To feel angry at celebrating the NHS

[TaylorSwifting]

The NHS is falling apart and today people are all full of glee at the NHS yippee 75 years today, it’s making me so angry!!!!!!!!!
My family member has been diagnosed with cancer, 2 months down the line and has had no treatment and terrible delays for tests…..still yet to see an oncologist. 2 months!!!!!!!!! Family member only has pain management because us family have begged and fought to get it. It is an utter disgrace and I had no idea how bad things were until this awful diagnosis in our own family.
We are not alone / it hasn’t been a mistake or being lost in the system by accident! Record high cancer patient delays - this is what so many people are facing. I am in utter disbelief!
I won’t be celebrating today.

People get denied treatment and fobbed off until they die. The nhs is not fit for purpose. It’s paid for by taxes so people have paid but can’t see a dentist , gp, get a test etc. Truly a shoddy service. The people who work there are doing jobs they are not angels or happily in service they need to be paid right. It’s not an honour to work there it’s a job.

It's falling apart because of the Tories.

Not because of itself.

They've saved 3 people close to me in recent years and 2 family members work tirelessly as Paramedics saving others.

How dare you.

The NHS has been let down by the government. They absolutely need to celebrate what they stand for so that they can remain true to themselves and not the watered down version that will be given to us if the government has their way.

It’s a democracy and our terrible healthcare system which defends negligent doctors and nurses means our relatives have lost their lives too soon, so I dare.

If your paramedic family members are 2 of the good ones they should be calling out the bad ones, they shouldn’t fear criticism if they’re any good.

This 100%

But an awful lot of people aren’t paying taxes, or nowhere near enough to contributing more to the system than they take. We have a very very high proportion of the public on out of work benefits. This is the result. No cash and strained services.

I am so very sorry that your relative is ill and is waiting so long for treatment.
However your anger should be against the Tories who have starved the NHS of funding, depleted it of staff and done their very best to bring it to its knees.
Despite all that it continues to perform, saves lives and gives … for the most part … wonderful medicine and care.
All free from the point of contact.
I have worked in the NHS for 40 years and would literally lay down my life to save it.

My family in central europe had access to gps, dentists etc as usual months before people in uk. Face to face, not having to describe infected tonsils on a phone after trying to call or 4 days to get phone appointment....
They are like Germans, surprised at lack of access in UK.
Quality has been joked about for decades. Broken leg? Aw, have a paracetamol. Decades

I had the same experience as your DH. I will be celebrating. The NHS definitely needs an overhaul though.

The stupidity started long before Covid. Have we forgotten the vomit inducing scenes at the start of the London Olympics?

I won't be celebrating. The NHS woefully neglected to treat both my father (2010) and my mother in law (2008) who both had cancer and both suffered ridiculous levels of neglect and inefficiency leading to their deaths. In my father's case, despite the much celebrated short waiting lists, it took them 18 months to operate on his cancer, after one delay/foul up after another - no one cared, every cancelled operation was just glibly shrugged off as "one of those things" whether it was the surgeon being on a course, the operating theatre being decorated - some of the reasons (excuses) were crazy. But basically because he'd missed the (I think) 20 week "target", there was no incentive to operate as the target had been missed, so others close to the target were prioritised and he was left languishing on a hospital ward! Very similar with my mother in law - lost files, missing staff at appointments/treatments, etc - consultations and treatment sessions just glibly cancelled without reason, re-scheduled for a few weeks later, no sense of urgency. It's heartbreaking when you see your previously fit/healthy relatives continue to deteriorate whilst supposedly under the "care" of the NHS - I've heard it's referred to as "supervised neglect" when basically they're just monitoring your condition etc but not actually doing anything about it!

Which other developed countries would be grateful for the NHS?

The NHS has helped to achieve huge improvements in public health since 1948. Of that there is no doubt and that should be recognised. The population and its expectations has changed hugely since then and it is not wrong to ask if the model needs to change. It is also not wrong to point to the clear problems with culture and governance within the NHS and the professions which work within it (some of which problems of course predate the NHS).

