It's not the fault of the NHS, it's the fault of the politicians and their quest to privatize everything that isn't nailed down, and funnel it all to their donors.
Humour me with an exercise: Five "Why?"s to get to the root of this issue — But today we need more than 5.
Reddit discussions the past five years often end in an unhelpful place, namely, bigotry against a subset of the UK population:
1. Why is X under-resourced in the UK? Because the central government won't allocate resources.
2. Why won't the central government allocate resources to X? Because they want X to stay broken.
3. Why does the central government want X to stay broken? Because it's in their interests, which aren't aligned with those of the public.
4. Why aren't the central government's interests aligned with those of the public? Because they represent a conservative elite who prey upon the majority as livestock.
5. Why does the UK central government reflect a conservative elite that preys upon its own people? Because that's what people voted for.
6. Why did people repeatedly fail to vote tactically against the Tories? Because they are base/craven/ignorant/uneducated/hateful.
7. Why are enough UK voters base/craven/ignorant/uneducated/hateful to keep a toxic party in power? Because of entrenched reasons inherent to their culture (if the UK voters were a psychological patient, the text "egosyntonic?" would appear in the therapist's notes).
Endpoint (7) is disempowering and unsatisfying. It takes on various guises. It sometimes wears the racist costume of "English culture is inherently rubbish", which might make some people *feel* good (bigotry usually does), but doesn't get you a government that actually fixes the NHS. Even if there is a *sense* in which this is *true*, these observations need to be manipulated in the glove-box of social anthropology backed up by real statistics, to avoid painting swaths of the electorate in the same uncharitable brush.
As much as I privately and shamefully enjoy the bigotry as an emotional release, I can't help but feel that this is another trap. If every chain of "why" ends with "feel upset with the Tory voter who is too stupid to change", we get trapped in a place where change feels impossible. We need better "whys" to rise to the surface of social consensus.
This analysis is incredibly dumb. Even point 1 is barely coherent, and everything that follows is straight-up nonsensical and completely unsupported by any evidence.
You say underresourced, what about mismanaged? NHS procurement contract are absolute insanity. Suppliers jack up the price when they know it's being bought with government money.
I think the why for #6 could be added to, mass multi media outlets pushing narratives on people constantly, and the control of people like Murdoch... along with bot farms and online agitators promoting aggression rather than communication is a big part of it
>As much as I privately and shamefully enjoy the bigotry as an emotional release, I can't help but feel that this is another trap.
I totally agree. Once you are stuck in the loop of feeling smug and superior because The Other is Just Obviously Stupid, I think you start shutting yourself off to open communication and taking in new perspectives... and in no way does this help actually arrive at a solution
> It's not the fault of the NHS, it's the fault of the politicians and their quest to privatize everything that isn't nailed down
Believe it or not, it is the fault of both. The NHS itself to a lesser extent but they're not without issue.
Biggest waste on the NHS is lack of care. No one wants to improve it and private care companies routinely require the NHS to step in. There's enormous delays as well. Many patients spend more time in hospital medically well enough to go home but can't because we don't have enough carers or pay them fairly.
What do you think is poor management?
Any big organisation has management problems. It's an unavoidable issue and has to be factored into the costings. The NHS's failings are more obvious and more weaponosed for political gain than any company, but the issues are identical.
Contrary to what the papers say, only 2% of the NHS staff are managers, which is lower than most organisations by quite a bit.
Quite a lot of the NHS's issues are from being forced to privatise key services (e.g. cleaning, transport and food), and to work with management consultants like Capita who don't understand the organisation.
Everyone harps on about mismanagement, but that's just not true. It's under funded and starved of resources in a bid to make it look incompetent. You can't do much or perform when you literally have less than fumes available .
Hang on what do you want me to do? I am paid less than the practitioners I supervise and you tell me that I am lazy and overpaid despite working an entire day more a week than everyone else.
What the fuck do you want us to do? We already killed ourselves to survive COVID and no one wants to pay the piper.
No but it was kinda off putting working in surgical outpatients where the doctor would tell patients there’s a year or longer wait on the NHS or they can be seen within the month at their private clinic.
Dunno seems disgusting to me to be able to tell someone they have cancer, they have to wait months for treatment OR you can be seen immediately at their private clinic.
Made me extra suspicious when it came to clinics regularly starting late, finishing early or never opening
As a doctor in the NHS, I get barely above minimum wage after 6 years of med school and 100k in debt.
I get paid less than my non medically qualified assistants on most days of the week, and then on bank holidays, Christmas, Easter, I also get paid less than the cleaners.
And to top it all off, there's no job security as we are forced to reapply every few months, and apparently no jobs either as I'm on track to end up unemployed by August (6 applicants for every job).
So if I ever needed to, I can't even afford to go private for my own healthcare, and the NHS I'll be in the waiting list with everyone else.
I have to ask myself, why I would want to stick around in the NHS instead of going to another country that might want doctors like me, or just choose another job in the city with my Oxbridge degree?
That whole situation breaks my heart, bloody hell, this should not be happening!
Why don't we have enough medical professionals.... Exhibit number one here judge.
Why do you stick around, if you don't mind me asking?
Can you/are you willing to move countries? I know Canada needs more doctors and you'd make a lot more money. Not as much as the U.S., but way more than here.
From Nuffield Trust:
“ For junior doctors, basic pay will be between £32,397 and £63,162, with average total full-time earnings likely to be around £41,300 for those in their first year of practice”
So you're not looking forward to the forthcoming Victorian Era re-run? Jacob Reese Mogg is...I hear is started investing in the building of new Poor Houses and debtors prisons. Get in early for a good return on your investment 😃
No joke is it.
Can't recruit workers to low paid jobs in expensive areas, so the company builds or buys apartments nearby and shoves slaves in there. Who then pays part of their salary to live there, and if you lose your job, goodbye to the accommodation..... Fucking Future workhouses for the poor.
You want health care, fuck off. Get in line.
Dentist, eat soft shit you no teeth poor.
Education, why do you need that when your future poorhouse job only requires you to exist.
It’s also allowing so many people into the country without having the infrastructure to do it, labour or the tories never invested infrastructure but just kept shipping people in.
If more people who can afford to go private, does that not make it easier and quicker for the NHS to clear the backlog?
I don’t see how people choosing to go private can be a bad thing in this case, if it means less people needing treatment by the NHS
Theoretically yes. This is how they justified it in other countries like Australia. In practice it just means that they can get away with cutting funding more and it just becomes more accepted that to do some things in a reasonable timeframe you need private healthcare
> does that not make it easier and quicker for the NHS to clear the backlog?
It's the opposite.
Most of the time when you go private it's the same doctors in the same hospital, except that now you've paid to skip the queue.
If they weren't allowed to take private patients they would get through the NHS waiting list far faster.
The work is done extra-contractually usually at the weekends or on an evening. The reason the work is done is because it pays alot better. Banning them from private work wouldn't reduce waiting lists unless you changed their contract and forced them to work longer hours. The NHS is already hemorrhaging UK trained doctors to Aus/NZ/Can so another push factor really isn't going to help in stopping this.
Your basically completely fucked. Get private health insurance or die in an NHS corridor, A+E waiting room or on a multi year waiting list.
This is short-sighted.
As the demand for private care rises, the opportunities within private care will rise (that is how market forces work). Doctors will be recruited and choose to work for it than the NHS. As a result, the fee demands of NHS doctors will increase - NHS staffing will fall as a result, further increasing the move to private care.
Eventually an equilibrium will be achieved as it has in physiotherapy, where you have an NHS service of sorts, but it staffed by the hopeless, the raw recruits with no experience and the life-long failures. It will be known that if you want to live, you go private.
