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?

We (as a country) need to pay more for healthcare if we want outcomes and experiences to be as good as other countries. How we do that is ideological (eg NHS, German model, US model). But the poor outcomes and experiences are because we simply do not pay enough in.

There’s some glorification of the US system on this thread, ignoring the role that insurance companies have to play.

I have a rare condition. It took a while to get the right diagnosis and treatment on the NHS. But I’m in various online support groups and the people who have most trouble are usually those in America as insurance often won’t fund the right tests or medication.

Same. It's absolutely sobering reading about the battles people with my condition have in the US - even wealthy people with very good insurance cover.

Put it this way, would you prefer a private system in exchange for getting approximately 50% of your combined income tax and national insurance and employer national insurance back?

Because that's how much the NHS costs to society.

Even as a basic rate taxpayer it costs me over £6000 a year, i.e. more than average health insurance cost in the US.

And in return I get shockingly poor treatment relative to the US.

I'm not even a high earner FFS.

The NHS model of healthcare - i.e. free at the point of delivery, is and will always be the pinnacle of what a good healthcare system should be. Free to anyone and everyone who needs it, when they need it.

It is held in very high esteem but unfortunately, the British Government hasn't realised what a gem they have had in their hands all this time and have let it decay and get to a point where the Minister for Health takes a Nurses Union to the High Court to stop them from going on strike. How about paying the nurses (yes, those citizens that the British public clapped for during the lock downs) a decent wage so that they can live without having to resort to going to food banks and then they, oh, might not need to strike in the first place!

We have what I will call a mongrel version of it in Ireland and we also have private healthcare for anyone who can afford to pay for it.

I can see the UK going a very similar two tier system where people who have money can 'jump the queue' and get healthcare because they have the money.

As i said "latest crisis" the NHS wasn't great before, i doubt anyone would deny this.

1000s of Dr's Nurses and AHPs left the NHS after Brexit and perhaps more importantly, many more EU workers left Adult Social Care and no one from the EU comes here to work in the NHS anymore, a huge loss.

so we take HCPs or try too, from developing countries and have lowered their qualifications to come here as well.

These are facts, you may not like it, maybe you voted to Leave the EU, i don't know.

This is why, waiting lists lists have doubled since 2019 and why they are increasing, despite CV having abated.

Have you seen the bills that come in from such a stay? Just wondering.

Many will say because its free we should be grateful for anything. I'm actually shocked by the quality of care here vs abroad nothing to do with the staff who are hard working it's the ratios.

It's not free OP!!!! Well it certainly isn't for me because I've been paying towards it every month for the 40 years I've been working. Such a stupid comment.

Realistically though there are not enough people contributing and we need to be paying more. But no political party will say that. Hence many people now are using a mix of NHS and private health. I know I am.

Even if we did get rid of the NHS, the government won't lower taxes.

It should definitely be reformed though before it's too late.

You’re not wrong there.
Majority of nurses and doctors I encountered in a hospital or my GP practice (true, it was in London) were non British, often EU nationals. There’s a serious lack of staff now, many of those EU HCPs left and no new ones are coming 🤷‍♀️

Assume you work in the NHS?

Look, I recognise some pockets of the NHS are great. There is no doubt amazing caring and skilled people working there. I am not blaming them. But people are allowed to express disastifaction with a service that we all fund when that service is getting to the point of not being fit for purpose in some areas. And it's not "just" life and death, it's quality of life, it's patient experiece.

Oh, and @CareBearScare123 people are allowed to share their personal experiences of the failures of the NHS and a thread discussing the NHS.

Yanbu
I understand that in 2010, the NHS was rated the best healthcare system in the world on most international measures. This is measuring outcomes for everyone, not just those with money, those without money struggle in many systems.
Still today, apparently it scores very highly on value for money. We get a lot out compared to the £££ we put in.

The decline in our health service has been shocking though.
Although a great deal of this can be laid at the Tories door, any health system is going to struggle with a large number of elderly people. Healthcare around the world is a victim of it's own success in many ways. We have keep very ill people alive with complex and extremely expensive medical care for decades, in the past these people might have died and cost nothing.

A controversial matter, but I do think we need to look at healthcare for the very elderly and question both the cost and morality of it. An elderly relative of mine is have a gaul bladder operation today. She is exhausted with life, in constant pain and has multiple other medical conditions. The operation has to be done under sedation because a general anaesthetic is too dangerous for her. This means she has to be awake while a tube is pushed down her throat. She has begged for a general anaesthetic and is completely willing to take her chances with it.

Another friend of mine wasn't allowed to take her dad out for lunch from his care home because he was only allowed liquid food. Her dad knew he could choke and died on solid food, she knew he could choke and die on solid food, they both wanted it anyway. Instead he was kept alive longer than he wanted on joy less liquid diet.

Personally, I think we do too much to keep people alive at all costs when they have no quality of life and no hope of recovery. A proper debate needs to take place on this with out the shrill shouts of 'murderer' at people who dare question the morality of giving flu and covid vaccines (for example) to people already living in pain near the very end of their lives.

