To hate what covid has done to the rest of the health service

[Dishwashersaurous]

I need an operation. Haven't seen a consultant in over a year due to covid. Finally, following telephone appointment I've been listed for the surgery.

I'm in constant pain and barely able to get out of bed most days.

I phoned to find how long the waiting list is. Due to covid its over a year.

I then investigated taking out a loan to go privately. The private wing at the hospital have just told me that due to covid they are not doing any overnight stays for months.

So I will probably lose my job ic I have to wait until a year. And I will be in constant pain. And all due to covid

Agree re brexit exposing the underfunding of the NHS.
Ironically the red wall areas who voted to leave the EU because of austerity and neglect from central government have elected the very type of mps who want to defund the NHS and public services ! Couldn't make it up...

I think a system like @BuggerBognor is advocating will as usual affect those less able to exploit those choices. Surely too much choice just muddies the waters as in the rail service for example. But I agree that change of some kind is necessary.
I've worked in the NHS for 30 years. On the whole I defend it, I know I work hard, but recently my own experience as a patient has been lamentable (not as an in patient I hasten to add). Luckily I knew what to do and I've been given another appointment. If I hadn't been aware of those options I undoubtedly would have been waiting months.

the patient is a drain on resources and - unsurprisingly - is shoved from pillar to post with treatment deferred as long as possible and the cheapest option always pushed

This really resonates with me. One of the things I really hate about the system is that it’s completely binary, you’re either an NHS patient or you’re completely self funded.

I paid for my cataract surgery and was offered a choice of vision range, ie did I want good close vision and glasses for driving or good distance vision and glasses for reading? As an NHS patient I wouldn’t have got any choice. Why couldn’t I have been an NHS patient and paid the cost of non standard lenses?

It’s the same with people being denied expensive drugs, why can’t they remain an NHS patient and just pay for the drugs instead of having to move completely to the private sector?

@BuggerBognor

We paid specifically towards heallthcare where I am from. I would have no issues with it here.

I think the difference on the continent (where I’m assuming you’re from - perhaps wrongly) is that in the better-performing countries there is more than one provider and a highly regulated insurance system. That’s infinitely preferable to having a monopoly provider that gives (at best) a variable performance depending on where you are in the country and in which the patient has no power and cannot simply vote with their feet. Put simply, the money needs to follow the patient. Under our system, the patient is a drain on resources and - unsurprisingly - is shoved from pillar to post with treatment deferred as long as possible and the cheapest option always pushed.

I’d be happy to pay much more in return for a guaranteed level of service. We cannot get any help for DS’ autism and have only had bad experiences with the NHS (and my DH is a consultant who is frazzled by the crapness of the system in which he works). From an entirely selfish point of view, why would I be willing to pay even more without some assurances about proper delivery, when I’m already spending hundreds every month out of net income to get DS the help he desperately needs?

You are correct. And yes, there are few insurance companies, but if I remember correctly over 60% are with 1. It goes directly from our wages to them and that's it.

However, there are also other differences. We pay for our contaception, for example. But we get annual gyno check up incl smear from the time we start being sexually active. We get fee annual check up with dentists and pay only towards extras (unless something changed, but I haven't heard anything,). Annual with a gp.

However, some things are obviously lacking. No system is perfect. Also, I say we, but I mean them, because I don't have the health insurance anymore there, obviously. Sadly.

And yes with the outlook at a patient as a drain. Plus I've never heard there something's like "you should stop smoking to save the healtcare system" or "you must lose weight so save the healthcare system" and other guilt tripping. Also, they weren't "saving the NHS" or "protecting the NHS". The posters said "stay home, help the healthcare staff, save lives". It's interesting to see the different attitudes in these things

@Alsohuman that is also very good point about state/private and why not "mix"

Can I reiterate GP surgeries are not closed. Yes we're working in a different way but we are still working. Personally I've never worked as hard in my 30 years as a GP. The reason people can't get appointments isn't because we're "closed" it's because of high demand. There are numerous reasons for this. The level of mental health problems has sky rocketed. As mentioned above people are waiting in pain for routine surgeries and quite understandably are contacting their GP more. Meantime we deal with all the other issues we always dealt with and run vaccination hubs. I am honestly physically and mentally drained.
I'm not looking for sympathy and have never objected to hard work. But what pushes myself and my colleagues over the edge is when we're working harder than ever and yet the perception is we're sitting here doing nothing

The argument against co-payment is usually that it creates a “two tier system”

It doesn’t get much more two tier than it is now! Private medicine only survived the birth of the NHS because some doctors had their “mouths stuffed with gold” to bribe them to work for the NHS. The original intention was to stop it altogether.

The “free at the point of delivery” mantra is maintained while the actual care is tendered to whoever comes in lowest, simply because any discussion of co-pay or alternatives is sacrilege and cannot be entertained in polite company

I don’t think that’s entirely true. It was Lansley who introduced compulsory tendering of clinical services and his reforms are universally recognised as wasteful and expensive now, particularly with the discovery of the procurement scandals of the Cameron years. I suspect they’ll be repealed in the next few years.

