To think we shouldn't be funding this on the NHS?

[AgileJadeDog]

I recently had my first stay in hospital due to a respiratory issue and I kid you not, every other person in the bay smoked+had a smoking related disease.

I have no idea if this is typical in other specialties/hospitals but it really hit me how much gets spent on completely self inflicted stuff. AIBU to think we shouldn't be funding stuff like this?

Stop helping people with mental health issues. They should just get over it and pull
themselves together.🤔

Agreed that people smoke illegally on hospital grounds , but they won’t be nurses and the nurses won’t be pushing them there because it would , in this day and age , be a disciplinary issue .

You don't have a clue about health inequalities you really don't.

I know three people who died of lung cancer who never smoked. My mother had COPD. She never smoked.

How may cigarettes would someone have to smoke in their lifetime to become unworthy of treatment?

I understand you Op, but where does it end?

I think we need a radical overhaul of the health system in this country.

I think means tested health insurance would work. You already see health insurers giving better rates to those that wear smart watches, so it’s starting… if you smoke, you pay more. You eat too much? Pay more. Drink too much? Pay more. Take part in extreme sports? Pay more!

I say this as someone who does sports that do cause injury and I probably drink too much… incentivise people to get well and if you don’t take responsibility then you pay more. It’ll never happen, but the current system is broken. The people who use it the most and probably get hundreds of thousands a year aren’t the people paying into it.

How do you draw the line?

5 cigarettes/vapes a day? Patient pays whole cost of any illness treatment including broken leg?
20 cigarettes/vapes a day?
BMI of 30+ patient pays whole cost of any treatment including cut to head that needs stitches?
BMI of 40+ ?
Anyone with drugs or alcohol that shows up in blood tests pays for all their treatment?
People who are injured playing football/rugby/cycling/running pay the bills for their sporting injuries to be treated?
Diabetics who do not manage their glucose levels by drinking lots of alcohol, not managing their eating and suffer other conditions because of that?
Trans surgeries?

We all make choices that affect us - where are you going to draw the lines?

Who is to say whether a high cholesterol level is caused by amounts of fat eaten on someone who happens to be pre-disposed to high cholesterol (as many people who eat healthily are)?

Are committees going to go through every case and decide? Individual Drs?

But THEY are funding more towards the healthcare of others as a result of that choice. That’s the point.

There’s genetics and second hand smoke that cause illness. It’s not always from first hand smoke. I’d put a huge tax on tobacco and vapes to pay for smokers treatments.

When the NHS no longer exists as free at the point of delivery which will happen one day though everyone on this forum may be dead by then. It will be replaced with maybe a mixture of free care and insurance and what will happen is like any other insurance your payments will be based on your risk.

The unpalatable truth is people live too long with conditions that not that many years ago would have killed them and people don’t look after themselves. I’m not agreeing with the op but it’s why the NHS is on its knees as well as the fact it’s run so badly. My brother died of type 2 diabetes complications. We all know our family history. He made no effort, he ended up on dialysis 3 times a week for a number of years. He was ultimately really selfish making no effort.

The affection for the NHS which is sometimes misplaced and the lack of personal responsibility will kill it off whether we agree with the op or not.

YABU. Healthcare is a human right. Everyone is entitled to it even if they are ill or injured as a result of choices they have made. Otherwise there’s an equally sinister argument for saying we shouldn’t fund care for people who eat processed food, or are overweight, or ride motorbikes, or drive cars, or don’t wear their bike helmets.

People who smoke need support and resources to assist them in quitting. They don’t deserve to be left to die because you’ve made an arbitrary moral distinction regarding which people are worthy of healthcare.

👏

By the time you exclude:

Smoking
Drinking
Drugs
Obesity
Living in polluted areas
Dangerous activities
Dangerous driving (bad weather/ice/fog)
Pregnancy with underlying conditions
Insufficient exercise/bad posture
Insufficient use of sunscreen
Pregnancy past a certain age

I suspect your department for administering who is qualified for free healthcare would be as big if not bigger than the clinical staff.

On the plus side, you'd be spending very little on the actual healthcare side. The rich wouldn't care, as they'd get private health insurance, so it's only those who can't afford it who would be screwed.

You could also go all the way, and refuse to pay for any costs associated with genetic conditions which could have been detected in pg.

But is that the world we want to live in? Where do you draw the line?

That’s a very black and white way of looking at things. YABU. Perhaps recognising your privilege would be a good start for you OP.

As PPs have pointed out, the taxes brought in from smoking are far higher than what it costs to treat those with smoking related diseases. And those people are likely to die far younger than those who don’t smoke, generally speaking. So they’re really not using as much of the NHS budget as you might think.

I’m not being deliberately obtuse but from my experience the nurses were indeed taking the patients outside to smoke. I don’t judge them for this. But this was absolutely happening.

I had a skin cancer removed when I was 10. My parents did use sun cream but how do you prove that? Should I have been left untreated?

Well, insurance companies, lawyers and privste hospitlas would make a fortune if we decided not to treat self inflected medicls problems. I'm sure years long legal battle when NHS decided not to treat someone and when court and experts decide that it was in fantastic not self inflicted won't cost a penny.

You do realise that smokers have more than payed for their care with the 90% tax they pay on each pack of cigarettes, whereas the obese patients with heart disease, diabetes and all the other issues caused by obesity haven't so should we stop treating them aswell?
If you want to denigh people treatment for 1 type of self inflicted diseases then you need to do it for all.
Or if you really want to save the NHS money you could ditch all gender ideology, so training, flags, walkways etc and then theres the all the unnecessary cosmetic surgery and repairs/corrections for botched surgery abroad, add the salaries of the managers and the ott pension contributions way above and beyond any other public or private sector plus the cost of the PPI taken out under Blair, if you end all of the above you could have a well funded NHS that was fit for purpose.

My husband recently went on a litter pick at our local hospital - most of it was cigarette butts

OP,

I am curious on your views on IVF for people 35+?

That is pretty expensive and, arguably, self inflicted?

Ultimately, I would far rather economise on IVF, gender surgery and cosmetic surgery than treating people who are seriously ill, regardless of how it came about.

So?

Free at the point of need. The end.

Smokers are net contributors as a group in any case. They die early and pay a fortune in tax. Yes YABU

.

I'm with you 100%. But my mum worked on cardiac ICU and HDU as a nurse and she told me, people often needed to quit smoking for a year to have surgery. (Unless emergancy) also alcoholics don't get liver transplants.

But the amount of time and money and rescourses fat people take of the NHS is just disgusting.

Yes, people smoked in planes in the 80s, but they were in a separate smoking section at the back of the plane - just the back few rows - the majority were in the non smoking area in the middle and front

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 There was NO ‘no smoking’ area. While it was dedicated rows, there was no magical barrier that contained the smoke! It was the one thing I hated about flying as you always left the plane stinking of an ashtray, and that was being used to it as I had two parents who smoked at home while growing up. Being stuck in a plane long haul with it was really something else.

There will be things we do today that we will find out in future are bad for us. Should we be penalised for that? When I went to school, pretty much all teachers smoked in the classroom (who could blame them……). I remember when my cousins were born and we went to visit mum and baby in hospital, ashtrays were standard on bedside tables and most new mums smoked. By the time I starting working in hospitals, the bedside smoking had stopped, and instead every ward area had a smoking room instead. Honestly no idea why I never smoked, but it was normal for people from around 15yo to smoke. In 20 years we will probably find that (insert a number of things here) gives you cancer or whatnot.

Absolutely ridiculous. Just a silly comment. Either very rich and funded a private hospital or not had kids.