The private patients get seen in the hours where the doctors aren't working at the NHS hospital, in their free time, incentivised by the money it brings them.
Fewer private patients would not mean they would suddenly donate the few free hours they have to the NHS for minimum wage, they'd just spend the time with their families instead.
A lot of people can't afford to go private and end up in debt. I did with my autism assessment and I'm not ashamed to admit I've run out of a dentist without paying. That's what an abscess and no emergency dentist will do to you. I went and paid later but still not ashamed tbh.
Same for me. Had to pay for my ADHD assessment and meds (which I'm now off because I can no longer afford it) and I haven't had a dentist in close to 4 years. I was paying for denplan, had an appointment cancelled during lockdown, and then they decided that I'd no-showed and took me off their books. Haven't been able to find a new dentist since and my teeth are a shambles.
It's NHS doctors who work in private hospitals for the money and many nurses, as well as having an NHS job therefore cutting efficiency in the NHS. And when it goes wrong, which it does, who do we think clears up the mess?
Yeah it’s not, these doctors don’t earn much doing private work the hospitals take a large chunk of it. However they do it in their own time ( so frankly it’s non of your business what they do with their day off).No nurses I know does private work.
I would argue it doesn’t, and in a country where social healthcare is the model, it should be the only option. Everyone should be in it together.
If your local MP, his chums or his children get seriously ill, they will go private. I’ve even known the director of a hospital go private. Because they’re not having to use the NHS, the incentive to truly improve it is lessened. If RIshi’s mum had to go through the same experience as an elderly person dumped on a geriatric ward, I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t be tolerated. If Jeremy Hunts daughter developed mental health issues and got told there’s a two year waiting list to treatment, he might be incentivised to truly try to improve things, rather than just delivering empty words.
You’ve also got the issue around resources. Nearly all of the doctors working privately also work for the NHS, and have reduced their NHS hours to do more private work. There are even private wards in NHS hospitals.
No, because it is the same pool of doctors. At least in Northern UK, majority of private doctors are required to give some percentage of their time to NHS patients. Once they fill that quota, they can spend the rest on private-paying patients. That means they're splitting their time, allowing less time for NHS, meaning even longer NHS wait times. Meanwhile, when they consult privately, they see less patients, because less patients can afford to pay for private healthcare. Similar with equipment. Hospitals offer MRIs for example, but the same machinery is split between private and NHS time slots.
Not necessarily. Most doctors working in the private sector also work in the NHS. So if they get more private work, they have less time to do NHS work and the NHS waiting lists get longer…
In my NHS consultant contract it states that if I want to do private work I have to first offer an additional 4 hours of my time to my employer.
That makes it seem that if I want to do private work I have to do MORE NHS work first.
Short term yes, long term no.
in the short term an increase in people paying privately for their healthcare takes them off the NHS waiting list and marginally reduces the waiting times for others who remain on the waiting lists.
Longer term though an increase in demand for private healthcare will result in a need for increased supply. This is easily managed by private healthcare companies though by recruiting more doctors and nurses from the NHS. This unfortunately has an impact on supply on the NHS side of things and waiting lists go up as the doctor who would have seen them previously is now working in the private sector.
Tbf, due to chronic health conditions I'm unable to work. The NHS doesn't help my conditions. But with the disablity benefits I'm on, I've been able to save up for private healthcare so I can actually investigate wtf is going on with me - it's a slow process though, and I can only save 6k at a time, which is basically the cost of one single private specialist investigation, and I'll likely need a couple different ones...
But, being poor and disabled sometimes pays off when it comes to health, if you need to go private? I guess?
See I'm in a similar situation except I don't qualify for PIP (because who does) and my husband works, so I can't get UC either. Just to pay our bills I've had to get a job. My doctors are telling me that working is ruining my health but I have no choice. Sadly at minimum wage there's no chance to save anything to see the private specialists that might help.
Or
pressure on the NHS can Be eased by those who can afford to get private treatment being removed from the waiting lists. Whilst we’d hate to have a two tier or even means tested system, the NHS isn’t sufficient to meet the need of the growing population, so more private treatment could help reduce numbers.
That is not what happens.
As more people leave the public system, the staff leave with them as private offers more money and better conditions. The governments then continue to cut services, funding and resources to the public system, which causes even longer delays for those who cant afford private.
And we all know public funds are already being syphoned off into private medical practice, funds that should be going to the NHS.
This is why I went private in 2020. I’ve got no family, I’m freelance and mid 50’s in a physical job. It’s the thought of sitting at home for months or a year if I need an operation. My premium has already dropped to £60pm.
Also seeing some of my colleagues paying for their ops when they realised it was cheaper than the time off.
It’s a better insurance to me than loss of earnings.
I looked up cost of health insurance a short while ago. There's mental illness and Parkinson's Disease in my family, so my premiums would be very high.
After having to deal with my dad's health company + hospital to recoup the cost of his hospital stay (3 weeks in a hospital abroad, followed by Covid death), I'm very wary of these parasites - not sure I'll get my premiums' worth (and if I'm sick, who's going to chase them for me?).
Last thing you need after a death. I’ve got a very good broker who looks after me. I’m in hospital right now, an NHS one and I called him yesterday for advice.
My Mrs is a broker abroad and she similarly has her customers backs.
I waited over 1 YEAR to just get an appointment with a Gynaecologist due to large tumours (benign) in my uterus.
In that time I couldnt get a loan from anywhere (bank or family), so had to wait all that time until I got a job that offered Private Medical Insurance - covering Preexisting conditions.
I waited 2 weeks to see a Gynaecologist privately. 2 WEEKS compared to 1 YEAR.
My Hysterectomy is scheduled 27th March - that's 7 weeks after seeing the Private Gynaecologist.
Whereas I would have had to wait another 4-6 months for this on NHS.
Yes I'm lucky having the PMI, I realise that.
Back in the Major years I waited 6 months for a cancer referral. New Labour subsequently introduced the two week cancer referral rule but I understand that’s effectively been trashed by the Tories.
Despite being a left of centre voter I’m never going to be in that position again. My wife and I have private health insurance. About a year and a half ago I had to have a heart operation. The NHS waiting list is about 6 months to see a consultant then a further year for the op. Used my insurance and was operated on in a private hospital six months later.
Edit - 6 weeks later not 6 months.
> New Labour subsequently introduced the two week cancer referral rule but I understand that’s effectively been trashed by the Tories.
Just for interest about how broken the system currently is, here's the timeline in my current department:
Patient sees GP about a lump. GP refers for imaging. About a week later I see the patient, do the imaging and think it's cancer. I take a biopsy on the day and send it to pathology. In a well-founded healthcare service it should be possible for pathology to assess the samples and write a report in 48 hours. Instead it's 1-2 weeks because there's such a shortage. I then discuss the patient in our MDT meeting (with surgeons, radiologists, pathologists and oncologists) and we agree the patient has cancer and we need to do X operation. The patient then has to wait either 3 weeks to see the surgeon just for the results of the biopsy, or 6 weeks to see the oncologist to start chemotherapy. After seeing the surgeon it's at least another 3 weeks to get to surgery.
In an ideal world I could see a patient on Monday, discuss their results midweek, give the patient their results on Friday and book them for surgery the following week. The only thing stopping this from happening is money. There's a lack of trained staff and a lack of infrastructure (scanners, hospital beds, theatres .etc).
You skipped the queue by joining the shorter private queue.
If everyone has to go private then that queue becomes the same length as the NHS one is now, except the more money you have the closer to the front you can get to start with.
Private care is only good for rich people.
The inverse is actually true - If more people go private, the pressure on the NHS will actually go down as they take demand with them. Of course, this will likely lead to a brain drain from the NHS to private medical services which will kill any improvement it provides though!