I would happily pay an extra few hundred pounds in tax a month to contribute to creating a decent NHS. Our experiences of it as a family have been extensive and, sadly, mostly pretty awful. At its worst, totally dehumanising.

If we could get private services for the things my children need we would, but they always send you back to the NHS when things are complex, and back into the dire services and revolting hospital buildings we go...

back into the dire services and revolting hospital buildings we go...

The buildings don’t matter. How can the services be dire if they provide something the private sector can’t, ie that money can’t buy?

I personally felt very guilty about queue jumping and paying for private treatment but unfortunately I’d have gone blind by the time I got to the head of the queue. I was on the cusp of not being able to drive by the time I would have joined it.

The buildings do matter when you are in for a long stay and can’t even open the window, the shower doesn’t work, and you all need to be moved in the middle of the night because the ceiling falls in from a flood.

Many of our hospital buildings are totally inadequate.

Services such as children’s mental health, paediatric neurology, and dentistry for people with learning disabilities are just a few of the appalling non-services I can name where there isn’t a private alternative and the NHS version isn’t fit for purpose.

Amazing how many people work in "caring professions" who clearly hate their patients the minute they express an opinion they don't like.

Perhaps you should think about why those services aren’t provided by the private sector @OrangeSamphire. If there was any money to be made, they would be available privately. Presumably their cost is why they’re not fit for purpose.

There are many reasons why many NHS services aren’t fit for purpose.

I am sure I am not alone in my willingness to pay significantly more tax to fix this problem.

I’m not sure there is any country in the world that has completely got it right in terms of services for long term or complex conditions. But there are many things we could learn from alternative systems in Australia, Germany and to a certain extent Canada and even parts of the US system too.

And your patronising ‘perhaps you should think’ comment really stings when I spent several years working in senior NHS management and we are heavy users of the system as a family. Of course I’ve bloody thought about it!

@OrangeSamphire

And your patronising ‘perhaps you should think’ comment really stings when I spent several years working in senior NHS management and we are heavy users of the system as a family. Of course I’ve bloody thought about it!

I’m really sorry. That genuinely wasn’t meant to be patronising, it was a very unfortunate turn of phrase.

Appreciate the apology. This whole thing is a sore point and at times we feel quite vulnerable when there’s nothing but poor services that don’t meet needs for our children.

@Natty13

Some of these comments are making my blood boil. You have NO IDEA what NHS staff have gone through in the last year despite news reports, articles, social media posts....

I'd love it if any of you keyboard warriors could have come in a year ago or before the second wave and explained how, with havong to cram insanely sick ITU patients in every space with an oxygen and power supply. That includes all operating theatres, recovery areas, A&E, 2 floors of the elseparate children's hospital, rehab units....we had to pull staff from everywhere: pre op clinics, specialist cancer nurses, A&E, wards where elective patients go post op, wards which were already slammed with less acute covid patients. And we still struggled to deliver even the most basic fucking care.

In the last year I have had to make decisions I never in a million years would have though possible. I'm not alone in that but I feel really fucking alone. Despite stopping ALL other treatments and operations I was still REGULARLY having to make decisions between 2 or 3 people crashing at once and only being able to attend to one. Imagine that for one second. How would you decide? I've had no magical training, there are no policies to show me how to decide who lives and who dies and I lie awake at night going over and over the decisions I made. Imagine having to call someone's family and explain they died because you were with someone else.

We are human beings and the lack of compassion for what we've gone through is absolutely disgusting. No wonder 40% of nurses have responded to a union survey stating intention to leave the profession.

But yeah, keep telling yourselves that the "big wigs" could have found a way to keep other services going you absolute ignorant ***.

I think people who have not been in the midst of it have no idea. The NHS cannot suddenly magic enough beds to treat thousands of very sick patients alive and keep services running as normal, as well as thousands of staff of sick or dead or shielding or tooo mentally unwell to go to work. I feel desperately sorry for anyone living with pain and waiting for surgery, but people gasping for breath have had to be the priority over the past year as well as life saving surgery. I work with cancer patients and I've heard heartbreaking stories of people to having major cancer surgery delayed because there was literally no high dependency beds available for their recovery, or having chemotherapy delayed because the risk is too high. There are no easy answers and I feel desperately for the people who have been having to make these decisions like never before.

I have a serious condition which requires a scan every 6 months to check tumours haven't developed. My last scan was over a year ago.

I've given up waiting for my NHS appointment and have paid to go private next Friday.

My son on the other hand, has been given several speedy hospital dermatology appointments throughout the pandemic for his acne...

We do not pay nearly enough in tax to fund the health service we seem to feel entitled to.

news.sky.com/story/covid-19-it-will-take-five-years-for-some-hospitals-to-catch-up-with-patient-backlog-experts-warn-12278863

Doesn’t say where all the extra are going to come from to clear the backlog. New equipment, beds and buildings are easy - they just cost money but you can’t easily or quickly have an extra number of trained doctors, nurses and support staff.