Just privatise the NHS

[user1237865]

Totally prepared to be told IABU but I've just got to the point where I think the NHS is so far gone it should be privatised.

Totally outing so I've Name changed. In NI we have 2 private hospitals but they don't do emergency's, they don't do ante natal care. Really they only provide you with an appointment with a consultant who will then decide in treatment which in most cases will happen on the NHS. If it's something like cataracts they'll do it but the private hospitals here don't do anything major. Perhaps the rest of the UK is the same. I'm not sure.

Today DSis was sent to A&E by the GP. DM and her have now been waiting 7 hours to be seen. While waiting another man collapsed and died in front of them. I think this is beyond ridiculous how can they let this happen?! If people were seen in a decent time frame this would be less likely.

FIL has terminal cancer again nowhere to treat him when he gets recurring sepsis so most times he sits on a chair (around ever 2 months) for 36 hours getting an IV in A&E before he's finally gets moved to a ward.

I paid for private ante natal care each time I was pregnant. It did give me appointments every 3 weeks and scans with a consultant but when it came to giving birth it was a time when the consultant was working a shift for the NHS thus using their resources and beds. Yes the care was probably therefore cheaper than had I been paying for my stay in hospital too but it isn't an option here.

The whole things a complete joke. Those willing to pay/ have insurance are still stuck blocking the NHS which in my opinion should be there for those that can't afford their own treatment or can't get insurance through their job.

Surely if a lot of it was private, pay would be better, meaning more people choosing it as a career (and not leaving) meaning people actually get proper care! Though so much of what I think could be wrong as I don't understand it all fully.

The DUP pulled the plug in NI, there are 4 other parties wanting to work together to make things better here.

It is the DUP holding the country to ransom - no one else.

Privatisation is not the solution but NHS is so badly run and totaly and hugely inefficent..I have lived in Turkey for the most of my life and I was shocked how bad the NHS is when I moved back to UK .Turkey has a population of 80 million maybe 10 million refuges and immigrants.Huge military spending and is much poorer then UK and still manages to do a much better job.This glorification of NHS is actually damaging it .You have to accept how shit it is and totaly reform it ripping it apart and starting from scratch .

I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be "getting away with" - we have an aging population and thus smaller % of population in working age - this has been seen coming for decades.

My worry is there'll be more and more of this:

NHS waits force patients to pay for private ops

Pre covid when we moved here there was no indication it would be impossible to get NHS dentist - none of the quandongs/obscure agencies who has some provision list had a dentist on who when contacted hadn't taken NHS patients for years. Everywhere else we'd live it was hard but not impossible to find NHS dentist.

I worry rest of NHS will become similar - won't be every illness or every area but they'll start to be pockets where private starts to be only realistic option.

There are no NHS dentists accepting patients in the whole county we now live in. We are still registered where we used to live. We now have to wait 10-12 weeks for a GP appointment. It’s appalling.

According to an OECD report on healthcare published today, the UK's healthcare spend is equivalent to about £10k per household, and is the third highest in Europe, yet it performed worse than 18 of the 19 wealthiest nations. Only the USA was worse. Health spending rose 14% between 2019 and 2021. This was the highest rate of increase of all the countries that submitted data.

I would link the article, but it's behind a pay-wall.

People continue to fall for the narrative that private companies would do a better job. Take a look at some of the private health companies running GP surgeries in the UK or some of the private companies running care homes or mental health services used by the NHS. Are these the kind of outcomes you want? Private healthcare is run for profit. The answer to our problem is to fund health and social care properly and to take back control of services from private health companies. our government have been allowing private companies to cherry pick easier, potentially profitable parts of the service. Look at what the NHS are paying to private companies to care for vulnerable people. Thousands for substandard care in mental health facilities where they are abused. It is a national scandal.

It doesn’t need to be a carbon copy of the American model. It’s like when you discuss doing away with the monarchy and everyone goes ‘but we could end up with Donald trump’

i think there could be something to be said for a hybrid system.

Why do people immediately jump in and mention the USA system. Plenty of European systems work just fine.

Precisely. But that’s not the narrative being sold by the Government or their media buddies. Instead the public are being persuaded that they need a smaller state and more privatisation. And so many are falling for it.

Labour seems to be having a lot of trouble finding itself a clear set of policies while trying to dance around Brexit still.

I reckon so many people are desperate about the state of the NHS right now that they would get a very long way by branding themselves the party that would get it sorted out as its priority and put forward specific funded ways they would do this. Just saying general stuff about sorting it out isn’t enough.

People continue to fall for the narrative that private companies would do a better job.

The care I've had in private hospitals has been in a different league to the NHS. I appreciate private hospitals have their limits, particularly around more specialist, acute care.

But I've had a fair amount of surgery and it's been stress free and yes, it's nice to have your own room with an en-suite to recuperate. While a nice environment doesn't equal great medical care, i haven't had a bad experience at any of the private hospitals I've used. They also have to compete for patients. My local NHS hospital is decrepit, filthy and frankly quite depressing,

This is not criticising hard working NHS staff but I don't see the current U.K. a private healthcare as a bad option.

