NHS is finished

[Tulipsroses]

My experience with NHS is patchy. The maternity hospitals were good but some diagnostics I had to do were a nightmare. At one point I found it easier to fly abroad to do a biopsy because NHS would not do it and private clinic would charge a fortune.

I read about NHS horror stories and I can't stop thinking why on earth it's not abolished by now. It is clearly not sustainable. It's a black hole where you damp more money every year and the outcome is predictably worse.

If I was to design a health service I would have diagnostics and general health completely private with set maximum prices and no barrier to competition. I would subsidize medical degrees to make them free and remove the number limits on them so there are more doctors trained.
I would encourage people to have as many early diagnostics as possible.
What's your thoughts?

Well. I also said it needed reform. Nobody picked on that one. The NHS does very little prevention. I think that would also be the key to turn the actual situation we are in. The population is sick or very sick.

i think there is a lot of money put in prevention
diet advice
etc.,

How naïve some people are never stop to amaze me….

@Tulipsroses maybe read a bit more about the situation in the US and how even those who are comfortable end up with huge bills because they’ve dare needing a CS for example. Or they’ve had a car crash and ended up in ICU.

Then come back when you’ve had to sell your house to be allowed to live.

Is it bollocks 'finished'.

I contacted my surgery online about a week ago about a pain in my leg. Was contacted by a physio with 24 hours by phone, sent for x-ray in the same week. A walk in appointment. I was seen within 30 minutes.

Someone has just called me on a Saturday morning to update me. Further appointment arranged for Monday.

All non- urgent and I live in a very large city.

It can be patchy, agreed, according to where you are, but overall we are very lucky.

Just to argue with whoever said there isn’t any evidence on obesity. Yes there is. We now know what interventions help people lose weight. We know that where south Asian people carry fat is more dangerous than with white people and how their fat is distributed. We know there is a link between poverty and obesity. We know that UPF’s are highly addictive and are the reason the UK has higher levels of obesity than the continent. However, we have a government who is too incompetent or scared to regulate our food industry so we have to sit back and watch the next generation lose their lives and limbs. We know a great deal but unfortunately we are doing nothing.

Goodness we should never deny the medical care of any age group! can't believe anyone would ever suggest such a thing.

In my local hospital (cornwall) the fracture clinic is often rammed with extremely frail elderly people who have fallen.

It's very sad - but I do think services should be split between the user in the trolley who is extremely fragile vs the user with a broken arm who can go home soon.

Our opthalmology department is bursting with a similar problem. GPs are overwhelmed by elderly and end of life care. Paramedics too.

Never ever deny anyone of healthcare though. It's all so awful.

@Tulipsroses btw when you went abroad to have that biopsy done, did you go to the US and pay US prices?
Or did you do to Europe and pay prices in a country with socialised medicine? Because I’ve personally found that strangely enough, in countries where insurances are not allowed to run the whole healthcare field, prices are much more affordable. Wondering why 🧐🧐🧐

This is probably one of the most out of touch posts I've ever seen on MN.

Goodness we should never deny the medical care of any age group! can't believe anyone would ever suggest such a thing

I've seen it several times. I try to tell myself it's just "no-one knows who I am, I can say anything outrageous and get away with it" keyboard bravado, but what's disturbing is that some people are obviously thinking along those lines. It does make me wonder how those posters expect to be treated when they are old, though.

I've just completed a US healthcare estimate on the basis of earning the same (around USD 50k), living in a cheaper suburb of New York.

If we assume that all of my pre existing conditions are covered, the cost would be about USD 10,000 pa and I would have to pay 30% of all out of pocket expenses. This does not include dental cover.

I get Cosentyx for free now. I get free physio. I get cheap HRT. I get steroids when necessary. I've had scans, blood tests, doctor's appointments. I get free smears, prepaid prescriptions for under a tenner a month.

I would not be able to afford or access any of that in a US system. So I wouldn't be able to work and would die far sooner as a result, most likely in the same way my father did before the conditions had effective treatments - cardiomyopathy and keeling over aged 54. Or from multiple myleoma (the other major cause of premature death from autoimmune disease, followed by strokes). I'm 50. If I were lucky, I'd just drop dead, but not everybody dies instantly, so you could add on the cost of the time it would take me to die.

The NHS is brilliant.

@MrsDanversGlidesAgain I was just thinking that. life is short. We will all be "the elderly" soon

Are we playing Daily Hate bingo? You appear to have won.

The NHS is under-managed and the victim of endless government meddling by people who have no clue about healthcare. It spends far, far less on management and administration than any other organisation of comparable size. This is the root of its problems.

Unfortunately the alternative to the NHS is even worse, especially for lower income groups. I’ve had a rare cancer and the NHS saved my life and it continues to monitor me. I am part of a worldwide support group and the experiences of others in the group are reported. The US particularly is a very different ball game. Often the women in the US are struggling to get the treatment and tests covered by their insurance. They have a constant battle to get what we in the U.K. receive without question.

