to think its disgusting the people with money can get to the front of the nhs treatment que, treated in a nhs hospial by a nhs doctor

[freespiritfreedom]

i mean wtf is going wromg with this country ?

dh needs to see a consultant, its a 12 week wait nhs or if you pay, to see the same dr they can get you in, in a few weeks

its fucked up

yikes tilly,we dont know op circumstances but am guessing she is very stressed and worried

and hey maybe just expressing anxiety that her loved one has a wait for treatment.as would any of us really

dont agree with all op comments but do empathise how bad she feels

So how does it work in the case of those Russian quins that were born here some months ago. By all accounts they were taking up 5 scbu/neonatal beds but being paid for privately. If somebody had a prem. baby in that area, would they have been shipped half way across the country because these privately funded babies were taking up NHS beds ?

I remember commenting on this at the time to DH.

consultants on the whole do not work full time for the NHS they work and are paid for sessions per week which usually means they have some time to see patients privately. They are not being paid by the NHS for this time
they are also not allowed to use NHS facilities or services when seeing private patients don't know where people have got that idea from. Most NHS hospitals have a private wing attached and the money they get from it helps to fund NHS services.
People who use private healthcare are in fact paying twice once through their taxes and once through the private system

If i was in your boots i'd be out scrubbing toilets or whatever it took to pay for the treatment not on here moaning.
In Australia you paid 1% or went private if you earnt over $40,000 so basically most nurses, accountants etc had private cover it was just the done thing and as others said freed up the NHS for those in real need, people in the UK need their eyes opening to the fact that they actually pay little tax and get a hell of a lot for their money.

YABU.

If more people who could afford to pay for private care did, then it would free up resources for those who can't

NHS salaries for consultants are notoriously low anyway. One of our family drs, a consultant, recently left the UK because he could not afford to live in London and raise a family.

A consultant....

YABVU.

countingto10 that's an interesting point. Presumably it's the same as if someone foreign gets knocked over by a bus or something, they get treated by the NHS but receive a bill.

can't be arsed to read the whole thread

has anyone decided she's a troll yet?

I am an NHS consultant. I don't do private practice at all. I single-handedly cover a population of about 75,000 children in my specialty.

The wait to see me is at least 18 weeks, there is no-one else, I cannot work any harder or faster, you cannot get blood out of a stone.I am having to defer an operation that I need, as there is no-one to do my work for the 2 months that I would be unable to work.

My colleagues who do private practice do it in their free time, they put in more than the hours they are paid for in the NHS.

And you call us greedy fucking bastards?

Tissy... You are appreciated by the majority.

you got it slightly wrong OP - as others have said, private consultations are outside of theuir contracted nhs hours. If an nhs facility is used, the nhs charges, it does not affect the nhs in anyway. Infact, it does, as the nhs makes income on usage of facilities.

There is a surplus of senior doctors atm - a bottleneck of registrars who are qualified to apply for consultants posts, but the NHS won't pay for any more posts.

The result is many doctors are being forced to either go overseas, or I know of some highly trained surgeons retraining as GPs.

It is a shocking system, and a total waste for those people who come out of medical school and find there simply is no job for them.

QOD, my point was that maybe it does affect NHS patients in the case of the Russian babies as NHS ones would be moved across county as beds taken by privately funded Russian babies. I thought there was a chronic shortage of neonatal beds/nurses so should we allow private patients to take them up.

...and they won't get a GP job either when they've retrained because there's too many new GPs coming out of training and not enough partnerships or salaried jobs for them. It sucks.

mtas debacle candidates without posts scandalous

oh its bloody ridiculous. My Mum is a nurse contracted to finish work at 4.30. Now she rarely finished before 5.30 AND she goes in half an hour earlier in the morning (she's in the community).

My son needs OT. There aren't any. Luckily he gets SALT through the LEA now, but there's no SALT.

And yet nurses, OT's and SALTs can't get jobs.

Crazy crazy crazy.

The doctors are the only winners here, they can work for the NHS and privately.. wish they had the option for an upgrade though when you're unfortunate enough to be inpatient..

The person who pays to see a doctor privately is paying twice. Once for the NHS, through their tax and secondly through paying privately.

yes it is disgusting
disgusting that my mil had to pay private as she was so much pain she couldn't wait any longer.
disgusting that my sil had to the same as she was in pain.

FSF- your comments are ridiculous, poorly thought out and insulting to a lot of people.

Of course, NHS waiting lists are too long in a lot of circumstances but that isn't the point that you are making.
Surely you realise that there is inequality in the world at all levels?
I'm afraid it is just life that some people can afford to pay and others can't. It may seem unfair but there is really no point in getting so angry about it!
As for calling doctors greedy bastards, I really can't understand why you think this at all. After years of training, v long hours, masses of exams and huge responsibility why shouldn't doctors choose to take on private work in their free time? Doctors don't enter the profession to earn huge salaries and compared with other professionals (most with less training) they actually earn far less.

It would lovely to be able to see everyone within a few days of being referred, but with the current resources it just isn't possible. It's not because greedy doctors are pocketing their huge salaries and sitting on their lardy arses doing nothing, but because more people are being referred tahn the system can cope with.

Here are a few things that would cut my clinic waiting times:

Gps not referring people for surgery who don't want surgery

Gps not referring people who are never going to be fit for surgery

People who can't be bothered to come for their appointment not phoning to cancel

People who have got better turning up anyway

GPs not referring people who have nothing wrong with them (eg. flat feet in toddlers- that's normal!)

btw, it's not all the GPs fault- IME they wouldn't refer if the patients didn't push for a referral.

Absolutely nothing wrong with paying for prompt treatment.

My baby needed an operation when only a few weeks old. The surgeon phoned us on a Sunday evening and he was operated on the following morning. It was an NHS teaching hospital that carried out private surgery. There were seperate invoices for theatre, surgeon and anaesthetist, so the private surgery provided more income for the hospital via theatre fees.

i do private patient work, we do this in our own time (lunch hour or after work in the eve) the hospital rents out its theatre and equipment and private ward, the profits form which is ploughed back into the hospital, they have to make money from somewhere as government funding is just not enough.

So, you are happy to shit care so long as everyone else does too? What about those arrogant bastards who think they have the right to shop at Waitrose when I am going to Tescos? Oh, let's not even get started on the "greedy fuckers" who holiday in foreign countries.

Goog God, people spending their own money on health care. What ARE they thinking?

I remember about 20 years ago, when my mum was having some treatment, her being told "or it's next month if you go private", or something similar, and it was a huge, jaw-dropping, moment-of-blinding-light for me.

I knew about private medicine. But I'd always thought, until that point, that there were "NHS doctors" and "NHS hospitals", or that you could pay to go to a "private" doctor or hospital, as with schools. I thought if you paid for private you went to Harley Street, or the local equivalent. The revelation that you could pay to go private with the same doctor at the same hospital had me walking round in a bemused "shit, I thought I knew how the world worked" daze for days.

Is it just me?