To ask if you would pay for GP visits

[justanotherhappyflunkie]

Been talking with various friends who all agree they would rather pay a nominal sum to see a GP rather than the current system.

I have lived in a country that does this (free for children, disabled people, discounts for beneficiaries and long term sickness) and it was great. Same day appointments, good range of doctors, quick referrals.

The UK equivalent of this would be around £20 per visit.

AIBU to suggest it is the system that could help the NHS? prepares for a flaming!

@Badbadbunny Specsavers take shortcuts. There need to be appointments for adjustments. The initial appointment is to check if the person needs a hearing aid or some other medical intervention. My gran was rejected at this stage and referred for other treatment that worked. Specsavers would have just fitted a hearing aid.

Using an example of the private sector taking shortcuts as being more efficient really does not stack up. And my local specsavers does it in two appointments and three if you go back for adjustments. So locally all they are cutting out is the initial consultation to see if a hearing aid is appropriate or you need some other intervention. Specsavers do not have qualified enough staff available to offer this anyway.

Your friend would likely be one of those who would qualify for a free appointment...

@Badbadbunny The private sector are not more efficient if they have the same money as the NHS. I am amazed anyone still argues this after the various private sector debacles.

@carmenitapink My family would not. My DH and I both work full time and just above minimum wage. We would move on from being the ones with poor teeth to the ones with untreated medical problems.

I already pay for the NHS through my taxes.

I would prefer it to be as it us now, free but there is an option to go private if you want to.

Regardless of ability to pay there should be a fine for not attending for regular offenders. The NHS needs reform, individuals need to take more responsibility for themselves. Throwing money at it isn't a long term fix.

I’m not sure what the answer is to be honest, I’d happily pay to see the doctor if the care was better but I do understand something needs to happen to the ones that don’t show up, maybe taking a small fee out of their wages/benefits at source would make people think!

If they miss appointments and can’t be arsed to turn up then they clearly aren’t sick enough and should be fined, how hard is it to cancel an appointment if you don’t need it 🙄

@Ineedwinenow Actually they are sometimes the sickest patients. If you are badly ill with a chronic issue you often have multiple appointments alongside tiredness and difficulty concentrating. It is very easy to get mixed up.

It can be surprisingly hard to cancel an appointment. If they don't have an online booking system (many still don't), you can't just click to cancel. You then need to phone up, and end up 57th in the queue or just cut off.

Even if you manage to get through, there's no certainty they'll actually cancel your appointment. I once had two appointments the same afternoon, one for our DS and then another for me around an hour later. A couple of days before, I phoned to cancel DS's appointment and re-arranged it for the following week, but when I turned up for my own, the doctor gave me an ear bashing for DS failing to attend an hour earlier - I pointed out that I'd cancelled it and told her to check next week's diary to see the new appointment, which she did, and it was there, but she never apologised for the practice error of not cancelling his original appointment!

As for cancelling or changing a hospital appointment, that's a whole new level of pain, as when you call the number on the appointment letter (if it's not a disconnected number that it), you just get an answering machine, and leave a message, but they never get back to you, so you have to keep trying at random times to try to find a time/day when there's someone working who may actually answer the phone. (Ignored answerphone messages has happened many times!)

I think part of the problem is we are used to our healthcare being free now. If you watch the earlier series of call the midwife, people were used to paying for their healthcare or not getting it if they couldn't afford it. So they were grateful for free healthcare, even if it wasn't that great or there was a long waiting list. Now, we are used to free healthcare. If someone suddenly introduced paying for GP appointments then people would expect a better service for their money. And let's face it, if the only people being charged are the people who pay for their prescriptions, the amount of money saved is going to be minimal. The people who use the gp the most are not paying for their prescriptions.

I'm wondering if it would help to have a team of specialist nurses, kind of like health visitors but for other groups of people like the elderly, people with mental health issues and other groups of people who tend to use the gp a lot. They could take the pressure off the g p's and maybe do self care, preventative advice and routine health checks. I know the practice nurses do some of this stuff but I'm thinking of a more specialist role. I was just thinking that if we had a kind of facility where you could get an appointment and have reassurance and advice when needed then there would be less people giving up on the gp surgery and going straight to a and e. Also maybe having the option to take "being an adult" as a GCSE subject instead of subjects that most adults will never need again. They could learn about healthy lifestyle, when it's appropriate to use a and e, budgeting skills etc.

YABU!! I pay enough in National Insurance and tax every month! £700 a month goes straight from my employer to the government.

@elliejjtiny Those teams exist. They have suffered cuts.
There used to be other teams as well like fall prevention teams. If someone elderly was taken to hospital after a fall the falls prevention team would support them to prevent future falls. They also took referrals from GPS etc. Falls take up a lot of emergency resources and sometimes simple measures like physio or even installing better lighting in hallways or a hand rail can prevent any falls happening.
But psychiatric community nurses, crisis team, respiratory nurses, cancer nurses, cardiac nurses all exist. They are often just as hard to get hold of as GPs though.

I already via my NI contributions however i do feel that if you miss an appt there should be a charge

I had two DNA's today. One was an 88 year old lady, the other a 28 year old man.
Would you charge them both?

I'm not on a low income, but I'm a lone parent and my outgoings are high (childcare, mortgage etc). I would absolutely struggle to pay this. I've not had the funds to pay for prescriptions in the past. I hate this idea that only people on benefits are struggling.