Then we would have poor healthcare that we also have to pay £££££££ for.

I don't think so. There isn't much I would want to replicate from the Americas. They are pretty hideous.

People always go on about how the NHS is underfunded, perhaps it is. But I think it's just extremely poorly run.

The NHS is not free, just free at the point of use for most of using paying contributions. Rather than check our insurance documents/policies we are able to be treated.

If you can buy paracetamol for 26p over the counter why are thousands of people accepting prescriptions for them?

If someone is able to fly to Turkey for cosmetic surgery why should the NHS pick up the cost of “rectifying” things that go wrong or the cost of removing implants because they’ve reached the end of their usage? There are many, many examples of lifestyle choices costing the NHS thousands of pounds. In my own experience I had a number of cysts removed from my eyelids privately because the NHS considered it a cosmetic procedure; despite the fact I was getting infections and needing to take antibiotics.
Long term it was probably costing the NHS more to prescribe antibiotics that it would have done to operate. It took three years for me to save the money for the operation privately.

What needs to be reviewed is the ridiculous procurement contracts that have been put into place that are wasting millions of pounds, alongside the consultancy contracts to project manage various dreams and schemes.

Whilst private health care seems like the answer to many problems the reality is when you begin to look a little closer at the reality of these schemes they aren’t. Diabetics unable to get insulin funded insurance schemes because of long term high costs.

@lot123 I agree with everything you said.
Regarding private nursing homes they are better in my experience.
DGF went from hospital to an NHS nursing home for rehab. We were then advised the NHS had allocated him 2 weeks of rehab but these 2 weeks might not start for up to 16 weeks.
After around 6 weeks the rehab was yet to start, the nursing home was extremely poor he had no TV so we bought one and a radio. Both were left in the wardrobe then they disappeared.
We gave up on the rehab and moved him to a private home. The private home were appalled by the condition he'd been left in skin roaring red from improper cleaning. Private nursing costs a lot (£1k per week) but for the level of comfort and safety it's worth paying double that.
If private means profit it will also mean choice. Therefore the private hospitals/ nursing homes will be competing and competition more likely means better care.
We as a family all have private health insurance I can not in my lifetime recall one time we've had an issue with the insurance company paying. I don't use it often but as a large family of 4 generations it get used regularly enough.

The government seems to have got you thinking exactly the way it wants people to think. Healthcare should not be about making a profit out of other people's illness and disease.

Hip replacements - buy one, get one free!
Special offer on anaesthetics - this will knock you out!
Antibiotics - 10 days' treatment for the price of 7!

We want healthcare for the benefit of the population, not for businesses to make a profit. We pay for the NHS through taxation and NI contributions, so it's "free" at the point of delivery. Mick Lynch has been doing a very effective job pointing out the profits made by rail companies are lining the pockets of bosses, but cutting jobs and reducing pay and conditions of service of the workforce. See this article. We don't want a health service run in that way. The health service is not for sale. Don't let them try to make you think otherwise.

Aneurin Bevan must be spinning in his grave.

Read about the creation of the NHS.

@CactusBlossom perfectly put.

Thank you!

But what you are seeing is a very small section of healthcare in the private sector. The reality of all of healthcare being private would be very very different.

So if we go to a privatised system What’s supposed to happen to those of us that won’t be able to afford insurance? We get the second class care do we? If any at all?
I’ve had breast cancer and Dh is living with a brain tumour, oooh I wonder how much our premiums would be? 🤔🙄

Generally private healthcare in the US is nothing like what you expect when you pay for private healthcare in the U.K. It feels just like the NHS but worse.

Lots of unemployed people without health insurance but state funded when they can eventually get it. Underpaid staff, insurance companies/ policies that don’t like paying hospitals. Escalating costs of emergency medicine that not everyone can pay.

In most of Europe with state backed insurance models the state would cover it for incomes which cannot pay the premiums. Also the premiums are nothing like the scare stories always thrown around about the US. People are not left without health care and premiums and costs are regulated.

@XingMing ..and how long has the UK been funding the NHS at these levels? less than 2 years.

Blair trebled NHS funding in his first 3 years, then cut it back but it still took 7 years before anyone noticed.

The problem we have now is so much funding is being used to fix issues from years ago.

With staff shortages, why aren't we reducing AHP tuition fees? seems a bit obvious.

Sadly, I think the NHS has passed it's expiry date.. In 1947, it was a brilliant bold experiment in healthcare, which benefited most of the population who had always worried about paying a doctor. As a result, people lived longer. But eventually, people in poor health lingered longer, thanks to more sophisticated experimental treatments that could never be tried out on anyone who was not already ill. But the breakthough claims reported by the Mail et al seem to have convinced a large % of the UK that death is a choice.

@AndreaC74 , if you read my post, you will see that there was no political spin attached. It was a report on spending levels, deliberately. Reported against the spending and healthcare outcomes for 20 comparable economies who have reported figures for the same periods. Mostly in Europe, so comparable economies, incomes, demographics, climate. And the NHS doesn''t come out of it well.