Has the pandemic made you think about your NHS impact?

[reducingfootprint]

Aside from having children, i rarely have doctors appointments. I am the lower end of healthy weight, good blood pressure etc and think overall i must have a low impact on the NHS. I dont smoke, dont drink often but rarely exercise and probably have too much sugar
With covid devastating the NHS has it made you want to change your ways, like stop smoking and lose weight, to decrease your impact on the NHS?
So AIBU to think you should really complain about the stress if the NHS if you have an unhealthy lifestyle?

@wingsnthat but wouldn't it be better if you do what you can to stay well and the money paid in improves lives/ outcomes for those not able to make those choices?

No one should be guilt tripped into not bothering the NHS. If you want to eat healthily, not smoke etc do it for yourself. It doesn't make you a more moral person.

If you need expensive treatment I bet you will take it OP. Despite the cost to the NHS. Will you be turning down chemotherapy if you needed? Just by having children you will have cost the NHS a lot, those children could have had disabilities or chronic illness that cost the NHS millions, yet you still chose to have them. Seems you only care about the impact on the NHS when it suits you.

Imagine if our health care system was designed to actually care for people rather than to save government money?

Imagine a different model, where our hospitals relied on providing good care so that we would choose them rather than them just knowing they'll get people coming, with inadequate funding to do it, so they cut corners and costs..

We could have a different system and have a health care system that prioritises patients' health, not state coffers.

The pandemic has made me resent the NHS to be honest, because the covid measures have all been about protecting an inadequate system, not about treating a disease. It's exposed that it's all about money and not about treatinf people. Things are only opening up because there are fewer people needing the inadequate system's resources.

I had quite a low impact on the NHS other than childhood visits to A&E and giving birth twice. That changed a couple of years ago when I developed diabetes. Now, some of my diabetes is due to my lifestyle (too many carbs and not enough exercise) but since my entire family is riddled with it and I have other connected conditions as well, it was pretty inevitable that I would develop it at some point in my life. Now I get blood tests a couple of times a year, free prescriptions, eye checks, etc. I'm trying to manage it better with my diet (failing during lockdown but getting back to it as things get back to normal), but now Ive been diagnosed I'll get all those things for life. I have lost 2 stone in the past year, and I'm looking to lose another stone over the summer to bring me further into the healthy weight range.

DH has had a massive amount of input from the NHS, from a chronic illness in childhood, to a different chronic illness as an adult which flares up from time to time and increases his risk of certain cancers.

Everyone in my family seem to have years/decades where we never see a doctor, then we develop a few things all at once. I assume that's similar for most people. The younger you are the less likely you are to need medical attention regularly, then those medical needs increase with age. My sister has just turned 40 and is currently waiting for 3 operations for 3 entirely unrelated conditions. She's also unlucky enough to have a disability that means she's probably used the NHS more than the rest of the family put together. There's absolutely nothing she can do about any of it though.

@Biffbaff

Imagine if our health care system was designed to actually care for people rather than to save government money?

Imagine a different model, where our hospitals relied on providing good care so that we would choose them rather than them just knowing they'll get people coming, with inadequate funding to do it, so they cut corners and costs..

We could have a different system and have a health care system that prioritises patients' health, not state coffers.

The pandemic has made me resent the NHS to be honest, because the covid measures have all been about protecting an inadequate system, not about treating a disease. It's exposed that it's all about money and not about treatinf people. Things are only opening up because there are fewer people needing the inadequate system's resources.

I'm sure you won't mind never accessing the NHS again then. Sorted.

@CuriousaboutSamphire

That's nice. Leave the NHS for us poor people!

Except... it doesn't work that way, does it?

Who trains your private doctors?

Who shares their expertise, facilities?

Who picks up the pieces when private health care goes wrong?

And a while host of other issues. Private health care in the UK is not independent of the NHS.

So well said. And most nhs consultants also do private work.

I think there is a difference between using the NHS for "chance" illness ie caused by genetics and by chance than for self inflicted illness - I do think that people have a responsibility to look after themselves. It would be great if the NHS could treat everyone but there is limited resources so choices do have to be made and yes for those who have contibuted significantly to their own ill-health they maybe should be a lower priority

I also think this is very smug of you OP. I have a relatively healthy lifestyle and am not overweight, I was diagnosed with breast cancer last month. I hadn't been to my GP (apart from a tetanus jab and smear tests) in years. These expensive things can happen to anyone.

Used to work with adults with brain tumours . They must have cost NHS hundreds of thousands . Several pretty much lived in hospital for years . Never, ever begrudged them their care . You can be skinny, eat plants, never touch a fag, wear a bike helmet and get a GBM at 40 and die a year later with a massive team caring 24/7 for you . You can smoke 40 fags a day like my gran - and live to 81 with very few illnesses at all .

The beauty of the NHS is you won’t pay a penny except through normal taxation .

At the end of the day it’s mostly genetics, life chances (the stuff that happens to you that you have very little influence on like ACEs) and luck .

Self inflicted illness - if you can call it that - tends to come through ACEs, poverty, disenfranchised, isolation, abuse, racism, lack of money, exposure to crime, lack of money .

Majority of that happens TO you and not because of any decision you made.

If you’re healthy and able to eat well and exercise in a gym and don’t have MH and don’t smoke and weren’t abused in childhood and don’t need to work in cheap manual labour; that’s mostly luck .

