It wouldn’t be a bad idea if we paid for GP appointments?

[Babybear260]

I’m no economist or politician but it occurred to be that if everyone (or the majority of the populn excluding students, under 18,s , pensioners and very low income households) paid, I don’t know ~£5 every time they saw a GP, could that improve the NHS?

I know many, many people that spend twice that a week on lattes and cappuccinos (including myself) so I wonder whether if the majority of the population could stump £5 per appointment it would help?? Because most people aren’t seeing GP’s weekly so surely people wouldn’t mind contributing?

sure people have thought of this before and there must be a reason why it wouldn’t work because obviously if if did, it would be an option.

Yep that’s the system here in jersey and it works well. Pay for GP but onward treatment if needed is free.

No one gets a gp appt unless they need one these days with econsults surely? id also worry about the low income cut off. There's often people who don't get support who actually still need it.

It would be a terrible idea.

“Free at the point of delivery.”

And any cost , however small, would be used as a gateway to successive future rises. We’ve been there and understand the concept.

You cannot shoot every idea down because if you made it charge 10 times as much it would be a bad idea. The system currently is failing. If you’re counting on a government that can pay you a pension when you retire, or if you want healthcare in that retirement, something has to be done.

I can. Pay for fewer wars, for a start.

How about an optional payment?

We have a lovely local kid-friendly museum, it's council run and free to get in, but there's a donation box that says Suggested Donation £5. They've recently added a card payment thing so you can just swipe it to pay a fiver. It's completely optional and there are no staff hovering to see if you pay.

If there was a similar card payment machine on the wall in my GP surgery, A&E or hospital outpatients, with a sign saying Optional Donation £5 per visit to go to the NHS as a whole, I'd happily pay it.

No, it's not. When I had an early miscarriage in Australia, I didn't bother losing paid work time and paying the $100 to see a doctor. The NHS website said nothing could be done.

After my second miscarriage, I had a D&C because it wasn't a complete miscarriage and there were still bits inside me.

I'll never know if the first miscarriage caused the second. I have had children since so I try not to think about it.

But I will never choose money over health again and luckily I can afford now to safeguard my health.

Paying for doctors appointment will kill poor people who can't afford them - the very people the NHS was set up to serve. If you can afford it, you go private but leave the NHS alone!

The end of normal? My aunt would be lying on the bed, holding on the bedhead bars and crying in pain from her teens onwards. I know of this condition as it is in my father´s family. That it takes so long to diagnose is because it is a disease that only (obviously) affects women. The gender bias in medicine at its best.

GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER

Every time MIL comes out of hospital (she's a frequent guest) she comes home with a new list of medications, these include paracetamol, ibuprofen, laxatives, iron tablets, the list is endless. These prescriptions are then put on repeat by her GP who I doubt even looks at what they're prescribing. Half of them she won't touch because she knows better than the doctors but she won't cancel them because they are free and they might come in useful one day.

It would be an excellent idea as, hopefully, it would reduce the number of people making unnecessary appointments. Sadly, I suspect that the costs of administration probably make it a non-starter.

What has changed is that we have 1000s more people coming in, health tourists who refuse to pay ( with no consequences)
A rising obesity issue which we didnt have 20 years ago. A huge increase in people taking illegal drugs, and a massive mental health problem which we didnt have 10/15 years ago. People going abroad for weight loss surgery, and cosmetic surgery coming back with issues that the NHS ends up having to try and rectify.
So how can we remedy all of this?

I do think their should me some charge monthly or something towards medical care meaning GP appointments maternity dentists

In my area you can't even get GP appointment for love nor money unless you go private had to use a private dentist last year which I had to go to q emergency after severe pain for a week came out costing me £1400

FWIW, I was shocked the first time I got a German payslip. Mandatory health insurance costs close to 20% of your gross income, half paid by the employee, half by the employer. Self-employed pay the full 20% alone. Pensioners also pay - a standard sum for low income, percentage-based over a certain, quite low threshold.

The system has problems, mostly relating to decisions made 40 plus years ago which are showing up now, but there’s still a high standard of care in most cases. And tests.