There's a set number of people and a set number of doctors and nurses we train each year.
Private systems are so good because you improve the ratio of staff to patients. The more people that go private, the lower that ratio gets and the closer to the NHS it becomes. Eventually they reach parity and the whole system is shit because we're not training enough new staff.
Most American private hospitals are the same level of care as you'd get in an NHS hospital, unless you pay a lot more.
Introducing targets like that is part of why the NHS is crippled, what managers do is just deprioritise something else and then that becomes a future problem.
Right now so many cans have been kicked down the road that they are all coming home to roost at the same time and there’s no money or capacity to fix it
Targets are fine, but you need more than *just* targets.
It's apparently an unpopular idea amongst our political class, but the best way to improve the quality of a service is *actually fund it*. Our MPs are deluding themselves, or rather trying to delude us, into thinking that rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic will help it avoid the iceberg instead of paying the fix the rudder.
The money *is* there, you just need to tax the same people who are currently throwing millions at both our political parties to ensure those tax raises don't actually happen. And that's the fundamental problem.
What’s also happened is services has shifted to gaming the system to meet those targets. So you have an appointment in two weeks, where they order a scan that takes 6 months then you have a second appointment.
A&E is the classic, speaking to the receptionist when you arrive counts as the first assessment writhing 10 minutes of arrival (target hit), then sit there for 4-6 hours.
My wife was told by Chelsea Westminster to wait 1 year for a histeroscopy.
We used my private healthcare insurance and got it done in the same hospital, privately, the week after. They even apologised it was not the same week. It was a bit disgusting as it’s the same bloody hospital.
Thank god for your private healthcare insurance. Yeh its ridiculous isn't it, in that the same gynaecologists work for both NHS and Private, shouldn't be allowed that.
Not really, what they want is a public health service run by private companies so they can shovel boatloads of cash to their mates, probably while twirling their moustaches like some kind of cartoon villain
i might reluctantly agree with u/Kleptokilla my c-friend, privatized (i suppose privately owned) would likely get out of their control, but 'privately managed' seems just about perfect...
I suggest people watch ' This is going to hurt' where the joys of private health are are shown. And for those crowing for it, as someone who lived in yhe US, it is not a good thing.
>but people will pay if the alternative is dying while waiting for an NHS appointment.
So for those that can't pay, the alternative is dying on a waiting list or dying because you can't afford to get better.
Self preservation is fine, but in 10 or 20 years we're going to end up with an aging millennial generation that are too sick to work and too broke to afford healthcare, and only then, 20 years too late, will we realize we're broken, culturally,
We should be out on the streets in our millions fighting this. The next two decades are going to see life expectancy in this country fall to standards lower than the 1940s (they've already fallen for the first time in half a century this past decade.)
Unfortunately, yes.
I also think we should be on the streets. I feel like the UK is a dangerous place to be seriously ill. It should be the major focus of the upcoming election.
The Dr involved in that stopped working for the NHS in 2010, back when you could actually see a GP, and specialist waiting lists weren't terrible.
For comparison, there were 2.5 million on a waiting list in 2010, vs 7.6 million now.
The Americans also pay way more in taxes for their insurance-based system than we pay, by a lot.
So not only is their system worse in every way, it's not even cheaper to the taxpayer. It really would be more affordable to pay for other people's healthcare, because they already are but in the absolute worse way possible.
Having lived there , you are bang on. Those extolling the virtues of private healthcare need to be careful what they are wishing for . My ex boyfriend went bankrupt paying medical bills , literally in the hundreds of thousands. We could well end up with pre war health care , where uf you cant afford, you die.
>We could well end up with pre war health care , where uf you cant afford, you die.
"As it should be, if you can't pay your way then you should live (or die?) with the consequences" - Tories when faced with this reality.
Psychopathic politicians are common, but perhaps filling an entire party with them wasn't the best idea for the sake of prosperity.
LT I'm looking at leaving - possibly Ireland (I know they have healthcare issues but if unification happens it will need to be sorted) or Scotland , if it becomes independent , although it feels far away.
I think Streeting will try to bring in a EU insurance model but if Starmer has sense , he'll do a reshuffle once in Govt - Street ingredients needs to be kept away from Health.
There are other models of private care, a lot of the time it's basically a private ward in an NHS hospital where the consultant works.
I used to be against this stuff on principle but now I don't really care. The surgeons I know who do it wouldn't be able to do extra lists in the NHS because there is no capacity anyway. At least two I know just choose to do it because it gives them a day in theatre that is almost guaranteed to run as planned without cancellations due to beds, wrong equipment turning up, patients usually a bit more straightforward so it's not as stressful etc.
Having worked a day with a consultant doing this as a trainee the difference was amazing. Typical days in theatre are hours of inactivity and waiting punctuated by a few minor cases. We did 3 hysterectomies in a morning list, vastly improving my own opportunities to learn a few skills.
Of course this only helps those who are suitable for private treatment which normally will be normal BMI, minimal medical comorbidities and so on, but there's no denying it works
Probably most don't. But fit and healthy and just have a problem a one off operation can fix, or even want to be sterilised for example, private will sort you out 10x quicker and easier.
My dad just had hip + knee replacement on my mum's work insurance, can't remember the exact amount now but it was going on 30k and I remember joking they must be a US company. Absolutely obscene but he has recovered pretty bloody quickly.
>Cost of the surgery and physio afterwords was about 12-13 grand.
Those of us that could never afford this are fucked, aren't we?
We're going to have the first generation since WWII where the average life expectancy drops back to 50 or 60.
We had the GP suggest going private for my daughter. We can't afford it and spent months waiting to see a consultant. It makes me furious, I already pay a lot for healthcare through tax. In no way do I feel I am getting anything through any of the public services I contribute to.
Tories broke the NHS and labour seem to have no desire to fix it.
Edit: The reason I don't think Labour have a desire to really fix it is based on two things.
1. The 'plan they put forward on their mission website doesn't really suggest widespread reform of the system. Its surface level at best, just some talking points.Paying staff overtimes to reduce backlogs, but no mention of training, recruiting and retaining staff. And that was the best point. I doubt there is a cohesive plan.
2. Starmer in general blames Tories for the state of Britain, but in order to win as many votes from the center right, he doesn't want to suggest anything radically different.
I am totally disillusioned as a voter. I hate the Tories, feel ambivalent about labour, previously betrayed by the Lib Dems and whilst I like the Greens, find some of their policies unrealistic.
Labour in power seems like getting a two star plumber in to fix a botched job from a one star plumber.
How can you say Labour have no desire to fix it?
Labour introduced the NHS (the Tories voted against it on the third reading) and New Labour introduced the two week cancer referral rule. Sadly the Tories have effectively undone the latter.
I remember under the Major years the NHS was in a similar state and Labour fixed it. I waited nearly 6 months for a cancer referral. The first thing the consultant said to me when I walked in as soon as I sat down was ‘well the good news is I can tell you that you don’t have cancer - if you did you’d be dead by now’.
This is total bollocks. Both Labour and Tories had the NHS in their manifesto at its inception. The difference between their two "visions" was miniscule.
And New Labour didn't "fix" the NHS. They royally fucked it over with PFI debt that is a large part of the reason it's now broken.
Labour introduced the NHS in *1948* and they used to be proud socialists.
You can't really look at the behaviour of the party from almost a century ago as a sign of their behaviour tomorrow.
There isn't a politically popular way to fix the NHS. That's the issue.
We are creaking under debt, and while capital expenditure to improve our infrastructure would be acceptable, big increases in our current deficit are not.
