NHS shouldn't have to treat gang members / criminals

[Sellias]

I live in a city with lots of crime (drugs, gangs, knife crime)

Groups of idiots 'beefing' with other groups of idiots over postcodes, selling drugs on eachothers patch and perceived disrespect over the silliest of things leading to murder.

I recently watched a documentary about knife crime and it got me thinking about what a terrible state our NHS is in and how people like cancer patients, people with heart problems etc are waiting far too long for treatment to the extent that they can and do die before their treatment even begins.

..these gang idiots though, if they stab or shoot one another an ambulance is called and they get rushed to hospital. It's all hands on deck to save them. Seriously ill people have their much needed surgery cancelled because this stab victim (who sells drugs and causes endless harm in their community) is deemed to need treatment more than they are.

AIBU to think if they chose to live that way then the NHS should have no obligation to treat them? Let them pay for their own treatment with their ill gotten gains.

Disclaimer, I'm not talking about children who of course we should do all we can to save.

I know these people make up only a small percentage of those requiring urgent treatment but it really pisses me off that they bring it on themselves by living the life they do and then expect the tax payer (having never paid tax in their lives)

I sometimes think this place has displayed peak stupidity
And then along comes anything level

YABVU

healthcare is a human right. It should stay that way, always, even for the bad humans. It’s the only way to operate

If we start making a charter about Bad People who Don’t Deserve Treatment then it’s a gateway to an Orwellian world. And before long you could find yourself linked in based on someone thinking your actions or opinion is wrong. Do you REALLY want that?

Doctors have an ethical obligation to treat anyone who needs treatment, based on the Hippocratic Oath.

You know the only ones who didn't take that oath? Medical students in Nazi Germany.

That’s not actually true - very few, if any, UK medical schools make their students swear it. Have you read the Hippocratic Oath? Bans surgery and abortion services, amongst other things, as well as having a weird focus on sharing your income with your bosses, and prioritising the children of other doctors for medical training.

UK doctors follow Duties of a Doctor.

Ah yes. All those people who aren't middle-class, haven't been socialised or educated about health problems in the way that richer people are, and are also not given any financial or educational help to enact healthy lifestyles which can be very directly nothing they've ever been exposed to or known or what can be accessed in their communities.

And every sociological study says that poor/low socio economic status people are disproportionately effected in not only health issues, but health education and NHS health care. And BME communities are more likely to be members of that group.

So you want poor people, including disproportionate numbers of non-white and non- English white people to receive poorer health care because they don't care about their health?

Got it.

What I am mostly getting here, is that people want their own healthcare to be free and easy to access, but don’t want to pay for anyone else’s healthcare, especially if their needs are high 🤔

I don’t agree with OP.
Everyone should be treated equally, the NHS are not in a position to decide who is a criminal and who isn’t, there’s no time to determine this anyway? If your son/daughter was involved in a stabbing you wouldn’t want people standing around deciding if they deserved it or not? Nurses/doctors and ambulance crew treat everyone as equals, it’s their job.

I’m also wondering how it would work on a practical level OP.

Say a teenage boy come win with stab wounds. Surgeons have minutes to save him. How do they figure out if he’s a worthy save? His skin colour? Wait for a DBS check? Ask whoever he came in with and be ready to have a patient die if that person is wrong?

tell us

AIBU to think if they chose to live that way

People in gangs don't choose to live that way.

They live that way because they have no other choice.

Try growing up on a sink estate in Peckham with your dad in prison and your mum on crack. See how many options you have when every time you step outside, the police are racially profiling you and the local gangs are threatening to stab you or your family.

Lots of kids are recruited into gangs at 12/13 to run drugs. They're threatened into doing it. It's a case of 'take these drugs to this place or I'll cut your sister'.

If something doesn't make sense to you, perhaps be curious enough to wonder what it is maybe that you're not understanding before you write posts on the internet about how some elements of society should be left to die.

I am a nurse. My job is not to treat only the people I sympathise with or feel "deserve" it, and if such personal attitudes begin to influence how I do my job, then I will know I need to seek help or step away. When I am at work I don't really "see" what people have done or how their injury occurred etc. beyond the implications for their assessment, treatment and safeguarding. I see a need that must be met and a life that we have to do all we can to preserve and improve.