I have tried to be a bit healthier. I am overweight, but not as overweight as I was pre-covid. I'm generally eating more fruit and veg, drinking less alcohol and getting more exercise.

However, although this was initially in response to the pandemic, it was more to do with reducing the risk to me rather than thinking about the impact on the NHS.

The nhs has made me mad and very very sad at the state of healthcare now post covid. I can't get a face to face doctors app. I am fobbed off on the phone and tbh have given up completely ever imaging I'll see anyone.

I also couldn't get my dd into a&e last year as the hospital said I had to book an app. I think this was absolutely disgusting.
I ended up waiting on the phone to 111 while they repeatedly told me my dd seemed fine on their checks. I ended up losing my patience and demanded my dd was seen at a&e. Turns out she'd broken her arm. She was seen 6 hours after the accident.
After my gp continuous refusal to see my ive now seen an online private doctor who has written a letter to my nhs dr to request I be examined.

My attitude is one of disgust and anger that private healthcare has also been severely halted to support it.

Imagining *

Deifying the NHS has created so much resentment that ive seen comments elsewhere saying that it might be better privatised. Attitudes and expectations like yours are seriously backfiring OP.

@EssentialHummus

I believe in personal responsibility for health where possible (“lifestyle”) but I don’t pray to the god NHS. I think deifying the health service is really problematic, and to some extent stops rationale conversation about it.

Yes I agree with this. The recent protect the NHS propaganda is nauseating. We pay for it. It's there to be used. People shouldn't abuse it like they shouldn't abuse anything else. People with chronic health conditions, disabilities etc should not have to worry about their impact on a service which exists for them to use on tops of their other problems.

None of us is control of our “impact” on the NHS. We use it most at the beginning and end of our lives. Even the slimmest, teetotal, non smoker could easily develop cancer or heart disease.

I’ve been left with an incontinence issue since the birth of my second daughter, and of anything it has made me use the NHS less than I would have, as my doctor won’t see me about it at all. When I rang about it, after what must have been a hundred hours of kegels, I managed to get a telephone appointment. However I was fobbed off, and they said (I’m quoting her now) “we won’t be able to get you an appointment with the hospital to help with the issue, so there isn’t any point coming in, you’ll have to wait”.
So now I piss myself continuously, as nobody wants to help me. I rang back a few times after that and had similar issues with other doctors, now I’ve given up.
I’m in my early 30s and it’s embarrassing, and the use of constant use of protection means I keep getting thrush.
Between terrible birth experiences, the hearing issues I now have as a doctor refused to help me as a child with a reoccurring ear infection they wouldn’t treat, the family members who have died due to poor care and not being screened and treated in time for cancer to not ravage their bodies, and now this, the NHS have failed me many, many times.

I did find it interesting when A&Es last March-
June were totally empty,
My friend is a paramedic and said they barely got any calls in those months. Makes
Me think do people really need to go there when they do? Or call for an ambulance?

@whatsthisfeelingcalled Gyms were closed for most of the last year to protect the NHS. Some gym goers will have got out of the habit.

@OverTheRainbow88 I have spent many shifts in A&E, the amount of time wasters we get in is unbelievable, 99% of the time wasters could get treated by a pharmacist over the counter in your local tesco!

Our A&E was very quiet and I got redeployed to ICU!

Well yes there is something or could do.. not get pregnant. Sorry if that sounds harsh but is your chronic illness likely to impact on you being able to care for your child over the next 18 years? If yes, you’re selfish and being massively unfair to your unborn baby.

@Sooperdooper19

I am disgusted. This is vile ableism and you should be ashamed of yourself. Would you prefer all disabled people removed themselves from society since merely living a life is a sign of selfishness?

No. These days reasonably heavy NHS user due to chronic illness. But previously very light user due to good health and being younger. I have paid a lot of tax in previous years as well so feel my contributions well outweigh my current costs.

No. The NHS is for everyone regardless of their lifestyle choices. Yes some people will pay less into it and benefit more but that’s life. I am proud that we have healthcare for everyone.
Anyway, apparently fat people/smokers/alcoholics actually cost the nhs less than healthier people who live longer because it’s much cheaper if someone dies of a heart attack at 65 than if someone lives a healthy life then slowly dies in hospital/with carers/on lots of medication at 95

@OverTheRainbow88

I did find it interesting when A&Es last March- June were totally empty, My friend is a paramedic and said they barely got any calls in those months. Makes Me think do people really need to go there when they do? Or call for an ambulance?

But a lot of the places people have accidents were also closed then. We have at least a couple of kids a week end up at A&E after an accident at school (bad landing in a PE/games lesson usually that needs an x-ray), sporting injuries are quite a common reason for A&E visits too, and pubs being closed meant there were far fewer drunken fights/accidents (yes people were still drinking but it's easier to avoid accidents in your own home than it is walking home after a big night out). So it's quite possible that people just didn't need emergency medical attention at the same rates as normal during lockdown. Obviously I am aware that there are also time wasters, but the decrease would also have been because people weren't doing the things that end up with injuries. Even my accident-prone nieces managed to avoid A&E during that lockdown and I can't think of another time in their lives where one or other of them hasn't needed an x-ray to check out an injury.