There's currently around 10% difference in survival but that's a very topline view as stage at diagnosis is important. Australia has historically had a very high incidence of colorectal cancer so the screening programme started at age 50 years whereas the UK only lowered the age from 60 to 50 years in the UK. Cases are increasing among young people, particularly in Australia - the earlier screening age means disease is being detected at an earlier stage with better survival rates.

The UK uses a home test kit for screening so not sure where you get the idea about people being scared. It literally couldn't be any easier.

*in 2021 - apologies, typing as I travel.

If anything, people should shout more about their dissatisfaction. The solution is not to stick our head in the sand and pretend the NHS is amazing, when actually it’s being run to the ground.

I agree. I wish more people both complained and sued the NHS for its failings. People don't becuase it's taking away money from the NHS, or they feel they don't have a right to complain. But nothing is going to change while people just put up with the poor care they are receiving.

@Remaker Sedation here is optional for the procedures you mention. It is always offered (at least it is in my trust). Many patients prefer not to have sedation as it means a quicker recovery, they can drive themselves home etc. I’ve worked in endoscopy and have had friends/relatives undergo these procedures.

Forgive me please as I am very tired and over emotional this morning but anything and I mean anything abroad has to be better than our NHS at the minute based on my recent experience. My husband has recently been treated for pulmanory embolisms and he returned home. On Wednesday evening he began swelling again in his leg,had chest pains and arm pains and we rang for an ambulance. The ambulance staff were amazing and took him into A and E at 10pm. He and I proceeded to wait on hard reception chairs to be seen by a doctor til 7pm LAST night. A nurse came once took his blood on wednesday at 1 am and at 4 pm yesterday we were told the blood taken hadnt been processed because it wasnt in the correct bottle coloured top, They discharged us with a blood thinning injection in my husbands stomach at 7pm last night and we have to ring for the results of the blood test today. Now we are not special or anymore deserving than anyone else I understand that but this was dangerous and utterly ridiculous. Our system is broken and to have to rely on it is frankly terrifying.

Yes, and we need to be clear that we don’t want the NHS replaced, but properly funded so it can be properly staffed and equipped to handle the population size.

I do sometimes wonder if people wanting an insurance based model have ever had the pleasure of trying to claim on their home or car insurance. The very first thing an insurance company does is try to look for any way possible to get out of paying the claim.

YABU. My husband was recently in a private Spanish hospital for urgent care. His cannula wasn't changed for 5 days and they only did it in the end because he said his hand was hurting. He was transferred to another hospital for surgery under general anesthetic, and they didn't change the cannula for the operation. The next day his arm swelled with fluid as it had come out of the vein. The staff shrugged their shoulders.
My dh collapsed in the middle of the night in his private room and no one checked on him for hours. He couldn't reach the call button and didn't have his phone to call me.

They did his observations about 3 times in the whole 2 weeks and their method for checking BP is questionable (on the forearm) and used a thermometer under his armpit. For someone at high risk of infection that felt inadequate. They also didn't notice that he was jaundiced until I pointed out he wasn't usually florescent yellow.

We also had to pay €2000 for him to be admitted, despite having insurance and him having a critical illness that if he had left hospital could have been fatal.

All healthcare systems are flawed but our experience of care abroad is not superior to the nhs. The nhs is not better, navigating the system now as dh has ongoing issues.

Except for the fact that quality of healthcare or the level of funding needed isn’t determined % of GDP spent! Lol. You could be a shit poor country and spend 100% of GDP on healthcare and all people get for that is a tetanus shot and a free box of plasters. 100% of nothing is still nothing.

The U.K. is poorer than European countries of the same population size, so while we may be spending the same % of GDP, we are spending less £ per capita and because we have done for over a decade, it’s not just day to day operating costs we have lost, we have lost the money needed for investment into new hospitals, surgeries, and more staff to keep up with the growing propulsion.

Ok, so less than 1% of working adults don’t pay any tax towards their healthcare because anyone with an income of £9,880 per year, even pensioners now are paying taxes towards the NHS.

I’m sure you do not begrudge healthcare for children and those too disabled to work?

It's stuff like this. Everyone has a story, either a personal one or someone they know, of really inadequate treatment. And then they feel they have to say "we aren't saying we are special". FFS, it's not asking for special treatment to expect not to be sat in a waiting room for 30 hrs when really poorly. And it's not even extreme stuff like this, it's waiting months and months and months for information or treatment really impacting people's lives, it's about not being able to access basic non-emergency health case, it's about everything being about budgets and not about people.

I have an increased genetic risk of stomach cancer. Confirmed by an NHS geneticsc counselling service. There is a DNA test to determine whether I have the gene mutation. But can I have it on the NHS (despite them confirming I am at increased risk)? No, their policy is to test the person with cancer (my mum who has been dead for 16 years) or their siblings (who I am not in contact with since her death). So her daughter who shares 50% of her DNA, for a more or less symptomless cancer that you don't know about untill it's so far progressed that there is no cure, no can do. So there's my most recent NHS complaint. Did I die? No. Did I have the wrong leg cut off? No. But did I absoltuely not get the care I should have done? Too right. Luckily I am well enough off to do the genetic testing myself, which I will do so I don't have to worry about dying on stomach cancer like me mum and materal grandma did in their 40s and 50s. But had I not been in a position to sort it out myself, I would have been pissed off.