What are your thoughts on privatising the NHS? Good or bad?

[Supernova23]

I would also love some input from those who have lived in countries that have private healthcare systems. Is it better or worse in your country?

For context, I love the prinicple of the NHS. I’m an NHS nurse. I also like a massive chunk of NHS nurses and doctors, think of looking for a way out on a daily basis. The lure of going abroad tempts me daily.

But as we know, we live on a tiny over populated island. People are living longer and getting sicker. People also abuse the system on a daily basis. I’ve been kicked, hit, spat at, called every name under the sun. I’ve been threatened numerous times. Me and my colleagues have been threatened by a maniac with a machete.

We are haemorrhaging staff on a daily basis. People either leave or go off long term sick. I can’t blame them.

Patients are becoming more medically complex with multiple co morbidities. In the nicest possible way, advances in medicine has meant that people who would have kicked the bucket long ago, are now people kept alive due to modern medicine. People are also getting much, much larger; this makes them more complex to manage in every sense. Even with basic bog standard care. We frequently have patients so large it takes at least 4 people reposition them. You try finding 4 spare hands on the wards; it’s a nightmare.

In my hospital alone, every single ward has multiple complex long stay patients that have been on the wards for 6+ months. In some cases it’s a year or more. The cost of these stays often runs into the hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions, and is obviously reducing the number of patients we can admit.

I could ramble on. The system has been at breaking point for years. Would privatising the NHS improve it? Or is that cloud cuckoo land?

I can only assume Papyrophile that you must be very young to venture removing anything but palliative care from the over 80s. My mother is 87. In October she wasndiagnosed with severe atrial stenosis. She had a TAVI two weeks ago to replace the heart valve. It was successful and involved an overnight admission only.

At 87 she has a husband of 80, worked from the age of 16 to 70, paying tax, notwithstanding the IHT paid on her parents' estate. She has friends, an active social life, plays bridge, drives her motor car, and lives entirely independently still walking two miles a day and dropping into less fortunate neighbours. Her family is long lived and she could have 10 good years ahead of her. She would like to see her great grandchildren when they come. She will not be a burden on the state, ever, because she has plenty of money. Enough to fund 10 years or more in the best possible nursing home at £78k per annum. Not that she would want that.

Until her op she took one statin a day and now must take daily aspirin.

But yiu would wish her dead. 27 years ago I buried a little boy born at 27 weeks. His congenital heart deformity was incompatible with life. We chose not to abort. We would have given anything for him to be well.

I am all for measured and careful thought in relation to the benefits of health care. Frankly your comme ts have disgusted me. I hope one day health services may decide yiu don't merit life.

Since AHA it is illegal.

https://www.hhs.gov/answers/health-insurance-reform/can-i-get-coverage-if-i-have-a-pre-existing-condition/index.html

The US system is not perfect, but there are a lot of misconceptions about what healthcare is really like for most Americans.

@AngryLikeHades . American healthcare actually is brilliant, the best in the world, if you have a solid insurance via a decent employer, albeit a bit paternalistic. I worked in NYC for five years and latterly worked for a huge financial (not for profit) firm. Half of the third floor of a 17 storey building (a whole city block) was devoted to our medical centre. Nobody went to a GP while they worked there; you felt poorly, and got to work and saw a nurse, who could send you home (in a taxi, generally, on the company) or to hospital, all funded. I am very allergic to most insect bites, and the first thing they said when I explained my feet were too swollen to wear any shoes was: Next year come in to see us for preventive desensitisation jabs in early April... you don't need to suffer this discomfort. An earlier US employer had devoted a whole floor of the building to a fitness centre, and the fitness director would call you direct to say, I haven't seen you in here this week; get your ass down here now. Your fitness is part of the company's programme. At that particular company, the medical and dental care insurance covered your whole family and was free after the first six months of working there, for as long as you were employed. But there was zero tolerance of anyone who didn't cut the mustard.

Can't read the entire thread (haven't my glasses with me!) but I was having a discussion with a very Rich Asian who comes to UK for private treatment. He's experienced the health service in several 1st world countries and says the UK, despite the NHS's faults, is the best.
In Canada, his son had broken his wrist on a Friday and he was told to "come back on Monday" because the radiologist wouldn't be back in until Monday!
In the UK, if we need emergency treatment then we get treatment. We may have to wait 8 hours but we will receive it!

"In Canada, his son had broken his wrist on a Friday and he was told to "come back on Monday" because the radiologist wouldn't be back in until Monday!"

Sorry but I think he's lying to you here. Nowhere is going to just leave a kid with a broken wrist for 2 days before checking it.

And the UK healthcare is absolutely not the best on the world! I've had treatment in Italy and so have my family and it's SO much better than the UK.

How would he know how the NHS really is if he is coming to the UK for private treatment?