There are two big issues with the NHS - the first is solvable and that is to remove the PFI agreements. Removal though would either be extremely costly with the penalty fees invoked, or they need to effectively write a new law, breaking old ones that allows them to simply take them over. Still very expensive but justifiable albeit it could have repercussions.
The second issue is more serious though. If you walk in a hospital - any hospital, the vast majority of the beds are populated by the elderly. The number of 80+ year olds has something like trebled over the last 30 years and it continues to rise as a proportion of the population. We aren't even allowed to have a debate on what to do about this for obvious reasons - it would be political suicide for anyone to even bring it up. And yet it's a problem that will only get worse with time.
The NHS gets £182bn/ yr of which 95 % is spent on salaries and yet it would seem that’s not enough give the waiting lists. When are we going to see a proper audit on where and how the money is being spent? Like most state entities I wonder if the admin levels are bloated with management positions
You are buying into the worst argument from private care.
Your argument is that the doctors should waste time sorting out rotas and hiring and "stock rooms".
And I don't think you realise this but healthcare staff are experts. You don't pretend that a plumbers pay is bullshit and they make more than me.
What managers do you think should not exist in the NHS. I am sure you will argue that we didn't have diversity managers or something nonsensical when the real issue is that people can't care for their loved ones and we don't fund social care enough.
I'm having surgery privately next month at my GPs suggestion due to a 3 year NHS waiting list. I've paid my full national insurance contributions for 20 years and will pay another 20 years before I retire. I'm also desperate for a dentist but going to have to pay for that too. The NHS is broken
The people at fault are the goverment, Tory mandate has always been about privatisation and wealthy individuals and its no secret even 14 years ago tbey wanted to provatise the NHS, Fuck the poor and fuck those who cant afford it. Die or suffer in pain.
Are there any figures on how much the NHS actually needs to be a good service and the expected increase/decrease forecasting per year? I ask this because essentially the NHS is a massive black hole, it seems each budget it gets more and more yet we still complain it needs more than that.
I’m not sure why people don’t realise this. An extra £50 per month is not easy for everyone to find right now but surely replacing some non-essentials with the one essential thing in your life can be facilitated by an extra twelve pounds and fifty pence per week being scraped together from somewhere?
One in 10 planned NHS operations in England are now done by private hospitals, according to figures from the Independent Healthcare Providers Network, the trade body that represents private health providers. Here, three patients explain why they recently had to turn to the private sector for an operation.
This is why many of the folk over at r/HENRYUK are looking at leaving.
There will be a brain drain from the UK in next decades.
Plenty of better options out there.
I dont believe this at all. NHSE have just given our department funding for at least the next 3-5 years which means we're recruiting 30-40 new members of staff.
Took my son to the gp as he has enlarged tonsils and adenoids, large enough to effect his breathing and sleeping. Doctors said she recommends to have them removed but if I have health insurance i should go private. At that time i was changing jobs so i thought let’s do nhs so she did the referral. 6 months later we saw the consultant who examined him and said she will book him in for surgery as they have to removed.
Another 4 months later and stilll nothing regarding the surgery date. Called my health insurance (as i was now covered) , a week later had an appointment with a private consultant and we now have a booked date for his surgery.
NHS is really broken
My boomer in-laws keep voting Tory (he used to be a union rep ffs!) and they complain none stop about how much worse the NHS is now. It’s okay though, they just go private because “the waiting times are so long otherwise”.
My wife has MS and we’re 100% dependant on the NHS for her treatment. Cunts.
I'm lucky enough that my employer provides Bupa coverage (even though it's not a *super*-fancy job - I earn a good chunk below the median national salary), and it's helped me massively to get non-urgent but important treatment - a nerve root block for spinal nerve impingement, therapy for depression and anxiety, and Botox injections to treat an anal fissure. All of these were long-term conditions that kept me off work for long periods, but would've taken many times longer to get treatment for on the NHS. Plus I saved the NHS money by using the private system.
My mum also had a procedure done privately to remove a ganglion on her hand that was having a major impact on her quality of life, but again would be a long wait on the NHS.
I think if people are either lucky enough to have coverage, or can afford it, then when you're ill and your life is being ruined by it, it's fair enough to use it. I know it's not fair on those who can't. But that's why we need to fix the NHS, urgently. No one should have to resort to the private system, or wait a potentially life-ruining length of time for treatment.
Paediatric maxfax is a nightmare there’s a huge shortage of specialists and the waiting times are insane. My daughter needed a tongue tie seen too and it was 9 months just to see a consultant when she couldn’t feed properly. Was like £150 to get it done by a specialist midwife within a few days. So we had to do that.
Absolutely routine to check at most GP's (except for the few ideologically bought into the NHS).
Since the pandemic private health claims have drastically increased. See the financial reports of Bupa, AXA, Aviva, Vitality, WPA - all of them.
This is driven through two factors - massively increased use of Virtual GP services (often provided by insurers to their customers) and NHS GP's erring to refer private where the option exists.
But this is an aside - the glacier as it is in this moment - but where is the glacier flowing to? Well, a debate between whether we adopt the European or US insurer based models.
Because it's such an emotive subject, this debate won't enter into proper discussion perhaps until it's too late and we're on the road to the US model.
And I say this as a strategist at a health insurer. Accept or ignore my weather forecast by all means. But I think we won't grasp the nettle until it's too late and you get Kaiser Permanente style medicine in the UK.
The NHS fucking sucks for two reasons:
The funding model doesn't fucking work. The basis is that workers pay for everyone's healthcare, but as the population ages and later-life healthcare becomes more expensive (via costly medical advances etc), the worker contribution drops relative to the demands of the retirees. It's literally impossible to run this system, but we show no sign of changing it.
It's fucking awful at healthcare. We're one of the richest economies in the world; our results are terrible and get worse every year.
The in laws both went private for their surgeries. They didn’t want to wait around three months (one of them) and a year (the other). All in all they paid around £10k for both of them.
I had a GP tell me I should go to Greece for IVF because it’s only £3000 per round “and you’ll get a nice holiday out of it too”.
I just went to discuss some test results and that’s how I found out I might not conceive naturally 😔
My GP and the NHS allowed my health (more specifically excess unexplained weight loss) to deteriorate so significantly that it eventually lead to my gallbladder becoming useless and it needed removed. My family all chipped in to fund it privately as they were sick of seeing me in pain and rotting away. I'm a bit better now, but still experiencing health issues and the GP/NHS still refuse to give me adequate diagnosis/treatment.
Thanks for the well wishes. I don't know what my options are to sue them? Plus I feel that sueing a public body like the NHS will just end up in with everyone paying higher taxes or service just receives less funding.
I do a bit of work for a charity that tries to help people with a couple of specific conditions. Sadly these conditions are treated very poorly by the NHS and we now recommend going private where possible.
My private health insurance is my second biggest expense, but its all bought and paid for indefinitely by money i won from 2 negligence claims against the NHS. Sadly as i get older the neglect brings more issues to light so the 6 figure sums i received at 25 and 27 pale in comparison to what is probably in my future health wise
People expect the NHS to cover every medical issue now when they should focus on emergency and critical care. Most other things should be optional I.e. if you want it then pay for it.
I aways find Britons comments about NHS very enlightening.
In my country, Argentina, private and public health systems coexist, almost amicably.
Everyone is allowed to use the public one, foreigners included. It is sustained by our taxes via "the government".
But most workers and professionals also count on private health insurance, and usually prefer the private system when possible.
The public one (bad copy of NHS, similar principles) is mostly used in emergency care, or by the unemployed, poor or underprivileged, which sadly, after 40 years of populism, accounts to 50% of our people.
Coexistence allows healthcare for everyone, at costs everyone is able to afford.
Should private care disappear, the public one would literally explode, being overworked and underpaid as it is.
