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.

You are forgetting that we do already pay for our NHS. Not just for ourselves and our own families but for everyone else who is unable to pay. I have no issue with this but chucking more nominal charges in won't help.
I think the answer lies in correcting the utterly dysfunctional management and the deskilling and demoralisation of clinical staff (eg Drs being replaced by ACPs and nurses being replaced by HCAs, staff retention and appalling levels of burnout due to stress).
I've spent 35 years working at the coalface, I wouldnt recommend the NHS as a place to work anymore (let alone be a patient) and could write a book about the behaviour of the managers I've worked for, including one director who moved to another country and just showed up occasionally on teams to check that everyone was still working hard.
Speak up guardians work for the Trust, they are paid to avoid legal action against the Trust and are about as useless in supporting staff as a chocolate teapot.

Totally agree. We have to find a way to make people appreciate the NHS and not take the piss. There was another thread this week from someone who was pissed off that they'd be removed from a service after missing 3 appointments. She admitted that if she'd known she would have been removed, she would have found a way to get there. Basically she saw it as a choice to not go despite the waste of time through cancelling at short notice. The numbers of missed appointments is huge, a small fee would hopefully go some way to making people think about whether they really need it and, if they do, to actually turn up.

It was a post war system and was fine then but treatments/medicine have been revolutionised. Technology eg MRI is expensive to buy, staff, maintain. Medicine is v.staff heavy. People not turning up? It's on them but if you miss your flight on holiday what happens? I know it's a simplistic view but there has to be a collective will to improve the system. That should be across the Govt, all the politicians without bias and the medical services. What it shouldn't be is a sell off of the services to pfi or overseas companies like EdF or Centrica. No, there won't be competition. It will be a cartel of investors.

I have no problem with charging for missed appointments, hairdressers , vets and dentists for this, but charging a £5 or £10 fee would just penalise the poorest, and would probably cost more to operate than it would raise.

I'm guessing you are in good health OP I don't see my GP every week but in September I had 3 GP appointments, 1 appointment with Physician assistant, 1 senior nurse and about 3 appointments with a health care assistant and a phone appointment with a different GP and 2 trips to urgent care.

So 11 x £5 = £55.

I've also had times in my life when I did not have £5 to my name.

Then the surgery has to have some way of taking payment, which means they may become a target for thieves looking for money.

The staff have to be trained to take payments. And what to do if the system goes down.

, Then what do they do with that money?

I don't know which country you live in, but in the UK, we have a lot of homeless people and others who are dependent on food banks to feed their children.

It's one thing to look in a shop window and see lovely things that you simply accept you can't have, because you can't afford them; but basic healthcare should not be like that.

It's a bit like period poverty: nobody is regularly spending hundreds of pounds a month on necessary supplies, but there are girls who have to miss out on school and have to forego their basic dignity because they and their families simply cannot afford the cost - even though, to many, that cost would be dismissed as 'only a few pounds'.

There is no point in moaning about the NHS but never changing anything.

All of European countries have a self funded element to it and they have much better health outcomes than we do.

If people had to pay for their healthcare to some extent they may actually start taking responsibility for their health.

People need to be less entitled and start thinking differently about their health. I would hate to end up dying of a cancer in my 50s that I would have survived if I was French / German / Swedish etc.

But that might happen to me, or any of you. Statistically speaking it will happen to several people reading this thread. So think about whether you want that to be you?

Do you genuinely think that ALL health problems that people suffer from are caused by poor choices and them effectively 'choosing poor health'?

Do you also object to public buildings being made to pay to instal wheelchair ramps, because the people who need them "probably made poor decisions and so it's their own fault really"?

So instead of cracking down on/educating/disincentivising the people (of all ages) who abuse a valuable system, we should remove it for everybody?

Would it be possible to bring in a system that understands people's needs and limitations and doesn't expand health inequality?

How might it change the relationship between GP and patient?
I suspect if people are paying at point of use they might raise their expectations.
Might it change how GP's practise too?

