To think people have inflated view of our healthcare system?

[Runaway0]

I've had treatment abroad twice and I wouldn't hesitate to get elective treatment abroad again this was the EU. The staff spoke perfect English there was an ICU in the hospital. I was offered pre op sedation because i was anxious ,I had my own private room , I was nursed with one other patient and there was 2 nurses on shift so 1:1 ratio my pain was perfectly managed. In comparison over here ive been expected to have gynaecological procedures with no pain relief. I had great protein filled meals with fish plenty of vegetables great for healing. (High carb slop offered here.)

I had dressings changed , post op care wirh docfor and I stayed 4 weeks to ensure everything was healing well. I keep hearing people say they would never get treatment abroad you will die etc they treat the UK as some holy grail of healthcare. People who go abroad are stupid etc.I have been left in pain multiple times in our health care system. My DD when she fell ill in Singapore had a team of doctors waiting for her at the hospital.
Preparing to be flamed but AIBU to think our healthcare system isn't that great? Many people haven't actually experienced care abroad so assume ours must naturally be the best?

The healthcare would be the exact same in this country if we paid for our procedures, the way you did in another country. Staff ratio would be one nurse two or three patients. Bit of a non story really

The % of a GDP we spend on the NHS is about the same as most European countries spend on healthcare, less than Japan and Italy which have older populations but on a par with France and Germany. There is no reason why the NHS is so bad other than poor management.

I agree.

I think the thing to bear in mind is that the NHS is massively underfunded and a lot of money gets wasted managing people’s unrealistic expectations and time wasting.

It happens on both sides, very inefficient & so much time wasting.

Nope. People who don't pay taxes still receive free healthcare. Taxpayers pay for some of the NHS's costs and the government makes up the balance through borrowing.

I’ve also never paid hardly anything for it.

So what you're saying is that you paid a lot for it?

We pay for our health care system through taxation.

lots don't though, we have an ageing population & a social care crisis which isn't helping

You get what you pay for! We pay less per head for healthcare than comparable countries and no costs to visit the gp or attend hospital. I'm not saying what is right or wrong, this is just a fact.

I've lived in the USA where I got excellent care funded mostly by my exh's employers - however that was $490 a month premium which they paid and we paid a further $120 premium deducted from salary. There was also copays of $15 a drs visit or prescription. This gets you jacuzzis in your private room. 20% had no insurance then and people die from not being to afford prescription drugs.

I was getting shocking treatment on the nhs 20 years ago. It really is rubbish. Too much demand, too few staff, utterly incompetent admin and, and this is significant, a culture of ‘admit no blame, learn no lessons’. It’s not just underfunding, it’s also the awful culture the NHS had built up to patient complaints. No one, and no institution, can develop and improve if they never admit responsibility when they get things wrong. I’m sure many of us have experience of terrible, incompetent managers who never get better as they never face up to having got something wrong - well, the NHS is the institutional equivalent of that.

however that was $490 a month premium which they paid and we paid a further $120 premium deducted from salary.

Is NI paid by employees & employers here so different?

People also don't realise unless you work in the NHS that the healthcare tourism is putting major strain on finances also. People fly in from all over the place to have their babies, operations etc!

What I think is something that informs many people's views of the NHS is no charge for most things at the point of needing it. Also the main comparison seems to be made with US healthcare.

Most people never need medical care outside the UK in reality.

Took one of my closest friends to A&E yesterday as severely dehydrated and in pain post chemo. My friend sat on a hard plastic chair in the waiting room for 8 hours and they ran all the drips required there. She was so ill that the skin under her fingernails turned blue as the drips went in. I've contacted PALs with my suggestion that if the waiting room is going to be used as a treatment room then make it fit for purpose and provide comfy "drip chairs" at least. I've never seen such poorly people in a waiting room as normally they would have admitted. One lady collapsed and I had to help her before she fell on the floor she did get a trolley in the corridor after. I saw 3 other drip lines being run whilst I was there. People are getting treated but it's the bare minimum. Which isn't fair on the patients or the staff.

Also other thing worth noting, there’s a lot of money in the US for research so all top notch specialists experimental treatments etc seem to be there. I know quite a few people in Europe fundraising for a treatment only available in the US (like for rare conditions or cancer).

