Private Health Care: a good or bad thing?

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OK, to avoid hi-jacking the education thread I thought I'd start this new shiny one! So, private health care, a great idea (if you can afford it) or completely unfair on the rest of society?

That's true in London sobernow- I found a private SALT easily there. But here there aren't any. SALTS haven't been trained. It's nothing to do with the private sector stealing them. I've searched high and low for a private SALT and OT. It's not that they're in private practice earning a fortune (although I agree NHS ones are totally underfunded and no wonder they work privately)

I just posted a bit on this on the education thread. Basically I think it stinks that I get penalised for not having enough money. If my child needed a transplant, we would have to join the queue at the NHS, whereas a couple with money could pay to have their child treated quicker by paying to go private. They even get their own rooms, etc. Why should my child have to suffer because we can't do this? It really gets on my nerves because we all want the very best for our children and families, but whether or not we can provide that depends on how much money we have. Surely something as important as healthcare should be provided equally for everyone, regardless of who they are?

We currently pay £85 per month for this, we would happily pay this to the NHS if improvements were made.

I've just watched my Dad die in agony, there were virtually no staff on the NHS ward. When we got to his bedside after being called to the hospital he had fallen over to one side of the bed and there was no one there to help him b4 we got there..

He has left nearly half a million pounds in his will (to Mum) but would not spend it on his health to make his last month more comfortable.

I have recently been to the Marsden cancer hospital in London to join their preventative care unit. The service was excellent, no wait, all clean, no problems.

yes , if tomorrow something happened to my family that neaded treatment which otherwise on the NHS iw ould have to wait for - and presuming i had the money - i would pay for it

this doesnt make it right - it doesnt make it right that someones child has to wait 6 weeks for a brain scan - its wrong. and like it or not the country is run and lobbied by people who have money thats not to say the working and underclass dont have to balls to instigate change - just that it seems to happen when someone has a certain amount of power and power usually equates with money

if these people with power, has to educate their children in a state school in london and wait 6 weeks for a brain scan for theri child - you bet you ass something would change or someones party political campaigning fund would suddenly decrease by a few million

this is reality

so if i had the money i would pay for everything and sacrifice any moral values i have

thats not to say its right

we should have equality of education and healthcare - and a decent standard of living for all.

thats how it should be in custardoland

I think i'd like Custardoland y'know....

How do we become citizens of Custardoland?

I also watched my gran die in pain and agony. My mum took care of her during the last years of her life, we couldn't afford to pay for a nurse. She was living in my mum's very small dining area, just fitted in a bed and a commode, the family had to eat in the living room. When my mum could no longer cope she was finally admitted to hospital. They fitted her with a colostomy bag that she did not want, because the nurses didn't have time to keep taking her to the toilet, so her last bit of dignity went. Then they drugged her so that she drifted in and out of consciousness, again she didn't want this. She eventually died, alone, and was discovered by the morning staff as they started their shift, we have no idea when she died.
Would she had gone private if we could have afforded it? No. She would not have wanted that, she did not want priviledged treatment, she was never that kind, she always put the needs of others over herself and would have been very upset at the thought of others waiting whilst she got the best care.
I can't pay £85 a month for my family. I can't even pay £20 a month for minimum house contents insurance.
Again the system just penalises the poor at every given opportunity.

just have to point out that you do not get organ transplants on private health care,no way.even a million pounda wouldnt put you higher up a list in this country for that.

I thought that too Yoko but wasn't sure enough to type it. I think everyone has to wait in the queue for a suitable donor. Then how you have the transplant and aftercare is your choice.

sorry,also ned to say that many private hospitals also have v poor hygeine etc,many also lack high enough levels of staff,often have underqualified staff on duty etc,im not saying the nhs does have these problems as it often does,but amazing wonderful things happen everyday in nhs hospitals,where i work presently,in a hospice,the care is second to none

TO GET YOUR CUSTARDO LAND passport

vote for me

i will get very rich and make lots of promises i cant or wont keep but will keep you shufflin along with my "values" so you will send me £1000 next year

yes it annual subsciption on 1st may

or lobby me with lots of money!

I have to say I am amused to think people really believe private hospitals are better. In our local private BMI hosptial there is just ONE very junior doctor on call all night, this is in a hosptial with an intensive care and coronary care. For sure you do not see NHS staff who would stay in a private hospital as a patient if they had a choice.

I'm actually feeling quite smug that private hospitals aren't all they are up to be! But that doesn't take away from the fact that they practically advertise queue-jumping, which in my opinion is immoral, what makes you think you are more deserving than the next person?

Custdy I'd love to join your world! It's so weird that we're agreeing on things all the time - next thing you know I'll be getting on down to heavy metal music! Must be the hormones!

just a quick response to a point morocco made some way back - how about training patients to be polite to nursing staff? the abuse some staff receive (and put up with) is unbelievable.

We paid for private treatment for our daughter last year (no insurance) for an unusual operation. Waiting for her to go through the NHS hoops would have meant her op would possibly have taken place in Feb/March this year instead of August last year.

Her consultant usually operates at a local private hospital but I told him that I wasn't happy for her to be operated on there as there was no PICU and I was worried.

Some people might think paying to use theatre space and open another bed in an NHS hospital is even worse than using a private hospital. But I would ask them to consider this: her operation was so unusual that it was used as a teaching/learning experience for a number of other doctors, medical students and consultants from around the UK, who travelled to watch. As a result, four more children have been operated on since then. She was only the 7th child to have the procedure done by the surgeon we used and he had done 4 of those outside the UK.