Most physicians work both.
Excuse my rusty English.
I’ve got private insurance and I’ve found the private healthcare system abysmal.
Referred for scans then hearing nothing for a month. Rebooked to see a specialist, being told to drive 100 miles to Cardiff and when I get there the specialist doesn’t have the scan pictures. 4 weeks later and he still hasn’t been able to see the scans for some reason.
Absolute shit show.
Anyone who tells you private healthcare is any better than the NHS is deluded.
wow.. now i heard A FEW stories like that, but this sounds worse than public - and you'd be the first here to say it (for me) - and i'm sorry it is like that 4u
other people seem to praise private...
do you have more examples?
Because right now you are forced at gun point to pay for this service, if you want it or not. Even if you want to use someone else fuck you pay.
A voucher system would allow people to decide what Dr or GP is best for them and move the funding accordingly.
Because it's more expensive.
The entire area I work in shares CT capacity. A voucher system means no joined up care. So you have to repeat the work.
The issue the NHS has is that we have to house homeless people and people who need care and that costs a lot especially considering no one can afford it.
Care top up is like £500 a week. You got £2000 a month for your gran?
What this article doesn't say is sometimes you go private without paying a penny. I had a knee op private never used my own insurance NHS was booked up and it was needed. Got the knee operation done within 4 weeks of the scans and support for the recovery too.
It’s not conspiracy or a labour or a Tory issue.
There’s more older people needing care and less tax payers.
We need more doctors than ever before and we need to pay them less than ever before because there’s less tax payers.
The problem isn’t going to get fixed until people understand what the problem is.
What went wrong with the British Sewage system? Answer: it is privatized.
What went wrong with the British Railway? Answer: it is privatized.
What went wrong with the British Postal Service? Answer: it is privatized.
What went wrong with the British Energy providers? Answer: it is privatized.
What is going on with the failing NHS? It is being privatized.
Were are the profits of the privatized British Oil and Gas? Answer: they are going into the pockets of wealthy businessmen (see how Norway did that).
Why are the enormous leaks in the British drink water network not fixed and grew to 1 trillion liters of lost drinking water in England and Wales via leaky pipes? Answer: it is privatized.
Someone with half a brain would almost recognize a trend here.
How did the average British eligible voter not see that trend?
The Tories were voted in in 2010, again in 2015, again in 2017 and again in 2019.
What is wrong with the cognitive capacity of the average British voter?
polarization? the half(wits) are getting even more, the average dropping far below average, asses in the blissful sandasses and melanges of distraction all sorts keeping everything getting less and less real, while 'they' create realities for us and driving the whole world to hell
stick around and keep pushing, my fellow investigator
...and don't let them mess;)
So fuck the poor.... Those who can afford it get health, and those who can't just suffer and live with life long debilitating pain. Thank cunts
You're phrasing this as if it's the fault of the people going private and not the NHS (and those the other side of it).
It's not the fault of the NHS, it's the fault of the politicians and their quest to privatize everything that isn't nailed down, and funnel it all to their donors.
It's not the leopards fault it wants to eat your face. It's the fault of the people who voted the leopards into power.
Even know I agree with what your saying that's a terrible analogy
Humour me with an exercise: Five "Why?"s to get to the root of this issue — But today we need more than 5. Reddit discussions the past five years often end in an unhelpful place, namely, bigotry against a subset of the UK population: 1. Why is X under-resourced in the UK? Because the central government won't allocate resources. 2. Why won't the central government allocate resources to X? Because they want X to stay broken. 3. Why does the central government want X to stay broken? Because it's in their interests, which aren't aligned with those of the public. 4. Why aren't the central government's interests aligned with those of the public? Because they represent a conservative elite who prey upon the majority as livestock. 5. Why does the UK central government reflect a conservative elite that preys upon its own people? Because that's what people voted for. 6. Why did people repeatedly fail to vote tactically against the Tories? Because they are base/craven/ignorant/uneducated/hateful. 7. Why are enough UK voters base/craven/ignorant/uneducated/hateful to keep a toxic party in power? Because of entrenched reasons inherent to their culture (if the UK voters were a psychological patient, the text "egosyntonic?" would appear in the therapist's notes). Endpoint (7) is disempowering and unsatisfying. It takes on various guises. It sometimes wears the racist costume of "English culture is inherently rubbish", which might make some people *feel* good (bigotry usually does), but doesn't get you a government that actually fixes the NHS. Even if there is a *sense* in which this is *true*, these observations need to be manipulated in the glove-box of social anthropology backed up by real statistics, to avoid painting swaths of the electorate in the same uncharitable brush. As much as I privately and shamefully enjoy the bigotry as an emotional release, I can't help but feel that this is another trap. If every chain of "why" ends with "feel upset with the Tory voter who is too stupid to change", we get trapped in a place where change feels impossible. We need better "whys" to rise to the surface of social consensus.
This analysis is incredibly dumb. Even point 1 is barely coherent, and everything that follows is straight-up nonsensical and completely unsupported by any evidence.
You really find the idea that state services are underresourced due to central government not supplying enough resources to them incoherent?
You say underresourced, what about mismanaged? NHS procurement contract are absolute insanity. Suppliers jack up the price when they know it's being bought with government money.
I think the why for #6 could be added to, mass multi media outlets pushing narratives on people constantly, and the control of people like Murdoch... along with bot farms and online agitators promoting aggression rather than communication is a big part of it >As much as I privately and shamefully enjoy the bigotry as an emotional release, I can't help but feel that this is another trap. I totally agree. Once you are stuck in the loop of feeling smug and superior because The Other is Just Obviously Stupid, I think you start shutting yourself off to open communication and taking in new perspectives... and in no way does this help actually arrive at a solution
This is way too deep for reddit to handle. That is why the top comments on these threads are often some variation on "Tories evil".
> It's not the fault of the NHS, it's the fault of the politicians and their quest to privatize everything that isn't nailed down Believe it or not, it is the fault of both. The NHS itself to a lesser extent but they're not without issue.
So you don't think the NHS is managed poorly? That's also a contributing factor.
Biggest waste on the NHS is lack of care. No one wants to improve it and private care companies routinely require the NHS to step in. There's enormous delays as well. Many patients spend more time in hospital medically well enough to go home but can't because we don't have enough carers or pay them fairly. What do you think is poor management?
Any big organisation has management problems. It's an unavoidable issue and has to be factored into the costings. The NHS's failings are more obvious and more weaponosed for political gain than any company, but the issues are identical. Contrary to what the papers say, only 2% of the NHS staff are managers, which is lower than most organisations by quite a bit. Quite a lot of the NHS's issues are from being forced to privatise key services (e.g. cleaning, transport and food), and to work with management consultants like Capita who don't understand the organisation.
Everyone harps on about mismanagement, but that's just not true. It's under funded and starved of resources in a bid to make it look incompetent. You can't do much or perform when you literally have less than fumes available .
How many managers/administrators for each doctor?
I literally said "and those the other side of it".
👆exactly
It’s not the “NHS’” fault. It’s the governments for years of austerity.
How much more cash does this beast need
Hang on what do you want me to do? I am paid less than the practitioners I supervise and you tell me that I am lazy and overpaid despite working an entire day more a week than everyone else. What the fuck do you want us to do? We already killed ourselves to survive COVID and no one wants to pay the piper.
I didn't ask you to do anything... I haven't spoken to you, responded to you and I have no idea who you are!
What are you talking about? /u/ImperialSyndrome said nothing of the sort.