While I understand the intended rationale in terms of allocating resources to the perceived greatest good, any real entertaining of this idea goes against the principles of healthcare on the ground imo, and such thought processes are why I have no desire to go into management at the level of deciding who gets what funding etc. I did not go into this sector to cherry pick who I treat, nor would I want to entrust the care of a family member to someone with that mindset, regardless of the fact that they have "paid in" and don't "deserve" their illness or injury etc. - it is simply, in my opinion, the very antithesis of what medicine exists for.

The delay of treatment could mean complications arise, so rather than a patch up, it's an admittance. Or complications further on. Where do we put those who live with someone who is violent? Do they get one treatment ticket and if they won't leave, bottom of the queue? What about the parent who won't phone the police on their mentally ill child and gets attacked? Why just gang violence, car accidents, burns, should be under the same system.
Two women shot dead on Merseyside, one was involved (by association) in drug dealing, one wasn't. How do we delay treatment finding out?
We need early intervention in most gang members, not second class citizen status. This would turn into a race issue and also a age issue. All it would do is make those young people feel more disconnected from society and get an even more "fuck the establishment" attitude.

You cannot be serious? Don’t be so ridiculous!

If someone is critically ill and near death they jump the queue. It doesn’t matter who they are, what they’ve done, they are human beings first who medics need to save and that’s all that matters in that moment.

The NHS has to be universal. The problem is with policing. The drug and violence problem is not being effectively countered.

I think it's a slippery slop denying life saving care and health treatment based on whether we agree with someone or not.

It opens the doors for saying "sorry son, you can't have medical treatment free at the point of delivery because you knew the risk of playing football" or "you might have been at the wrong place a the wrong time, but you know what drunks are like so no free treatment for you either. You should have stayed in".

🤣 someone skipped ethics class

100%.

The NHS as it was set up does not serve as it used to. Because it cannot. Because there are hundreds of other conditions that did not exist (or were hidden) in the 1940s and on the whole, people died a lot sooner.

But the premise at the time was free healthcare from cradle to grave because previously, poor people couldn't afford to give birth with complications or have very easily treatable conditions treated so people died.

It was a wonderful idea and worked for many years and does need adjusting now

But there are far too many people who think that they've paid tax and therefore they get to have an opinion on who is worthy or not of medical treatment.

And believing in the NHS means you believe in it for all, not just who you think is worthy.

And..paying tax doesn't give you a say that should be listened to about who you think is worthy of healthcare or not. You can vote for a political party that makes those decisions, thats the extent of democracy. You get to vote for a party that you think reflects your views, you don't get to try to impose them otherwise.

I would argue that the policing isn't the root issue either - it is the societal issues like deprivation that lead to many (most?) drug and violence problems. But that's a whole other thread!

The NHS absolutely does need to be universal and anyone working within it who would like to pick and choose who/what they treat depending on "deservingness" needs to reassess whether they belong in the job imo.

Who said anyone swears an oath these days?

Please read my post properly before responding.

We all pay tax. Dealers either money launder (so tax is paid), or spend. The spending raises revenue and generates tax.

I read where you said “You know the only ones who didn't take that oath? Medical students in Nazi Germany”. Which is untrue. Maybe read your own posts before arguing with me?

So the Olivia shooting in Liverpool, quite rightly Olivia got rushed to hospital, but her Mother shouldn't have been until it could be shown that she wasn't involved in drugs/guns?

where do you draw the line?

Should the person who falls off a horse not be treated because they live that lifestyle?

Or the person who is obese not get treatment because it's their choice to be overweight?

How about the alcoholic with liver disease or the smoker with lung cancer?

If a cancer patient is stabbed they'll receive the same treatment as a gang member who is stabbed.

Medical resources for cancer patients by and large don't come from emergency or critical care.

Our health service treats without prejudice, rightly.

And if payment of taxes is your threshold, what about those who don't work, or below the income tax barrier? What about children who are yet to pay a penny in tax?

Aside from being ethically wrong, your idea is just completely unworkable (how do the medical teams know who is a naughty gang member not deserving of medical treatment (and have they been tried and convicted yet?) and who is an innocent victim, in the heat of the medical emergency? Also people are treated for stab/gunshot wounds by completely different teams of medical staff to those treating cancer patients. So it's not as if if they refuse this person brought on with a gunshot wound they'll go and start someone else's chemotherapy sooner or operate on your auntie Doreen who's waiting for her hip replacement).

So 10/10 for stupidity really.

Well I imagine that the op would have them all branded with hot irons in case they ever needed medical help. Makes it easier for paramedics to know whose what too.
Like, I don't know...a GM burnt onto their chest for gang member?

Have you thought for a second about how impractical this is?