lasted a few weeks before I tried to get a GP apt, this took a month However I was offered immediate appointments at various other locations and also at the practice with a nurse. By the time my apt came the pain had started radiating down my left arm
Once seen, within a week I'd had two x rays on different days, a Doppler scan, an ecg and seen by a physio. The appointment for the breast consultant was phoned through to me that week and I was seen at hospital the following week. I'm just waiting for the mammogram date but it really looks as if this is 'just' breast pain.
I'm late 50's and have hardly ever been ill or required medical services. To say I was absolutely impressed with the NHS is an understatement.

The NHS saved my DD's life on more than one occasion in childhood and enabled her to receive multiple surgeries to correct congenital abnormalities which have resulted in her now leading a normal life

I see friends and colleagues abusing the NHS on a daily basis. Going to the GP for coughs and colds etc. I've also noticed here that fewer people seem to trust their own judgement with the health of themselves or their children. The general advise to a query is nearly always ' see the GP, phone the non emergency line' etc I can't recall often seeing a response to stay indoors, keep hydrated, rest and see how things go

Our NHSis bloody brilliant but will be broken if people don't start taking responsibility for their own health more

@ echt

She shoots, she scores

As PineappleDanish just said, it is not a question of NHS as is, or US style care, there are other options. So, I guess I agree that it hasn't been in tge NHS' benefit to have this "untouchable" status.
I live in Spain and, although the system is not without shirtcomings, I would much rather use the Healthcare system here, rather than in the UK.

I have been saying this for ages.

What is the obsession with the amazing NHS?

It makes me laugh when a Facebook friend goes to hospital with a sprained ankle or some other minor injury. Then just because the doctor doesn't accidentally remove a kidney or make some other major screw up, they gush about how amazing the staff are.

The interesting thing is that people in the UK are so impressed by what is considered to be relatively standard treatment in the rest of the developed world.

I think we have some unrealistic expectations of the NHS, that it will and should always be able to offer every possible treatment and care to every person who asks. Those GoFundMe pages for people wanting experimental/high risk treatments overseas - I'm okay with the NHS saying that it is going to prioritise proven treatments with high success rates, for example. And I would rather that any day than GoFundMe pages for people diagnosed with treatable cancer, having to face losing their home in order to pay for it, because the insurance they've paid a fortune for turns out not to want to cover the drugs they need.

I do think a free-at-the-point-of-need health service is a great public good, but I think we need to have some hard, serious conversations about the limitations of that. It cannot have an infinitely expanding remit to cover every newly researched treatment for a growing and aging population. Difficult choices about priorities need to be made based on prevention, prognosis, and yes, cost.

And of course not every NHS staff member is perfect. They are human. They're just like the rest of us: mostly doing their best in difficult situations and sometimes screwing up.

Why obsess over the US system?

We could switch to the Dutch, German, French or Swiss systems.

It's great and it's terrible. It's not free - we pay through our taxes - but we don't spend as much as other countries per head and it shows.

It employs nearly 1,000,000 people. Some are fantastic, some are terrible, most are covering their own job + 20% of someone else's. It's a cumbersome behemoth with management who are often extremely clever but rarely have the training, experience or skill to steer such a complex organisation.

Well they saved my brother's life this week, against the odds, so in my view YABVVU.

I agree @tttigress .

I think a lot of the problem is the demands made on it. My mum would only take us to the doctors if our arm was hanging off. These days people live at the doctors or A&E. They also expect everything to be covered. I've heard people on here moaning about not getting free paracetamol and gluten free bread. FGS it's on its knees people!

People being late for/missing appointments also gets my goat. Someone was complaining about her appointment being given away for a routine thing for her child when she was ten minutes late. She was given another appointment at another surgery a little further away. All this helps clog up the system.

When I was pregnant I still paid for my prescriptions, even though I could have got them for free, because I could afford them more than someone on a low income. I'd be the same as a pensioner, as I don't need free prescriptions. Just because you can get something for free, doesn't mean you should (people on low incomes are not included in this, obviously)

I'd be happy when in hospital to pay for meals etc. Why do people whinge about that? When you're at home you have to pay for food, why not in hospital? People on benefits or pensioners could, however, be covered. People also moan like stink about paying for parking, when it all helps to cover the costs of the service. It's a fraction of what it costs to treat you or your loved ones and you have to pay anywhere else -shopping centres etc-, so why not suck it up?

People are so wasteful of services. I know people who go to the doctors and get a prescription from the doctors but have no intention of actually taking the medication, so it rots in the drawer (they tell me they don't like the idea of taking them). Why get the bloody tablets in the first place. Then also people don't take back items like crutches? There often used for a couple of weeks and people don't return them, despite them being reusable. I returned some and the staff were amazed! I've often seem them in rubbish tips etc. Why not take them back rather than dumping them?

We could all help preserve our NHS by just being a bit less wasteful of it and less selfish/entitled.

The ideological construct of the NHS is spot on.

The culture within it is, all too often, toxic. Resulting in poor care, especially for women. We aren’t listened to and many diagnostic and treatment processes are based on research done on men. I expect this is a problem in many healthcare systems though, not just the NHS.

Who knows what we could achieve with culture change and a properly funded NHS though. Surely that’s something to aim for rather than taking it all apart?

People do keep saying what about us, when that would mean an extra £100k plus on care for one person for example

Agree with pp on not valuing what appears to be free

Watch the film Sicko by Michael Moore and see the alternative. There are stories of successful people who got cancer had insurance but when the cancer returned there insurance wouldn’t cover. There is a woman who had been a successful newspaper editor who lost everything due to medical bills when her cancer returned.
There is a woman who lost her baby daughter because the nearest hospital was not her insurance allocated one- by the time her daughter got to the new hospital she had died. She had a fever, a simple fever and they wouldn’t treat her!
There is a guy who’s insurance wouldn’t cover chemo as they said it was experimental- he died. The insurance companies employ doctors and pay them bonuses not to pay out when people get sick. If this is the system you want vote Tory. Many of them have said on record this is the system they want.
If you think you are fine cause you can afford insurance think again.

I have had both good and bad experiences in the NHS - several hospital stays - but nothing has ever made me question the NHS. To me, it is a sign of a civilised nation and I can't imagine what it would be like to live somewhere like the US where illness or injury can financially derail an entire family's future, often permanently.

I'm also most suspicious about the timing of your enquiry given the election campaign, and I hope everyone else is equally aware of your possible motivations. Hopefully, it will only strengthen our will to defend our healthcare system.

I think the NHS really comes into its own with serious care and we have so much skill and equipment. The problems seem to be with the more mundane every day stuff that should be easy. My Nan was in A&E last week for 12 hours, a 94 year old with Alzheimer's highly distressed. All she needed was an x ray as the ambulance crew wanted it all clear even though they were 99% sure it was ok but needed that for her respite care - which she now hasn't got as no one can talk to each other. People on trolleys in corridors and two full waiting rooms, a lot of people who didn't exactly look that ill but I'd hazard a guess could not get in with their GP. Yesterday my DD was ill I'm on the online system at 8am, can't get an appointment and 38th in the queue on the phone. It shouldn't be this hard.

Why obsess over the US system?

We could switch to the Dutch, German, French or Swiss systems.

I imagine the constant comparisons to the US system is because its widely believed that those who wish to change and privatise the NHS are motivated by profit rather than actual improvements to the service and the health of the nation.

If making money is the final game then the US system would win hands down.

@ThatssomebadhatHarry

That is because that films highlights the problems with the US health care model.

There are many other health care models around. Most Northern European systems deliver better health outcomes on every measure than the UK NHS.