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?

Sarcasm right?
Right??

@User2460177 that we can agree on, maternity care and women's health has a long way to go before being really good! More money spent on the right things for sure.

I think it makes sense to learn from places with systems that work. Not the US, clearly, but many other countries have mixed systems giving better service.

I also think there will have to be a rethinking of the extent to which the NHS offers anything deemed healthcare, and people's expectations in general may have to change. And their sense of responsibility around their own health. These things are more about culture though.

The UK already has a mixed system practically identical to the Australian one but you cannot ignore their different economic and demographic set up.

Australia is a wealthier country with a larger middle class, significantly smaller population, warmer climate with lower population densities.

Its resources sector generates huge tax receipts for its governments to spend.

This is why the Australian private health sector is much bigger than the UK one.

Perhaps also the fact that a Medicare Levy Surcharge (essentially, an extra tax) is payable if you earn over a certain amount and don’t have health insurance.

I agree with much of what you say. As someone who earns pretty well, I could pay for my healthcare or good insurance if necessary and would receive far better care. I have a child waiting an autism assessment - it'll be 2 years minimum. There is way quicker route via the GP but the GP doesn't know about it so I waited six weeks for me to tell them about it and for them to tell me to fill in one of those online quizzes, drop it at the surgery with the letter and they'll do what I suggested. I don't for a second think they will then do it!

What I don't like is the inequality. I earn pretty well so can pay for healthcare but what about someone who doesn't? I also wouldn't want to be in hospital after the birth of my children for any length of time or would I want my care led by an obstetrician. When I couldn't have a home birth in lockdown I was delighted that I was allowed to leave hospital as soon as possible after birth and was home in four hours.

Deleting this as I realised it is very identifying.

This

We can afford it, we just need to prioritise public spending - the tories can’t be trusted to do that - they want us privatised as they and their buddies own the private companies.

Still don’t understand how privatisation will suddenly magic up loads of nursing staff, doctors etc. That’s the reason you can’t see a GP or your hospital outpatient appointment is 3 years away, why quality of care on the wards is very much lacking. Demand is outstripping availability. There are simply not enough bodies to do the jobs.
I for sure as a nurse on £30k couldn’t afford to pay £200-300 a month to insure my family, my partner is self employed so doesn’t earn shedloads and doesn’t get sick pay in any case !
What we need to do is sort out social care. If you’re sitting on a house worth £500k like many older folk are and with decent pensions too the state shouldn’t be forking out on your care. Loop holes need to be plugged to prevent families routinely moving money around to avoid paying their fair share. Most of my ‘inheritance’ went towards my mums care and so it should have, certainly not be siphoned off into trusts set up years ago and conveniently hidden.

The system isn't the problem. The partial privatisation of many aspects of the system making it more expensive is the problem. Drugs for example. We generally find research through the state allow private companies to do some trials then they market drugs back to the NHS charging a fortune - usually for a drug with more side effects than benefits.

@bleughgreen sorry but you’re talking crap.

I love this idea that private companies will be wonderfully benevolent and have our best interests at heart.
Thames Water anyone? 70 billion odd paid out in dividends and no investment in infrastructure whatsoever.

And yet health care systems across Europe demonstrate that this is not the case.

Did you miss @mathanxiety post describing giving birth in the UK on Medicaid?

Free services for children up to 18. Then a basic nhs. It’s no longer workable, but when politicians mention
this the public scream - even though we can all see it’s a shit show.

It's been the aim of the Tories to drive the NHS into the ground to the point that this seems inevitable for years. IMO reform and renationalisation of all the daft PPPs is what's needed.

Nobody has said they would be wonderfully benevolent and its not relevant - I want to work, I don't care if there is a lord or lady bountiful at the top of the heap. The NHS is one of the worst employers on the market (plenty of threads on here about that) and is institutionally resistant to change and modernisation. No other public or private org has been able to ignore modernisation and change (although MoD procurement makes a bloody good stab at it).

Net result of all this is poor care and absence of care far too often, fragmented services where the buck is passed and absolute basics such as record keeping are often shockingly poor. It may have been worse by austerity but frankly the problems were already there which is why successive governments have tried to change the model for the last 30 years in the face of massive resistance. No other industry private or public could get away with it because no other industry has been canonised in the way that state controlled health care has been.

The latest "shocking" report on maternity care had its counterparts produced under both Labour and previous Tory governments (doubly so for black women). Each time hands were wrung, each time nothing really changed because the NHS fiefdoms won't change - far too many vested interests to appease.

What people have said on this thread and elsewhere is that our experiences of state backed insurance models consistently produced better experiences and better value for money.

I feel passionately about the NHS but so much doesn't make sense. I live in Scotland so don't pay for prescriptions. But I easily could. You get people getting paracetamol on the NHS here despite it being 50p in the shops. It's madness. People take the absolute piss out of it because it's free.

One of my big issues with the NHS, as significant as how it’s ran, is how it’s also abused by the public.

Watch documentaries on the ambulance service and the minor reasons people call 999 for an ambulance is mind boggling, and the risk of being sued means that no one can tell anyone ‘no, drive yourself or get a bus/taxi to hospital if you would like to be seen’.

The British public generally think that every issue, whether actually life impacting or incredibly minor and passing, must be seen and dealt with by the NHS. The problem being that there are far more people using it than actively paying in, and then comes the issue of mismanagement of funds…

I don’t want it to be privatised but I can’t see any other future for it? Which government would be actually capable of reforming it? None in this election coming up.

The obesity crisis is spinning out of control, we need to move back towards people taking responsibility for their own health

I couldn't agree more, but good luck with the concept; you only have to look at the frequent responses on obesity threads here to see just how welcome the suggestion that folk take responsibility for themselves is

Apart from that the belief that someone else must always provide the solution to everything has taken such a hold that I'm not sure how we'll ever grow back from it

Sorry that should of course have been "giving birth in the US on Medicaid" - I never have been able to proof read!

OP, be very careful for what you wish for. My cat's specialist vets bill for her cancer treatment was itemised down to the last bit of bandage and overall came to over £7k. She was insured.

I was turned down for private health insurance as I have a genetic condition

State backed insurances models prohibit exclusions for pre existing conditions and prices are capped.

Comparisons with the vetinary industry in the UK are meaningless - its apples and turnips.