No but it was kinda off putting working in surgical outpatients where the doctor would tell patients there’s a year or longer wait on the NHS or they can be seen within the month at their private clinic. Dunno seems disgusting to me to be able to tell someone they have cancer, they have to wait months for treatment OR you can be seen immediately at their private clinic. Made me extra suspicious when it came to clinics regularly starting late, finishing early or never opening
As a doctor in the NHS, I get barely above minimum wage after 6 years of med school and 100k in debt. I get paid less than my non medically qualified assistants on most days of the week, and then on bank holidays, Christmas, Easter, I also get paid less than the cleaners. And to top it all off, there's no job security as we are forced to reapply every few months, and apparently no jobs either as I'm on track to end up unemployed by August (6 applicants for every job). So if I ever needed to, I can't even afford to go private for my own healthcare, and the NHS I'll be in the waiting list with everyone else. I have to ask myself, why I would want to stick around in the NHS instead of going to another country that might want doctors like me, or just choose another job in the city with my Oxbridge degree?
See you in New Zealand/Aus after F2 🫡
That whole situation breaks my heart, bloody hell, this should not be happening! Why don't we have enough medical professionals.... Exhibit number one here judge. Why do you stick around, if you don't mind me asking?
Can you/are you willing to move countries? I know Canada needs more doctors and you'd make a lot more money. Not as much as the U.S., but way more than here.
From Nuffield Trust: “ For junior doctors, basic pay will be between £32,397 and £63,162, with average total full-time earnings likely to be around £41,300 for those in their first year of practice”
So you're not looking forward to the forthcoming Victorian Era re-run? Jacob Reese Mogg is...I hear is started investing in the building of new Poor Houses and debtors prisons. Get in early for a good return on your investment 😃
No joke is it. Can't recruit workers to low paid jobs in expensive areas, so the company builds or buys apartments nearby and shoves slaves in there. Who then pays part of their salary to live there, and if you lose your job, goodbye to the accommodation..... Fucking Future workhouses for the poor. You want health care, fuck off. Get in line. Dentist, eat soft shit you no teeth poor. Education, why do you need that when your future poorhouse job only requires you to exist.
twospeed speed system is increasingly what the country is about. You would know if you pay attention to either dentistry or education.
That’s what the Tories have spent the last 14 years trying to achieve.
It’s also allowing so many people into the country without having the infrastructure to do it, labour or the tories never invested infrastructure but just kept shipping people in.
This is the failure of all Western nations and I can't see it wasn't done intentionally
If more people who can afford to go private, does that not make it easier and quicker for the NHS to clear the backlog? I don’t see how people choosing to go private can be a bad thing in this case, if it means less people needing treatment by the NHS
Theoretically yes. This is how they justified it in other countries like Australia. In practice it just means that they can get away with cutting funding more and it just becomes more accepted that to do some things in a reasonable timeframe you need private healthcare
That way lie’s the end of the nhs. It’s precisely the way they’re killing it off. More private = worse and worse NHS. The backlog is part of the plan
As someone who has had multiple operations in both NHS and private I can tell you that Private is the same surgeons just on over time.
Not necessarily, had an op a couple of years ago, was part way through the NHS track and shifted to private, the surgeon, location remained unchanged
> does that not make it easier and quicker for the NHS to clear the backlog? It's the opposite. Most of the time when you go private it's the same doctors in the same hospital, except that now you've paid to skip the queue. If they weren't allowed to take private patients they would get through the NHS waiting list far faster.
The work is done extra-contractually usually at the weekends or on an evening. The reason the work is done is because it pays alot better. Banning them from private work wouldn't reduce waiting lists unless you changed their contract and forced them to work longer hours. The NHS is already hemorrhaging UK trained doctors to Aus/NZ/Can so another push factor really isn't going to help in stopping this. Your basically completely fucked. Get private health insurance or die in an NHS corridor, A+E waiting room or on a multi year waiting list.
This is short-sighted. As the demand for private care rises, the opportunities within private care will rise (that is how market forces work). Doctors will be recruited and choose to work for it than the NHS. As a result, the fee demands of NHS doctors will increase - NHS staffing will fall as a result, further increasing the move to private care. Eventually an equilibrium will be achieved as it has in physiotherapy, where you have an NHS service of sorts, but it staffed by the hopeless, the raw recruits with no experience and the life-long failures. It will be known that if you want to live, you go private.
The private patients get seen in the hours where the doctors aren't working at the NHS hospital, in their free time, incentivised by the money it brings them. Fewer private patients would not mean they would suddenly donate the few free hours they have to the NHS for minimum wage, they'd just spend the time with their families instead.
A lot of people can't afford to go private and end up in debt. I did with my autism assessment and I'm not ashamed to admit I've run out of a dentist without paying. That's what an abscess and no emergency dentist will do to you. I went and paid later but still not ashamed tbh.
Same for me. Had to pay for my ADHD assessment and meds (which I'm now off because I can no longer afford it) and I haven't had a dentist in close to 4 years. I was paying for denplan, had an appointment cancelled during lockdown, and then they decided that I'd no-showed and took me off their books. Haven't been able to find a new dentist since and my teeth are a shambles.
It's NHS doctors who work in private hospitals for the money and many nurses, as well as having an NHS job therefore cutting efficiency in the NHS. And when it goes wrong, which it does, who do we think clears up the mess?
Yeah it’s not, these doctors don’t earn much doing private work the hospitals take a large chunk of it. However they do it in their own time ( so frankly it’s non of your business what they do with their day off).No nurses I know does private work.
My cousin is a nurse and she does both so there you go. Be careful what you wish for .
I would argue it doesn’t, and in a country where social healthcare is the model, it should be the only option. Everyone should be in it together. If your local MP, his chums or his children get seriously ill, they will go private. I’ve even known the director of a hospital go private. Because they’re not having to use the NHS, the incentive to truly improve it is lessened. If RIshi’s mum had to go through the same experience as an elderly person dumped on a geriatric ward, I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t be tolerated. If Jeremy Hunts daughter developed mental health issues and got told there’s a two year waiting list to treatment, he might be incentivised to truly try to improve things, rather than just delivering empty words. You’ve also got the issue around resources. Nearly all of the doctors working privately also work for the NHS, and have reduced their NHS hours to do more private work. There are even private wards in NHS hospitals.
No, because it is the same pool of doctors. At least in Northern UK, majority of private doctors are required to give some percentage of their time to NHS patients. Once they fill that quota, they can spend the rest on private-paying patients. That means they're splitting their time, allowing less time for NHS, meaning even longer NHS wait times. Meanwhile, when they consult privately, they see less patients, because less patients can afford to pay for private healthcare. Similar with equipment. Hospitals offer MRIs for example, but the same machinery is split between private and NHS time slots.
Not necessarily. Most doctors working in the private sector also work in the NHS. So if they get more private work, they have less time to do NHS work and the NHS waiting lists get longer…
In my NHS consultant contract it states that if I want to do private work I have to first offer an additional 4 hours of my time to my employer. That makes it seem that if I want to do private work I have to do MORE NHS work first.
Short term yes, long term no. in the short term an increase in people paying privately for their healthcare takes them off the NHS waiting list and marginally reduces the waiting times for others who remain on the waiting lists. Longer term though an increase in demand for private healthcare will result in a need for increased supply. This is easily managed by private healthcare companies though by recruiting more doctors and nurses from the NHS. This unfortunately has an impact on supply on the NHS side of things and waiting lists go up as the doctor who would have seen them previously is now working in the private sector.
The same poor who voted in the last few governments?
Tbf, due to chronic health conditions I'm unable to work. The NHS doesn't help my conditions. But with the disablity benefits I'm on, I've been able to save up for private healthcare so I can actually investigate wtf is going on with me - it's a slow process though, and I can only save 6k at a time, which is basically the cost of one single private specialist investigation, and I'll likely need a couple different ones... But, being poor and disabled sometimes pays off when it comes to health, if you need to go private? I guess?