It hasn't been entirely successful unfortunately and all her further treatment is being done on the NHS but she can eat this year, which is a lot better than she was this time last year.

good point judethe obscure - didn't mean to imply politeness doesn't work both ways.
I've been trying to think of nhs horror stories and tho I have plenty about bad diagnosis and waiting lists I have no complaints about the actual ops:care received. I remember years ago reading some stupid article comparing the nhs to Poland's equivalent and saying that Poland was better. Well I lived there for years and am quite sure that that is not the case at all. I suppose my point is that it is easy to forget that the nhs is still actually pretty good despite its obvious faults and that people in the UK are lucky on the whole.
Mind you - don't get me started on waiting lists - I was planning on giving birth in the UK but when I went home at 32 weeks pregnant it took 5 weeks to see anyone at all and all that time I was developing preeclampsia - I just got a phone call from the midwife to see how I was doing. (in case anyone is wondering, my job entitles me to free nhs hospital care so not exactly freeloading!)

depends what you mean by "better". If you are going for a major op - then NHS facilities will be better every time- but you may be half dead by the time you get it.

If you have complex condition which requires input from a team of therapists then forget the NHS becuase they will write you off and not bother. I know this as ny child has been written off, as has every other child I know with a condition described as complex.

For all of you with high principals which prevent you using private services that's fine. But if your child needed a service which they weren't going to get on the NHS- and access to that service would make a difference to their life- not to mention your sanity of course you would pay for it. I don't dish out money to private practioners so I can feel high and mighty I pay because I have no choice.

Anyway even the NHS doesn't work fairly. A year and a half ago we had a private appointment for DS1- having waited 8 months on the NHS- and still not been given an appointment- we were due to move and I knew we would be at the bottom of another list. So we paid. The appointment was thorough- and included a hearing test which ds1 failed. The specialist expressed horror and disgust that we hadn't been put on the right track (autism- we were waiting for the reveiw appointment to decide whether we needed to go on the waiting list for the paediatrician). She also said it was of utmost importance that ds1's hearing was reassessed every 3 months. 4 months later we had our assessment at our new home. Thuis included a hearing test (which he failed again). The consultant receieved a letter from the priivate one saying ds1's hearing test needed to be repeated every 3 months until he passed. A year later we hadn't had another hearing test- we were starting sound work when the SALT noticed that he wasn't making any sounds that corresponded with the bit of the hearing test he'd failed. The queue for hearing tests was massive- the person who does them had been off sick for 6 weeks- and being the NHS hadn't been replaced. My nursery manager emailed a friend of hers- an ENT surgeon- who ran an NHS hearing clinic explaining the situation. She managed to squeeze us in. Of course that's not fair. But to be honest what am I going to do- sit and watch my son be forgotton? No I do enough of that every day and the majority of therpaists etc that he comes into contact with don't give a shit. They are too busy trying to treat the normal children.

So sure- take the moral high ground- but you can not understand what it is like to have a child who isn't deemed worth treating by the NHS. And if you had no other choice you would pay. That is where our money goes- on ds1. I've just bought a new oven- I'm overjoyed with- it cost 30 pounds in the paper. Point being I'm not flash harry throwing money left right and centre. I am simply paying becuase I have to. Remember the first Big Brother- where did the money go- to pay for a woman with Down't syndrome to go to America for a heart transplant as she wasn't seen as being worth treating over here.

Anyway I'm away to check the efficiency of the NHS. DS1 hasn't had a wee for 36 hours - sure that's not normal.

If my child goes in to the private system then that means there will be 29 in a class rather than 30 and it is one less student the government has to pay for. Doesn't that improve conditions for everyone else?. By going private rather than NHS, you are paying for a service that suits you individually and which isn't available to everyone. Why doesn't the same apply to education?. The outcome on an individual of going state in either case could be as potentially damaging depending on the individual circumstances.

WWW, wasn't it you who was asking about private nucal screening?.

11.30 sit and wait to see the GP. So far the NHS is doing OK. Please god I am hoping we don't need to go to the hospital- they are the most autism unfriendly places in the entire country. Half an hour in there and you find me hot and bothered muttering "bloody disneyland can arrange for autistic children to not have to queue why the bloody hell can't the NHS".....

Will keep you posted.

As I inadvertently started WW3 on the education board I thought I'd wade in here....The poor sate of the health service is much more of a problem for me than the inequality in the education system. I find it distressing that people can end up having surgery etc for problems that could have been solved quickly and easily if they had been seen by a specialist sooner. We are currently paying for DD to see an eye specialist as she has a squint that developed very quickly. If we had waited the 12 months for an NHS consultation the damage to her visual cortex would have been irrepairable (sp?). Maddeningly the consultant we paid to see was the same one would have been referred to on the NHS, and who saw us whilst he was "on holiday" for 3 weeks from his NHS post.

Yes, it is distressing that so many people have to wait for treatment and I wish the GP system could be abolished. I have many friends in all branches of medicine and they are universally dismissive of the GPs, and IME justifiably so..

A friend of mine had exactly the same problem with her child, Marialuisa; he developed a squint over a week or so. When my friend eventually took him to the GP her son was whisked into hospital from the surgery and was being operated on within 12 hours of the GP appt, for congenital hydrocephalus. She is American and was so thankful to the NHS as she couldn't begin to think how much they would have had to pay in America.

Also, my adult DS developed a weird eye conditon. He was sent immediately from the GP to a specialist, where, thankfully, they discovered his conditon wasn't dangerous. So the NHS does work for some people. It's a shame it doesn't seem to work for everyone.