Private surgery complications should not be covered by NHS?

[mantyzer]

People can pay for private medical care if they want to. But the NHS should not have to pick up the cost of botched surgery or complications. If you go private you should either be rich enough that you can pay yourself for any complications, or have insurance that will cover complications.
Currently the NHS are picking up complications caused by private medical treatment, complications which can be expensive and complex.

Started a thread about this a couple of days ago...

No, because it's often the same surgeons doing private and NHS work so they are effectively sorting out their own colleagues' mishaps.

If people are having unnecessary boob or "booty" jobs, maybe.

But not when someone pays for something that should have been done on the NHS months or years before.

Or maybe people are desperate (and borrow the money) because the NHS waiting list is so long!

Where do you draw the line?

Do they not treat a patient who got seriously injured playing a sport because it's their own fault for playing the sport in the first place?

No. If someone has problems after having their hip replaced because of the nhs waiting list, why should they have to pay again? Stop assuming everyone paying privately is having their boobs done and they’re rich.

YABU. Health care is health care. No one chooses to get ill, get infections, suffer complications. I don’t see issues after private surgery any different to most health conditions.

People wouldn’t be able to afford it anyway. Those I know who have had cosmetic surgery, paid for it with a loan or finance. No way could they finance an unexpected complication.

It depends on what they have wrong with them. If the complications mean that they have no quality of life and are reasonably easy to fix then it seems petty to say that all NHS treatment should be withheld.

It’s tempting to think of private procedures only as cosmetic surgery but quite a lot of the time it’s things like hip replacements. My Dad had his stoma reversed privately because it was such a long wait to have it done on the NHS. He had a much better quality of life afterwards and saved loads on colostomy bags and check ups (which were provided by the NHS).

People can pay for private pregnancy care if they want to. But the NHS should not have to pick up the cost of botched births or complications. If you get pregnant you should either be rich enough that you can pay yourself for any medical birth expenses, or have insurance that will cover this.
Currently the NHS are picking up pregnancy medical treatment, including complications which can be expensive and complex.

People can pay for sports injury medical care if they want to. But the NHS should not have to pick up the cost of surgery or complications. If you play sports you should either be rich enough that you can pay yourself for any surgery, or have insurance that will cover surgery.
Currently the NHS are picking up surgeries caused by sports injuries, surgeries which can be expensive and complex.

You can twist this to fit a million different scenarios depending on which group you decide should be bashed this week. Meanwhile people are forking out thousands for things like hip replacement surgery that they would be eligible for on the NHS but the waiting lists are so long they have to live in pain for years waiting.

I wonder whether you would be so blasé about this when you are older OP?

Never mind the fact that most private health care doesn't cover emergency complications anyway, and private clinics often won't handle them so the patient has no choice but to use NHS services because its not like there is an alternative available to them so your idea is just a load of waffle

@jemenfous37 I missed that

I think people going private are not paying the true cost though. By covering complications, the NHS is subsidising the private sector.
It would be easy for the private sector to sell insurance to cover complications of particular surgeries. In the same way when you book a holiday you take out insurance for the holiday.

It’s a precedent that would see the total change of what universal healthcare means.

Nope, I do not agree. If I am forced to pay privately for a knee replacement (the alternative being years of agony while waiting for the NHS) and this results in complications then as a taxpayer I fully expect the NHS to step in!

You're being unreasonable.

The NHS is there for everyone, free at the point of delivery. Not free to the people you feel are deserving of it.

Maybe if we had a functioning nhs people wouldn’t have to pay to go private?

Works the other way too of course. This year I spent £10k I can ill afford on private surgery to correct the results of botched NHS surgery. After nearly 5 years of being fobbed off whilst in continuous pain I decided I had no other real option.

I think you have fairly limited ideas about both healtcare and insurance in the UK.

Say someone had a triple byspas privately, after they are sent home they suffer the symptoms of sepsis. The majority of the UK does not have private A&E facilities, are you suggesting that people simply die of sepsis etc.