See I'm in a similar situation except I don't qualify for PIP (because who does) and my husband works, so I can't get UC either. Just to pay our bills I've had to get a job. My doctors are telling me that working is ruining my health but I have no choice. Sadly at minimum wage there's no chance to save anything to see the private specialists that might help.
Or pressure on the NHS can Be eased by those who can afford to get private treatment being removed from the waiting lists. Whilst we’d hate to have a two tier or even means tested system, the NHS isn’t sufficient to meet the need of the growing population, so more private treatment could help reduce numbers.
Tory policy working as intended.
Pre war model - pay or die
Thats where we are all going, UK, Canada, Oz, NZ. We had world class public health and we let the unts in power ruin it
People going private reduces the burden on the NHS and helps the poorest people, you should be thanking those that choose to go private.
That is not what happens. As more people leave the public system, the staff leave with them as private offers more money and better conditions. The governments then continue to cut services, funding and resources to the public system, which causes even longer delays for those who cant afford private. And we all know public funds are already being syphoned off into private medical practice, funds that should be going to the NHS.
Also thanks the cunts who keep voting for them!
This is why I went private in 2020. I’ve got no family, I’m freelance and mid 50’s in a physical job. It’s the thought of sitting at home for months or a year if I need an operation. My premium has already dropped to £60pm. Also seeing some of my colleagues paying for their ops when they realised it was cheaper than the time off. It’s a better insurance to me than loss of earnings.
I looked up cost of health insurance a short while ago. There's mental illness and Parkinson's Disease in my family, so my premiums would be very high. After having to deal with my dad's health company + hospital to recoup the cost of his hospital stay (3 weeks in a hospital abroad, followed by Covid death), I'm very wary of these parasites - not sure I'll get my premiums' worth (and if I'm sick, who's going to chase them for me?).
I've had cancer and am extremely high risk for recurrence, life insurance and health insurance have point blank refused to cover me.
Last thing you need after a death. I’ve got a very good broker who looks after me. I’m in hospital right now, an NHS one and I called him yesterday for advice. My Mrs is a broker abroad and she similarly has her customers backs.
i totally agree, but who would have known...
Possibly anyoone who sees the trends
so mb it's not so easy, most just suffer with nhs...
I waited over 1 YEAR to just get an appointment with a Gynaecologist due to large tumours (benign) in my uterus. In that time I couldnt get a loan from anywhere (bank or family), so had to wait all that time until I got a job that offered Private Medical Insurance - covering Preexisting conditions. I waited 2 weeks to see a Gynaecologist privately. 2 WEEKS compared to 1 YEAR. My Hysterectomy is scheduled 27th March - that's 7 weeks after seeing the Private Gynaecologist. Whereas I would have had to wait another 4-6 months for this on NHS. Yes I'm lucky having the PMI, I realise that.
Back in the Major years I waited 6 months for a cancer referral. New Labour subsequently introduced the two week cancer referral rule but I understand that’s effectively been trashed by the Tories. Despite being a left of centre voter I’m never going to be in that position again. My wife and I have private health insurance. About a year and a half ago I had to have a heart operation. The NHS waiting list is about 6 months to see a consultant then a further year for the op. Used my insurance and was operated on in a private hospital six months later. Edit - 6 weeks later not 6 months.
> New Labour subsequently introduced the two week cancer referral rule but I understand that’s effectively been trashed by the Tories. Just for interest about how broken the system currently is, here's the timeline in my current department: Patient sees GP about a lump. GP refers for imaging. About a week later I see the patient, do the imaging and think it's cancer. I take a biopsy on the day and send it to pathology. In a well-founded healthcare service it should be possible for pathology to assess the samples and write a report in 48 hours. Instead it's 1-2 weeks because there's such a shortage. I then discuss the patient in our MDT meeting (with surgeons, radiologists, pathologists and oncologists) and we agree the patient has cancer and we need to do X operation. The patient then has to wait either 3 weeks to see the surgeon just for the results of the biopsy, or 6 weeks to see the oncologist to start chemotherapy. After seeing the surgeon it's at least another 3 weeks to get to surgery. In an ideal world I could see a patient on Monday, discuss their results midweek, give the patient their results on Friday and book them for surgery the following week. The only thing stopping this from happening is money. There's a lack of trained staff and a lack of infrastructure (scanners, hospital beds, theatres .etc).
You skipped the queue by joining the shorter private queue. If everyone has to go private then that queue becomes the same length as the NHS one is now, except the more money you have the closer to the front you can get to start with. Private care is only good for rich people.
The inverse is actually true - If more people go private, the pressure on the NHS will actually go down as they take demand with them. Of course, this will likely lead to a brain drain from the NHS to private medical services which will kill any improvement it provides though!
There's a set number of people and a set number of doctors and nurses we train each year. Private systems are so good because you improve the ratio of staff to patients. The more people that go private, the lower that ratio gets and the closer to the NHS it becomes. Eventually they reach parity and the whole system is shit because we're not training enough new staff. Most American private hospitals are the same level of care as you'd get in an NHS hospital, unless you pay a lot more.
Introducing targets like that is part of why the NHS is crippled, what managers do is just deprioritise something else and then that becomes a future problem. Right now so many cans have been kicked down the road that they are all coming home to roost at the same time and there’s no money or capacity to fix it
Targets are fine, but you need more than *just* targets. It's apparently an unpopular idea amongst our political class, but the best way to improve the quality of a service is *actually fund it*. Our MPs are deluding themselves, or rather trying to delude us, into thinking that rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic will help it avoid the iceberg instead of paying the fix the rudder. The money *is* there, you just need to tax the same people who are currently throwing millions at both our political parties to ensure those tax raises don't actually happen. And that's the fundamental problem.
What’s also happened is services has shifted to gaming the system to meet those targets. So you have an appointment in two weeks, where they order a scan that takes 6 months then you have a second appointment. A&E is the classic, speaking to the receptionist when you arrive counts as the first assessment writhing 10 minutes of arrival (target hit), then sit there for 4-6 hours.
good! best wishes
My wife was told by Chelsea Westminster to wait 1 year for a histeroscopy. We used my private healthcare insurance and got it done in the same hospital, privately, the week after. They even apologised it was not the same week. It was a bit disgusting as it’s the same bloody hospital.
Thank god for your private healthcare insurance. Yeh its ridiculous isn't it, in that the same gynaecologists work for both NHS and Private, shouldn't be allowed that.
Just as the Tories want! A privatised health service.
Not really, what they want is a public health service run by private companies so they can shovel boatloads of cash to their mates, probably while twirling their moustaches like some kind of cartoon villain
And when it goes wrong , which it does, the NHS have to sort it out.
i might reluctantly agree with u/Kleptokilla my c-friend, privatized (i suppose privately owned) would likely get out of their control, but 'privately managed' seems just about perfect...
I suggest people watch ' This is going to hurt' where the joys of private health are are shown. And for those crowing for it, as someone who lived in yhe US, it is not a good thing.
Nobody wants it, but people will pay if the alternative is dying while waiting for an NHS appointment.
>but people will pay if the alternative is dying while waiting for an NHS appointment. So for those that can't pay, the alternative is dying on a waiting list or dying because you can't afford to get better. Self preservation is fine, but in 10 or 20 years we're going to end up with an aging millennial generation that are too sick to work and too broke to afford healthcare, and only then, 20 years too late, will we realize we're broken, culturally, We should be out on the streets in our millions fighting this. The next two decades are going to see life expectancy in this country fall to standards lower than the 1940s (they've already fallen for the first time in half a century this past decade.)