By the way in the case of both my gran and my friend’s mum the inquests actually AGREED that they had been killed due to mistakes a doctor and nurse had made. But both times they also decided didn’t matter because they were “dying anyway” so nobody was punished, everybody is still practicing, and no changes were made. They were both killed in such awful ways too. I don’t think people realise that doctors and nurses are allowed to get away with “accidentally” killing people (also known as “manslaughter”) as long as their victims are sufficiently vulnerable: if they’re old, young, pregnant, terminally ill, the NHS will shrug and say “oh well” and expect you to be grateful that they murdered your loved one for free. I honestly hate the NHS and I’m so jealous of the German system.

It's nice that they've saved people close to you.

They haven't saved people close to me. 😔

We all have different experiences.

We shouldn't have such different experiences. NHS care shouldn't be a postcode lottery. We should all get the care we deserve.

There are some great NHS staff - one was so kind to me the other week that I nearly burst out crying - but they don't always get it right. How could they? They're overworked; they're short-staffed - hell, as much I don't want to see it, it's very obvious how and why mistakes are being made, treatment is being delayed, and people are dying. I don't think it's a malicious or incompetent thing; it's the result of working people to the point of burnout.

All the people I know who work for the NHS see it as a calling, and that's why they work for the NHS rather than in private healthcare. I think each government takes advantage of that and keeps salaries down, knowing that a large chunk of the people there won't go anywhere else because it doesn't feel morally right to them.

I'm not sure I can celebrate the NHS given several people are responsible for my DF dying (I cannot forgive that right now, I simply cannot), but I can say that it needs more funding. It desperately, desperately needs more funding.

The advantage of more funding is that it will make it easier to retain good people, and there will be less reluctance to get rid of the bad apples out of the fear that they won't be able to find anyone to replace them and bad is better than nothing. More funding means people won't have to do such stupid shifts because there will be enough people to cover, and if salaries are higher, people won't need to do overtime to survive financially.

Money. A shit load of money. That's what we need to pump into the system.

Maybe then we can celebrate the NHS.

The NHS should be kept, you only have to look at America to see where the insurance healthcare path leads.
Of course the Govenment would like to privatise, it is a millstone around their necks. We all use it, we all see it as a yardstick to measure them against. I want to see people keep on pushing for accountability, peacefully protest to make it better. Vote for the party that is willing to make it better.

I'm so, so sorry. I can feel your pain radiating off this post.

Every time a politician says 'Our' NHS I want to puke. It's too important to be a party political football.
I watched Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall (sp?) on Question Time the other week and he said a lot of trouble down the line is through type 2 diabetes and there's too much shit food in this country and we need to stop being in thrall to huge companies who fill our food with addictive shit and get a grip.
Where is the party that will look at prevention rather than cure.

Why America? That’s one out of hundreds of countries who have insurance models.

And as for the Tories they’ve been in for 15+ years and are going into what is probably their final year or so. Why haven’t they done it by now, if that was the end game?

This. It also needs to stop being a political football. Hopefully that will happen with some grown ups in charge.

But look at the gigantic thread on here lambasting the government for trying to control what we eat because they’re trying to restrict unhealthy lunch choices?

Have you read the op? Are you suggesting that her family member shouldn’t be treated and that op should be okay with that?

I’m torn on celebrating the NHS. It doesn’t ever feel like it is the NHS that’s being celebrated, it feels like it’s the government saying ‘there, there, all is well’. I’m an NHS nurse, I’m frustrated at the government and I’m worried about the future.

I remember hearing on the radio one day. Some guy called LBC saying he went to the NHS for years with a back issue and they just said "it will sort itself out". One day he decides to go private and they diagnose and sort the issue the same day.

Trying to personalise the argument by saying ‘that means YOU think people like STEVE should die’, but the poster made a very important point. How much money is being poured into keeping people alive for just a few more years and in a lot of pain? And we can’t just pretend that it runs on magic dust and good feelz - it runs off cash and if people are not contributing and not willing to help themselves, why should everyone else support them, at the expense of people who do contribute and help themselves?

People’s experiences with the NHS seem so at odds with each other, some bad, some exceptionally good. I had cancer twenty five years ago and I’m still given amazing care now. Regular scans and tests, once a year meet with a specialist etc I honestly can’t fault it for my own personal experience. The first steps of my cancer ‘journey’ with the GP though was a different story!!

Wasn't there an NHS trust that had failed on maternal care and had many preventable deaths (of babies)