Yes the NHS is under enormous pressure but it’s still better than other healthcare systems.

We were in Spain last year. A man had a fall by the pool and an ambulance was called. They wouldn’t even look at this man until his wife found their insurance documents. He could have died while they were standing there.

Making health care private does not make it better when it's a general healthcare system ( not just isolated joint replacement clinic rv or dermatology etc)
Think about the security companies that are private etc - just farmed out and less regulated.
NHS works as it is still relatively cohesive - apart from the bits in England they have already farmed out. It will be same Drs and nurses btw. There isn't a supply of private ones who are acute trained.
Find it, increase bed numbers in line with other developed countries and stop trying to run it on a shoe string.
People paying for it through insurance won't magically make it better.

I’ve had a rare cancer and the NHS saved my life and it continues to monitor me

Same here. The second time they've saved my life.

It’s not free. It’s paid for via taxation. It’s ‘freeish’ at the point of delivery. Dental and optical is barely covered (just worked out what it will cost me with severe myopia to get eye tests and new glasses and a set of contact lenses and I just can’t afford it at the moment).

I think we need a halfway model like Germany or Belgium. We pay done insurance and costs. Not an open market for health - there is not one public utility in this country that has been privatised via the open market that is run well or efficiently and to anyone’s benefit other than the shareholders.

Training doctors is complex. The fees don’t matter, it recruits really well, but you need clinical placements to train doctors and these will never be limitless.

The US frightening in terms of costs - I had a friend who was a very well paid lawyer with an anorexic daughter. To pay for treatment like this long term for her (could not insure for this) he had to remortgage his house.

Fortunately she recovered; he confided that he had considered going bankrupt at one stage.

i am not sure german health care is as good as ours, in my family's experience - post operative care and support non existent.

I think this is really tricky, and my DH is NHS. DD(14) broke her finger a couple of months ago, we had to wait for hours for triage, X-rays, checks, follow up, plans, sent home with it bandaged and fracture clinic appointments and then needed further treatment. They were super stretched and we had to pop to a local supermarket to get over the counter painkillers while we waited as she was in tears with pain. However, DS(10) developed covid last month, has severe asthma, on arrival wasn't even made to wait as a triage nurse walked out as we were arriving, given oxygen/IV meds and blue lighted to a more specialist hospital almost immediately, and had 121 or sometimes 221 care whilst in ITU (during national strikes where his team took turns to be his "visitors" whilst on strike so they were on hand for crisis moments) and had brilliant after care, and actually is back playing football today.
What I would say is that in both scenarios the staff were beyond amazing and follow up from both has been good and continues to be for DS (he is a brittle asthmatic so was engaged with NHS consultant teams anyway).
Based on both these experiences - I would say the NHS is anything but finished (although it is severely underfunded and I truly believe held together by the staff going above and beyond).

I no longer use the NHS, but I do think it needs reform. Not abolition - reform.

I know it’s a cliche, but I think sacking all the diversity & inclusion managers would be a start. That would save tens of millions of pounds overnight. I remember seeing an advert for a D&I director with a salary of over £100k. More than some NHS consultants get paid. Utterly shameful.

Some points (and I agree, it’s been shredded recently)

• The US system of Medicare/ Medicaid which most of us could not access were we American, costs more per capita than the NHS
• Private insurance is not illegal in the U.K. Get it. I live in mainland Europe and our fairly Spartan policy is about £800/ month with an element of co-pay. If you fancy test-driving a European system you could always put that in a savings account each month and draw on it when you don’t fancy the NHS
• Pharmaceutical companies regard the NHS as a massive pain in the arse as we bargain the cost of medication down so hard. In a fragmented system, that bubble would burst and that’s where a lot of money would go. I’m not at all anti-Pharma, this is just the way it is

Do you not think it’s important that people with all the protected characteristics have equitable access to NHS care?

I'm happy for you that you've had no problems and good experiences.

I've had nightmare experiences and so have many people I know.

The NHS in my area is no longer fit for purpose and is on the verge of collapse, this is very obvious, and it would seem to be a political agenda.

When people share their concerns, I think it's because for those of us who live in areas where the NHS no longer functions to a level that feels in any way functional or safe, it's because a) we're terrified for our own personal health and what the implications and impact will be on us and our loved ones and b) we're saddened and frustrated to clearly see the NHS is over - nobody in their right mind wants that.

Personally I've superseded the above views and am now desperate that we get an alternate 'pay for' system in place (which it somewhat is) so that people who can afford to do so can pay for certain scans, tests, treatments, to assist towards their case being diagnosed or moving forward without the need of the NHS.

@AgnesX I do suspect these are planted posts to canvas opinion from the 'little people' by the Torries. They seem to pop up frequently.

But you can pay for tests and diagnostics, you just need insurance or deep pockets.

Look at the poster who suggested 800 a month by way of insurance. That is your alternative and it's not much use pretending you will get s cheap paying system.