my rant against the NHS (this time GPs)....

[AliGrylls]

This morning I took my DS to dr as he had been sick for 24 hours and had not held down any food. I did not have an appointment and just pitched up, the nurse said he would try to see me as soon as possible. Within half an hour I was walking out of my GP prescription in hand.

I couldn't help thinking on my way back what a lovely GP I have. He is sooo caring and will always try to fit you in if you don't have an appointment. A couple of times I have turned up at the doorstep of his surgery at 8 in the morning with one or other complaint. I have also seen him come in from doing house calls in the morning.

However, whenever I tell DH about how wonderful he is he thinks this is just the way GPs should be. Is he being unreasonable, and is my GP wonderful? Or, in this country have we just got so used to a crap service from our GPs that anyone who is half decent is considered amazing?

I am probably 80% happy with the health service overall, and probably 85% happy with our GP service. Hospital outpatient and inpatient stuff scores 65% I reckon, but A and E 90%.

I have gone private overseas before and was only about 60-70% happy with that, as frankly a lot of the time the standard of care was not as good. I have gone private in the UK as well and that 'only' makes an 85-90% for me these days (in fact the only complaint I have made recently has been about the blardy rude receptionists at the local private hospital).

Long live the NHS, that's what I say.

I think the NHS is amazing bearing in mind it is basically free. And taxes in the UK are very low. So essentially you get what you pay for.

I live in Belgium and the basic rate income tax is 25% for the lowest earners!!!!! You pay 30% if you earn over 7,420 EUR per year, 40% over 10,510 EUR, 45% over 17,610 EUR with a top limit of 50% for incomes above 32,270 EUR

In the UK even our millionaires don't pay 50%!

And there is no NHS in Belgium. You pay around 20 euros a month for basic cover which means that you pay to access every service then get a percentage reimbursed by the state. So I pay 28 euros for each GP appointment and get about 12 euros reimbursed. I also pay 14 euros a month to let me get a bigger reimbursement for hospital cover.

Childbirth (with no complications, no caesarian etc. costs almost 2,000 euros so without the extra top-up I would be in trouble!!!

It always annoys me when people in the UK complain about the NHS and then reckon they pay a lot in tax

My problem with the NHS is that fundamentally it seems understaffed in key jobs such as drs and nurses which is why some of them have a bit of a bad attitude (basically because they don't have time to do the nice things for patients like making sure they are comfortable).

There needs to be more drs and nurses and less middle management (which apparently there are lots of).