@RosesAndHellebores , I certainly am not wishing your mother dead, and for the record I am nearly 68 years old, and come from a long lived family. My parents are 90 and 92, both still alive, and neither has ever been seriously ill. At 40, I had three living GPs, the 4th died in an accident in the 1950s. My DH, also 68, on the other hand has had heart health issues for 18 years and his parents both spent many years enduring the pains of failing health. I think I get the range and span of life, and I send you and your family my very best wishes for good health and a comfortable, swift exit, come the day. I did not mean to be rude, disrespectful or unkind. I am sorry you interpreted it thus because I have agreed with everything you have contributed on this thread to date.

My husband had treatment in Italy while we were on holiday and while they were lovely, the treatment was abysmal.

RosesandHellebores, while I can't change your loss, I can shed a tear for your grief. I am very sorry that my post ripped open so many layers of pain and made them raw again. Deepest sympathy and sincere apologies. I would not have written a word of that if I had known the hurt I have caused you.

@Papyrophile I don't know what it was. It was an colleague of SIL so I don't know much of the details.

@Labraradabrador Thanks for explaining. I still don't really understand how it works but tbf I can't judge from my SIL's story as it was years ago and things might've changed since then

@sorryBritain's healthcare system has been ranked just 30th in a new global study – lagging behind other European countries including Germany, Ireland, Spain, Slovenia and Italy.

@Papyrophile thank you for your apology but you did actually say "you would limit care for the over 80s to palliative only". Palliative care only means my mother would not have been eligible to have her heart valve replaced on the NHS. Only NHS care for the inevitable heart failure that would have ensued with a life expectancy of 2 years. And two years of suffering. In those circumstances I, or she, would have paid £50k from our own pockets despite being net contributors.

Just lovely. Privatise the NHS and refuse to treat the over 80s, including healthy ones. Add in assisted dying, for good measure. A right wingers wet dream.

@marmaladeandpeanutbutter while I don't agree with most of what you (sarcastically) just posted - except assisted dying for those with terminal illnesses and with strict checks and controls against coercion, but that's for another thread - SOMETHING clearly needs to be done. What do you suggest? Or are you happy with the shit show postcode lottery we currently have?

@Papyrophile I do appreciate your apology was sincere and I appreciate I have been pedantic in my previous response. Please sleep well.

Blair funded health care by saddling the NHS with debt that it is still weighed down with today. You can thank him for some of what you see today. Had he been reelected, there were likely to be significant spending cuts, too.

We will still be paying the interest on PFI when the buildings have fallen down and need to be rebuilt.

Ultimately the NHS needs to be able to move bed blockers on. And it need more staff from cleaners to consultants.

So basically it needs more money.
Two options raise tax or divert taxes, or go to an insurance based system.
Insurance will add a bundle of admin fees.
How will an insurance based system be better than just raising taxes. Unless the aim is to only cover those who have insurance. No pay, no cover!

@Itsrainingten the government needs to spend more money, when in real terms it has spent less. Allowing profit to be made, when already the nhs is cut to the bone, is very obviously not the solution. Only the current uk would think it was.

And assisted dying might be the subject of a different discussion, but I don't doubt it's related in the minds of some, and will become more focused once profit is involved. After all, if you're not going to treat after 80, then ...

It's the worst idea I can think of, and utterly horrible.

Meanwhile, I'll carry on paying off the enormous amount of money I spent on my child's medical education, whilst their career is fucked, as part of the same (not very public) ideology.

@marmaladeandpeanutbutter there’s no reason to think assisted dying will become more prevalent with privatisation. In the US the incentive is just the opposite - more interventions at end of life.

personally I support assisted dying for those that choose it willingly and consciously. I feel very strongly that it should not be part of any economic calculation however. Ethically it is just all wrong, even if it feels to some like a pragmatic solution to two problems.

Finally, from personal observation, money could be saved if a way were found to be able to share files across health organisations and boundaries where required. That doesn't happen in many cases currently. If your doctor refers you to a hospital consultant, for example, and they don't have access to other tests taken recently to rule things out, those tests are likely to be repeated, or at the very least, the appointment rescheduled once you are there. That is a waste of resources.

We should stop routinely and ignorantly blaming admin and (some) managers for nhs problems, as we have for decades, as it's just political and not actually helpful, without plenty of detailed knowledge. But address real and practical issues such as the one just mentioned.

So fairly similar to the situation where retirees who own 6 properties and have 4 million in the bank get free prescriptions then, and a state pension, and cold weather payments and a bus pass. Except they have the ability to actually pay because they have their own money. Kids don't

And how many people out of the pensioner population are we talking about here? kids might not have money. They do have parents who do, though.

But accepting that death is the inevitable end to life, and that taxes have to be paid in the meantime, three score years and ten (which is three years away for me) seems a reasonable objective. Anything more in good health is a bonus

It's seven weeks away for me and I'm not planning for that as an end date, thanks very much.