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?

The cash has run out. Hard decisions have to be made IF we want to keep the NHS. We can't keep borrowing money to pay for the public services we think we need to keep. Sooner or later, a line has to be drawn or we, as a country, will be bankrupt and there'll be no NHS for anyone. We're already paying more in interest than we're paying in education.

No one bothers with the no smoking areas or signs. No one tells this selfish people to move along. I suppose it’s like shop lifting now where it’s tolerated due to risk of violence to the security personnel.

Yet when I worked in a supermarket, I ID'd a few people and they are 18/19. Why are people want to smoke now?

It is. This is why I feel torn about it. But the reality of smoking is that there is nothing to it that is beneficial or necessary. Driving a car to get to work is a necessity, but there’s obviously a risk of an accident. Same with sport. Sport is seen as healthy and guards against things like obesity and heart disease etc, but obviously there’s a risk in any sport of an accident (some more than others). But there is nothing necessary, healthy or good about smoking. It is a pointless and totally dangerous habit. The warnings are there for all to see. It’s printed on the packets.
Thats why I feel it is slightly different to normal ‘risk’.
If that makes sense.

I work for the NHS and I’m not hospital based but smoking outside hospitals is commonplace where I live in the west of Scotland, I’ve also experienced this in southwest England. There are signs everywhere that say smoking is banned etc but people were still there. My only feelings around this were sadness and compassion, as it shows how strong addiction is. Lots of the people smoking were elderly patients, in hospital for treatment so were taken out by NHS staff. It was a sad sight, I don’t think I could deny a very sick older person potentially their last cigarette either.

The lack of compassion and snobbery undertones on this thread are disgusting.

Chelsea and Westminster, Charing Cross and the Royal Free have patients with wheel chairs and /or drip stands smoking outside. No staff with them, though. Also, because all 3 open straight onto main roads, it’s tricky to work out where the hospital boundary ends.

So you got to know all 5-7 people on your ward on such a personal level that they declared their smoking past?

Of course you’re being unreasonable. A huge portion of patients are there for self inflicted reasons.
Anytime anyone gets into any form of transport, climbs a ladder, walks up or down the stairs, goes for a walk, goes into the sea, etc etc, they’re potentially putting themselves at risk of an accident. Everytime someone drinks alcohol, sunbathes, uses a sun bed, eats UPF they’re putting themselves at risk of developing very specific cancers. You can’t single out two causes of possible ill health and say they shouldn’t be covered.
I say “possible” because not every smoker or overweight person requires nhs care. You’re being ridiculous

It was a conversation with a urology consultant at work - maybe he was talking about his patients at the time.

I am more concerned that you have been given access to their confidential medical information.

So you'll be going private for any osteoporosis related treatment, including broken bones, in the future seeing as you're choosing to reduce your vitamin D levels?

Smoking can suppress your appetite meaning less likely to be obese. Not saying this outweighs the risk of smoking. Obviously it doesn’t. But. You could argue that at least they might lower the risk of obesity and its issues.

You are not guaranteed to have a negative effect when smoking. I never had a furry tongue or gross teeth (I have 2 fillings from childhood and no gum disease). I so far haven’t had cancer or any respiratory issues. Maybe I will in the future I don’t know. I might also get skin cancer from my early years of sunbathing in Ibiza or liver disease from my binge drinking in Kavos. Maybe the lung cancer I’ll get will be due to my father’s heavy smoking and not my own. But who could prove which one caused it?

How do you know where taxguru's OH is being treated?

Possibly they are. That could well be heaving with them.

So what's the plan? A fat person goes to the GP and complains of chest pain - what happens next? A lifestyle review before the ambulance is called? And if it's determined they 'did this to themselves' then they're asked to just go home to make themselves comfortable and say good bye to their loved ones? A triage nurse wanders through A&E and asks security to remove all those who have done this to themselves? Where do they go? To the street to die? Or should the hospital at least fund a taxi? Perhaps they could spend a bit of the money they're 'saving' to build purpose-built dying rooms in the basement. Normal, good people shouldn't have to look at that, so put it out of sight.

OP my DM paid over £100K this year in care costs because she has Alzheimer’s. The NHS already discriminates.

You have to go off site at both of the local hospitals I use regularly, security send you on your way if you try to smoke outside the entrances. The smoking shelters have been removed and I can't remember the last time I saw a member of staff supporting a patient who had been taken outside to smoke.

You’ve completely missed the main point which is that it is an addiction. Many older people smoked and became addicted before knowing about all the health risks. I suppose they should just be left to die then?

Who are you to judge who is worthy of hospital treatment? The NHS is free to ALL. It’s not a judgement based tick box system.

Quadruple or more the cost of cigarettes and tobacco and vapes. Put that extra tax into the nhs.

I’ve recently finished cancer treatment and although there was big signs saying don’t smoke in hospital grounds people would smoke right underneath the signs. Used to really upset me as I had to stand next to it waiting for a lift home! Bloody rude.

Except pregnancy is a normal, natural function which every species is driven to do, as opposed to sucking on a roll of dozens of hazardous chemicals.

How many pregnancies should we fund? The first two maybe? Anything more isn’t “normal” right?

The OP is not a nice person but I don’t know why you don’t believe that people smoke on hospitals grounds.

It may be illegal but people do not care. I regularly am at a hospital where there are 2 hospitals next to each other - the Royal Marsden (cancer specialist) and Royal Brompton (heart and lung specialist). It is unbelievable the number of people who light up cigarettes right next to the main entrance. They’re both on busy roads so the smokers could step away.

The Royal Free trust hospitals do not have enough security to deal with inside issues let alone outside. People sit on the benches and smoke under the do not smoke signs. It’s just lovely for the poor people who are waiting to be collected and cannot sit down unless they want to be next to a smoker.

Sounds like the OP would like an insurance based system where you have exclusions for various things. You know. Like they have in the US.

I wonder how many more of these posts we'll see popping up suggesting that we're all being somehow fleeced by paying into the NHS and really wouldn't it be super if we had an insurance system which excludes the undesirables.

Oh agreed. Also anyone over a BMI of 25. Anyone who does any kind of risky sport - including rugby, football, skateboarding, climbing etc.
Also anyone who has a baby over the age of 35. Anyone who drinks alcohol. Anyone who takes drugs - or who has ever taken drugs.
Anyone who doesn’t eat mainly a plant based diet.
all those fuckers are unnecessarily risking their health. In fact. The NHS should really only be for the well.

More bullshit. Try thinking more critically about the hypocrisy of governments who lecture people about the dangers of smoking, drinking, eating unhealthily and yet still allow the offending products to be sold because they want the tax revenue. And your comments about MH are ignorant and offensive.

I agree. Trouble is that "risk" is too complex for lots of people to understand. Because "some" people get lung cancer having never smoked, they justify the exceptions as being reasons for carrying on doing unhealthy/risky things themselves. The old "My great Aunt Edna smoked all her life and lived to 100" story. They don't understand that lifestyle choices increases/reduces the risk of things happening - they don't understand the very nature of risk and probability which is the there will always still be exceptions but that doesn't negate the basic premise.

Trouble is with the NHS that people are given the green light to make unhealthy choices in the knowledge that the NHS will be there to bail them out, so it actually encourages poor behaviour and poor decision making.