Insurance is a complex sector, it is however severely limited by the services that are available in the UK. The majority of private hospitals only provide planned elective care, they do have the staff or facilities for emergency admissions and often aren’t equipped to care for the seriously ill.

A friend recently had surgery privately, she has breast cancer, her surgery had been cancelled three times, her surgery was due to go ahead in February, she was still waiting in September. She wasn’t waiting due to being ill from chemo etc, it was purely down to cancellations. Her wait when she went privately was 9 days. The delays in her surgery could potentially kill her.

@Simonjt But the NHS is subsidising private healthcare. Why should private hospitals be allowed not to have the facilities to deal with emergencies during surgery and just transfer to the NHS?

I am not rich. I had to take out a loan to have hysterectomy surgery privately as I was so ill that I was suicidal and at the point of having to give up a career I’d slogged my guts out for. I had already waited for four years for treatment on the NHS and -despite being hospitalised on several occasions - I’d have had to wait another eighteen months at least. The NHS is not free. People like me are paying twice - through taxation, for treatment that we can’t access, and then for private treatment. It’s not even free at the point of use, because the “use” bit isn’t happening.

dont give the tories ideas op

It would be similar to allowing private schools to send their pupils to state school for lessons they do not want to provide.

Whilst I feel somewhat inclined to agree, it does call into question where the line is drawn regarding where universal free health care stops...

Life long smoker with lung cancer?
Base jumper with broken leg?
Lip filler gone wrong?
Complications from private endoscopy as waiting list was really long in their area?
Car crash, choosing to drive on an icy day?

I realise some examples are silly!

The NHS is saving a hell of a lot more money through not treating people (who either die waiting or go private) than it is having to spend on rare emergency situations that arise from surgery in the private sector.

That’s still better than them using the whole set of classes though? And works for the healthcare side of the analogy too.

I had a tummy tuck in a private hospital a few years back.

I asked my surgeon (who retired from NHS plastics a couple of years before my surgery) what would happen if I had complications. He explained that my price included 6 months of aftercare so if I required an extended overnight stay then this would be covered and I would remain in the private hospital.

The hospital had an ICU department which could deal with most issues but if not then I would be transferred to an NHS hospital for life saving treatment and then back to the private hospital once stable until ready for home.

I asked how many of his patients in the last 3 years had been transferred to an NHS hospital. His answer was zero of about 1000 patients.

However, he was quite strict. He would only undertake such invasive surgery if I was not overweight, agreed not to smoke or use nicotine (didn't apply to me) for 4 weeks pre and post op. Would not consume alcohol 2 weeks pre op and 2 weeks post op. I had to stop my contraception 4 weeks before surgery and have a separate consultation with the anaesthetic team 1 week before surgery.

He wrote to my GP asking of they had any concerns about the planned surgery.

I had reviews scheduled 7 days, 2 weeks, 4 weeks and 3 and 6 months post op. I had open access to the surgical ward and I was seen to have a seroma drained.

From reading posts on social media from people who went abroad there were no such checks and they would operate on anyone. Also they couldn't understand that a seroma is not a life threatening issue so the NHS will not drain it. It looks awful but will resolve after a few weeks in most cases. You can purchase specific plastic surgery insurance. If they decline on pre existing conditions then it's probably a sign that the patient should not be having elective surgery.

The aftercare is the most important part of the surgery according to my surgeon.

Cosmetic surgery - no
surgery needed for someone’s health - yes

If my friend had gone private when she was experiencing breast cancer symptoms rather than waiting for the NHS to take her seriously, she'd still be alive now and her two young kids would still have a mum. YABVU.

In an ideal world with a fully working NHS and no/very short waiting lists you'd have a point. But in its current state people are dying because they're not getting treated on the NHS.

So your argument that “private” botched surgeries shouldn’t be funded by the NHS….

So when the NHS surgeries are botched the patients should then be allowed to go private ?

You can’t have it one way and not the other!