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/nov/20/medical-bills-healthcare-costs-medicare-australia-public-health-expensive

The main argument against this is that it's a tax on the sick. If you're healthy, happy days you don't have to pay, if you have poor health then this would soon add up. And the people who are the sickest also tend to be the poorest, because it's hard for them to work if they're sick.

Yes, it's remarkable how many people who are privileged to enjoy mostly great health - with only the very occasional isolated, easily-resolved health issue - are happy to throw some of the most vulnerable people under the bus.

Many people who have frequent appointments find parking charges at hospitals and GP surgeries, or regular bus fares to get there, prohibitively expensive and a real barrier to them - let alone any new charges being brought in for the actual appointment.

Spoke to a pharmacist the other day who told me that if everyone paid £1 for their prescription it would raise more money that charging a few people £9.90. The amount of people receiving free prescriptions due to age or income is 95%.
MIL receives paracetamol for free, it would cost 35p from Tesco.
The amount of unused medication returned to pharmacies when old people die is frightening, doctors keep prescribing and the patients don't take it for some reason. It has to be disposed of rather than going back into stock.

The people who use most of the appointments would be exempt so I don't see it being a huge money raiser or saving missed appointments.

I would have to pay and wouldn't mind paying but I have only seen a GP 3 times in the last 24 years (excluding maternity where I would presumably be exempt in this scheme). £15 isn't going to go too far in saving the NHS.

I would like to see more proactive healthcare and I would pay for that, for example my husband followed a common path.

Hpylori ->heartburn->ppis->heartburn->b12 deficiency ->neurological issues.

This could have been nipped in the bud before one problem spiralled into the next even bigger problem, whilst not actually fixing the original problem.

But there isn't time for education and there isn't time for discussing the pros and cons of medication and what to do to mitigate the worst effects - in this case a depletion of b12 because the situation has been created and allowed to continue where it couldn't be assimilated.

Maybe if people payed there wouldn't be signs on the wall declaring 10 minutes and 1 symptom only when we know that so many illnesses are multifaceted and drawing together the seemingly disparate symptoms would result in more complete understanding.

This was discussed last week and I stand by opinion it penalises the chronically ill and disabled.

I have to request my sons medications which are all on repeat prescription when we start to run low on them. They are reviewed regularly at his various appointments.

Quite. It's neither a new take nor one that is nuanced nor considers the complexities of healthcare.

I would be one of the ones who’d struggle to pay and so get more poorly without access to help. I earn just a bit too much for help for prescriptions, dentist etc but those fees are a noticeable chunk from my budget. And once things attract a charge they quickly rise to become unaffordable for many people.

Some people really do seem to despise poor people, don't they?

I already pay a fortune in tax, why should I keep paying?

I don't have to think about it.

Last year my son was diagnosed with cancer.

About 1,645 children aged 0-14 are diagnosed with cancer every year in the UK.

The NHS is far from perfect but it saved his life.

Statistically speaking, I probably won't be the only parent on this thread who will hear ''The test results are back, I'm really sorry but your child has cancer'' at some point.

Childhood cancer doesn't give a fuck how healthy your child is, how active they are or how they've never tasted alcohol in their lives because they are obviously far too young.

Maybe some people should think about how if that is their child one day, how they would feel if they had to pay for appointments, especially considering how many appointments a child has if they are fortunate enough to survive cancer. Especially if you lose your job when your child is in hospital as I did.

A older friend of ours used to stockpile an assortment of free prescriptions - I once counted over 60 items in his bathroom. More than once they were mostly thrown out by a visiting ex-nurse friend.
He was very tight with money and I know would never have taken so many items if he’d had to pay even £3 each.

When he died he left well over £1m cash and 2 houses long paid off. (Dh was executor so I do know this.)

I’m not saying he was typical but I dare say not unusual.

Haven’t they mostly stopped prescribing very cheap and readily available items like paracetamol now?

When I had shingles the GP didn’t prescribe stronger painkillers - she told me I could easily buy them at any pharmacy. (Not off the shelf, I had to ask.).