This is certainly the case in mental health, I’m a therapist who works with people who have experienced trauma. I was at a conference in the States focussed on psychological trauma and their approach is so very different, much wider in their understanding, less inter-modality debate, much more innovation. They are miles ahead of where we are because there’s money for research, they don’t need to look for manualised therapies that are easily replicated, to keep costs down and efficiency up. The mindset is completely different.

As far as I understand, People’s insurance can run out too. It’s not unlimited. Once you have used up your pot, that’s it.

So I’m French and been living in the UK for 25 years. Each time I’ve anything to do with the French health system, it turns into a complete disaster.

• A&E forgot my mum in a room when I took her there with a mini stroke. It’s only because I realised what happened and ended up losing patience with the very unhelpful staff that a passing doctor clocked us and rushed to her. She could have died that day. And no onA&E wasn’t busy that day, it was deadly quiet.

-A&E sent my 100-year-old grandma home within hours after a fall without noticing she had a broken jaw. She went home, couldn’t eat or drink and went delirious. Luckily she had her children around who rushed her back to A&E. -My mum had a severe, unexplained back ache at Christmas. She went to her GP twice in two weeks and died a few days later at home in atrocious pain in front of my dad. Emergency services only agreed to come when it was too late. There’s hardly ever an autopsy in France, even when one dies at home. One has to insist on one and go through a lawyer. it’s very complicated. So I’ll never know what happened for sure and it’s a doctor on Mumsnet who alerted me to the fact that it could have been an aortic dissection. The NHS is now checking me out as it’s a hereditary condition. I can’t get over the fact that someone could visit my mum’s GP with the same condition and her GP is still none the wiser and never will be.

i don’t know about other EU healthcare systems but the French system is a mess, there’s zero accountability and its staff are pretty uncaring and not very knowledgeable.

I heard a British journalist who had moved to the US say the same. His son had some sort of permanent health condition and he said the US healthcare was better for them because of the access to more treatments and more experimental / new treatments coming through.

@Paperbagsaremine great, thoughtful post. Also love he idea of the Right Honourable Mr Sensible: he’s not gonna claim taxpayer funding to clean his moat, is he?

NHS isn't underfunded st all. It's badly run and haemorrhaging money.

There needs to be a government brave enough to change how it's funded and how it's run but there are so many idiots in this country that think privatisation means the US model and not that private companies are paid by the government to do the job the creaking dinosaur of the NHS is failing to do that they're scared they'd be an uprising.

Yanbu - my beloved Dad died of sepsis last week in an acute nhs hospital bed. His care was appalling and I will be looking for answers when I feel strong enough. The communication and lack of compassion showed was also staggering.

I have been an NHS nurse for 28 years but community and was very naive to how bad things were in hospital. We have to shout and shout to get my Dad see and yet he still died.

I can only speak of my own recent experience - a sudden and extremely nasty infection, which resulted in an ambulance arriving fairly quickly, being blue-lighted straight into the emergency room, and excellent care which I could not possibly fault, for nearly 3 weeks.

I do appreciate that emergencies are a whole different thing from any elective surgery, but I am extremely grateful to my local hospital.

Absolutely. Here there are pockets of really good care, but over the years I have realised that most of it is subpar, in old buildings which haven't been updated since the 60s, with HCP often treating you with disdain becasue you ought to just be grateful you are there receiving your "free" healthcare.

YANBU - my beloved Dad died of sepsis last week in an acute nhs hospital bed. His care was appalling and I will be looking for answers when I feel strong enough. The communication and lack of compassion showed was also staggering.

Im so sorry for your loss.

My ex developed an infection a few years ago, went to the GP who arranged blood tests for the following week. In the meantime his condition worsened significantly, he was shaking, couldn’t keep even keep water down, high temperature. I took him back to the GP who told him to come back the following week for his blood tests and in the meantime take paracetamol to bring his temp down. My ex could hardly walk back to the car. I took him to A&E where he was triaged and within 30 mins was in a bed with an anti-biotic drip. He had sepsis, if he’d waited for the blood tests he would have been dead. The GP barely examined him.

The point I was trying to make is - the NHS isn't 'free', as some posters above seem to think.
Whether funded through taxation or borrowing, the NHS costs.

This is probably not because of the quality of maternity services, for those who can afford to access them, but because there are women who do not access them due to cost. ‘Free birthing’, with no trained health care support at all, for religious reasons for some Christian’s is also a thing ( trusting in God), but the accounts I have read from women who did this admit that saving on medical bills was also a factor. I suspect it is actually THE factor but dressed up in religious garbs for psychological reasons/ social acceptability.