The NHS. We need to fight to keep it.

[Differentforgirls]

My Mil is 87. Last year (around September) she was bleeding from her vagina and went to her GP.

The GP referred her to hospital for tests, which she got quickly.

It was cancerous polyps in her womb so she got further tests to ensure they hadn’t spread and was referred for surgery.

Tonight she has been discharged from hospital after numerous tests over the intervening months and a surgery yesterday (keyhole).

She’ll get follow up treatment too.

All NHS, where she has been treated with dignity, respect and kindness.

It might not be what it was due to cuts but it’s still something we should be proud of.

She’ll celebrate her 88th birthday next month, as an OAP in social housing with nothing but her pension, because of the NHS.

AIBU for thinking the NHS is something to be proud of and fight to keep?

@Alexandra2001 your last paragraph reiterates my point exactly. The entire UK system presupposes a monopoly employer and provider. It results in slow, poor quality care and a provider with absolutely no incentive to improve. (It actually incentivizes the NHS to do the bare minimum, and as infrequently as possible, which is embraced in spades, but that’s a separate point).

It is not beyond the wit of man to change this. As I said upthread, we should be learning from countries which don’t expect their citizenry to languish on plastic chairs in A&E for days, or have better cancer survival rates, or outperform the NHS in just about every other measurable way (except access, where the NHS scores highly because it treats anyone who rocks up, albeit slowly/badly).

Such as? If it isn't life threatening/A&E, then it is outpatient.

I had a private consultant's appoint this Monday gone for example, and needed an MRI. The MRI was two days later this Wednesday just gone. Done, dusted and follow up this evening.

Nowhere does the NHS offer a quick service to compete with that for non-life threatening care. At best, I would be waiting a year

Spare me the clutching at straws.

Which country? That’s far cheaper than most. And what about people with underlying health conditions?

Even if we all had to pay roughly £300 a month each for private health care, that would work out as a lot more money than many families in the UK can afford. And that doesn’t cover the excess. What if your whole family are in a car accident? What if one of you is disabled or has a mild but permanent health condition like diabetes?

We already do pay for the NHS via NI.

That is the premium you pay.

The NHS is good/only option for lifesaving treatment. But the NHS is just a back up and fall back for private health. It just can't compete with the standard of private health insurance.

Dumps of hospitals, peeling walls, the lowest possible budget for hospital food which is on par with the budget used for HMP service, makes for a healthcare system of a developing country.

The majority of the NHS funding comes from general taxation (and borrowing). NIC is used mostly for benefits such as the state pension, unemployment & sickness benefits, etc.

Re your final point, I'm not so bothered about the physical state of hospitals, but more about the often crap attitudes of the staff which is nothing to do with flaky paint etc. When my FIL was seriously ill, he was initially treated in a bright and airy state of the art brand new PFI hospital - his treatment was utter crap. After a few weeks of deterioration where the doctors couldn't understand why he wasn't improving and he was left unable to reach his food/water etc, he was moved to a different hospital which did indeed look "third world" but the care and attention he received was second to none and he improved very quickly - mostly because they immediately noticed the chest drain inserted in the first hospital was in the wrong place and they replaced it meaning an almost immediate improvement, and the nursing "care" was also head and shoulders above that he suffered in the first hospital.

It's people that matter - there was a certain "air" about the staff in the modern hospital with an atrium - hard to describe, but certainly a massive attitude problem. Not saying that's because of the hospital, but what I AM saying is that it's possible to have better care in an old crap hospital or worse care in a brand new hospital with an atrium etc. One doesn't cause the other.

NHS 24. Dial 101. My son did it last night. Seen in half an hour. They have out of hours centres.

Yes my MILs MRI was did two days after she saw the consultant.

Which is an extension of A&E, but with conditions downgraded to non life threatening.

I have already acknowledged that we all use A&E for emergencies (an event I dread to think of).

I am talking about the standard of service for procedures, medicine availability, scans and everything non emergency related. The NHS just can't compete. It is night and day between the two.

We don’t have NHS 24.

I used it when I had shingles which appeared on a Saturday. Got an appointment that day, examined, diagnosed and given a prescription which I picked up immediately then went home.

Then that was an emergency and/or a follow up referral from the hospital.

No GP referral results in a two day MRI wait, unless it is an emergency/urgent

You keep going back to emergency care. That we have covered. Everything else is a long waiting list, NHS approved treatment only and shoddy treatment.

You do understand that Labour are going to try to placate their voter base, don’t you?

Where?

Outside Scotland.

She had fantastic treatment. Which is the point of the thread.

Seriously? I thought it was UK wide.

So, one datapoint, upon which you base your original assertion.

No.
This is what I meant earlier. The NHS you are so keen to fight for is not the NHS most of us experience or even have access to.

Nope...the point of the thread is the NHS, and the NHS also encompasses outpatient and non life threatening.

Nope. READ THE THREAD.

Surely you can see why I want to keep it though? I didn’t realise it was this bad elsewhere.

I’ll decide what my point is thank you.

I did. Perhaps you should as numerous people have pointed things out to you but you choose to endorse the NHS regardless.

Ok, three, five, ten, one hundred datapoints.

It’s not an experience shared by many.