Absolutely! I remember one particularly bad February when my kids were small everyone in the family was sick and we ended up out of pocket to the tune of €700.
i think a nominal fee would be good to stop time wasters but pensioners should probably get free care.

Yes, I love my German healthcare. Especially, for my pregnancies.

I agree!

I get the analogy, but the reason why it doesn't work for me is that by definition the people you're seeing in coffee shops can afford takeaway coffee and sometimes cakes and things. I don't think you're wrong that that subset could afford a fiver to see a GP, I could myself, ditto coffee shop food and drinks. But you won't see people in there for whom that fiver's needed for one of the week's main meals, or to keep the electricity on.

If any moves were made towards charging for GP appointments I think they'd need to be means-tested, and even then I think it'd be a worrying development. I don't think it could be applied to anyone with any kind of chronic illness as it'd quickly become unaffordable for them, and then you're in the territory of evaluating whether a person fell into that category and could have the payment waived. So I do think any form of charges would have to be administered extremely carefully, and even then some people would inevitably fall between the cracks and end up (as is the case in some other countries) struggling to afford to see a doctor. That would undermine everything the NHS is supposed to stand for and would be a real step backwards imo.

I think in the short term possibly, as it might put people off going to the gp. In some cases this will be the right thing and it'll redirect them to pharmacists who are under utilised in comparison, but I think in the long term it could delay people going to access support for what needed dealt with urgently - therefore becoming a more expensive problem overall. I also think this would create a slippery slope where the price will slowly inflate until we've essentially got a privatised healthcare system. To be honest, I think we need more transparency as to where and how money is being allocated and how its actually being spent out of public purse than what we currently have. There's a lot of systems taking large chunks of public money that need significantly overhauled to make them more efficient and cost effective. I do think there's room somewhere for a private wing of the NHS but it should be done to protect access to free healthcare as opposed to just to generate money for healthcare if that makes sense. We can't let ourselves get to the point where people need insurance for healthcare as we know from watching others struggle that insurance providers cannot be trusted to do this ethically.

The nhs has plenty of money its how its run thats the problem throwing more money at it will make no difference

I've got a medical condition under investigation, seems to keep involving blood tests that are a sideline to the main issue. (Possibly another issue) and the Gp's keep asking me to book doctors appointments. Personally, if I have to, because its just test results, I do say I'm happy for a phone call. But it would be costly if I had to pay everytime I had an appointment. Personally, I'd rather I didnt have too. And the time they rang me at the dentist, because I had an appointment I hadn't even booked or knew about! (That was over a scan result)!
So, it would need some working out.

I'm really sorry to hear about your child. I hope they continuing to improve. The NHS has helped me hugely too. I also didn't opt to be disabled. I was born into it. However, interestingly, it's the one minority you don't have to be born into and I think people don't consider that when they propose solutions like paying for healthcare appointments. To a degree I understand why. It's very hard to understand "otherness" unless it directly impacts you. It would be remiss of me to claim I understand the aggressions, microaggressions and discriminations other minorities face because they're not my story. However, I will never deny they exist or try and make life harder for those minorities.

We have homeless people and foodbanks here too. However the majority of people still manage to access healthcare when they really need to and A & E is free. We also pay a fee to call out an ambulance, except for accidents, and no-one thinks twice about calling one if they need to.

Our health system is in a mess at the moment as many others are, but from what I read on MN and hear from friends it's still better than the "envy of the world" NHS. I recently went to a new GP, one who is very thorough. I only saw him because my BP was slightly high and he sent me for more tests over a couple of months than I'd had in the previous 65 years! On my yearly review recently they were all done again - even though nothing showed up in the first ones.

I've lived many years in the UK and had my kids in the UK. I come from New Zealand. I cannot understand why GP's are free. Many times in the doctors waiting room it seems that people have "come in for a chat" with the GP - often people who are older or lonely.

In New Zealand our hospital care is free, but our GP's charge, based on your earnings. Some places are free or almost free to those with low incomes, and we have high use cards as well. We also have a free 24/7 healthline that you can ring to guide you through whether you need care or not.

It seemed odd that I, as a City worker in London, got free GP care despite my income, when that money might be better spent on supporting someone who had very little. But health systems are highly emotional and expectations differ.