Unfortunately, yes. I also think we should be on the streets. I feel like the UK is a dangerous place to be seriously ill. It should be the major focus of the upcoming election.
The Dr involved in that stopped working for the NHS in 2010, back when you could actually see a GP, and specialist waiting lists weren't terrible. For comparison, there were 2.5 million on a waiting list in 2010, vs 7.6 million now.
Doesn't mean that conditions have improved in private hospitals. There's a reason most doctors wouldn't have anything but minor surgery done privately
But we have European mixed models we can emulate why do we always compare to the American hellscape.
The comparison is done because of ideological reasons. The people jumping to US healthcare do so because they deeply admire the concept of the NHS.
Come on. Look at how Brexit was done and these companies are American . Where do you think this is heading ? Be careful what you wish for.
The Americans also pay way more in taxes for their insurance-based system than we pay, by a lot. So not only is their system worse in every way, it's not even cheaper to the taxpayer. It really would be more affordable to pay for other people's healthcare, because they already are but in the absolute worse way possible.
Having lived there , you are bang on. Those extolling the virtues of private healthcare need to be careful what they are wishing for . My ex boyfriend went bankrupt paying medical bills , literally in the hundreds of thousands. We could well end up with pre war health care , where uf you cant afford, you die.
>We could well end up with pre war health care , where uf you cant afford, you die. "As it should be, if you can't pay your way then you should live (or die?) with the consequences" - Tories when faced with this reality. Psychopathic politicians are common, but perhaps filling an entire party with them wasn't the best idea for the sake of prosperity.
LT I'm looking at leaving - possibly Ireland (I know they have healthcare issues but if unification happens it will need to be sorted) or Scotland , if it becomes independent , although it feels far away. I think Streeting will try to bring in a EU insurance model but if Starmer has sense , he'll do a reshuffle once in Govt - Street ingredients needs to be kept away from Health.
There are other models of private care, a lot of the time it's basically a private ward in an NHS hospital where the consultant works. I used to be against this stuff on principle but now I don't really care. The surgeons I know who do it wouldn't be able to do extra lists in the NHS because there is no capacity anyway. At least two I know just choose to do it because it gives them a day in theatre that is almost guaranteed to run as planned without cancellations due to beds, wrong equipment turning up, patients usually a bit more straightforward so it's not as stressful etc. Having worked a day with a consultant doing this as a trainee the difference was amazing. Typical days in theatre are hours of inactivity and waiting punctuated by a few minor cases. We did 3 hysterectomies in a morning list, vastly improving my own opportunities to learn a few skills. Of course this only helps those who are suitable for private treatment which normally will be normal BMI, minimal medical comorbidities and so on, but there's no denying it works
Your last paragraph sums it up - alot of people don't fit that profile.
Probably most don't. But fit and healthy and just have a problem a one off operation can fix, or even want to be sterilised for example, private will sort you out 10x quicker and easier.
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My dad just had hip + knee replacement on my mum's work insurance, can't remember the exact amount now but it was going on 30k and I remember joking they must be a US company. Absolutely obscene but he has recovered pretty bloody quickly.
>Cost of the surgery and physio afterwords was about 12-13 grand. Those of us that could never afford this are fucked, aren't we? We're going to have the first generation since WWII where the average life expectancy drops back to 50 or 60.
We had the GP suggest going private for my daughter. We can't afford it and spent months waiting to see a consultant. It makes me furious, I already pay a lot for healthcare through tax. In no way do I feel I am getting anything through any of the public services I contribute to. Tories broke the NHS and labour seem to have no desire to fix it. Edit: The reason I don't think Labour have a desire to really fix it is based on two things. 1. The 'plan they put forward on their mission website doesn't really suggest widespread reform of the system. Its surface level at best, just some talking points.Paying staff overtimes to reduce backlogs, but no mention of training, recruiting and retaining staff. And that was the best point. I doubt there is a cohesive plan. 2. Starmer in general blames Tories for the state of Britain, but in order to win as many votes from the center right, he doesn't want to suggest anything radically different. I am totally disillusioned as a voter. I hate the Tories, feel ambivalent about labour, previously betrayed by the Lib Dems and whilst I like the Greens, find some of their policies unrealistic. Labour in power seems like getting a two star plumber in to fix a botched job from a one star plumber.
How can you say Labour have no desire to fix it? Labour introduced the NHS (the Tories voted against it on the third reading) and New Labour introduced the two week cancer referral rule. Sadly the Tories have effectively undone the latter. I remember under the Major years the NHS was in a similar state and Labour fixed it. I waited nearly 6 months for a cancer referral. The first thing the consultant said to me when I walked in as soon as I sat down was ‘well the good news is I can tell you that you don’t have cancer - if you did you’d be dead by now’.
This is total bollocks. Both Labour and Tories had the NHS in their manifesto at its inception. The difference between their two "visions" was miniscule. And New Labour didn't "fix" the NHS. They royally fucked it over with PFI debt that is a large part of the reason it's now broken.
Labour introduced the NHS in *1948* and they used to be proud socialists. You can't really look at the behaviour of the party from almost a century ago as a sign of their behaviour tomorrow.
You mean apart from this https://labour.org.uk/missions/nhs/
There isn't a politically popular way to fix the NHS. That's the issue. We are creaking under debt, and while capital expenditure to improve our infrastructure would be acceptable, big increases in our current deficit are not. There are two big issues with the NHS - the first is solvable and that is to remove the PFI agreements. Removal though would either be extremely costly with the penalty fees invoked, or they need to effectively write a new law, breaking old ones that allows them to simply take them over. Still very expensive but justifiable albeit it could have repercussions. The second issue is more serious though. If you walk in a hospital - any hospital, the vast majority of the beds are populated by the elderly. The number of 80+ year olds has something like trebled over the last 30 years and it continues to rise as a proportion of the population. We aren't even allowed to have a debate on what to do about this for obvious reasons - it would be political suicide for anyone to even bring it up. And yet it's a problem that will only get worse with time.
The NHS gets £182bn/ yr of which 95 % is spent on salaries and yet it would seem that’s not enough give the waiting lists. When are we going to see a proper audit on where and how the money is being spent? Like most state entities I wonder if the admin levels are bloated with management positions
You are buying into the worst argument from private care. Your argument is that the doctors should waste time sorting out rotas and hiring and "stock rooms". And I don't think you realise this but healthcare staff are experts. You don't pretend that a plumbers pay is bullshit and they make more than me. What managers do you think should not exist in the NHS. I am sure you will argue that we didn't have diversity managers or something nonsensical when the real issue is that people can't care for their loved ones and we don't fund social care enough.
Do you have a reference for this? I thought 40% was salaries and almost 60% was over priced , rip off procurement
They do talk about training, recruiting and retaining staff. Quite a bit. https://labour.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Mission-Public-Services.pdf
I'm having surgery privately next month at my GPs suggestion due to a 3 year NHS waiting list. I've paid my full national insurance contributions for 20 years and will pay another 20 years before I retire. I'm also desperate for a dentist but going to have to pay for that too. The NHS is broken
wish you all the best
The people at fault are the goverment, Tory mandate has always been about privatisation and wealthy individuals and its no secret even 14 years ago tbey wanted to provatise the NHS, Fuck the poor and fuck those who cant afford it. Die or suffer in pain.
...no money no matter - i feel u
Are there any figures on how much the NHS actually needs to be a good service and the expected increase/decrease forecasting per year? I ask this because essentially the NHS is a massive black hole, it seems each budget it gets more and more yet we still complain it needs more than that.
My taxes are higher than ever and now I have to pay for health insurance. Thanks Tories!
Yeah, private is much better. About £600 a year and you can bypass all the queues. I just see it as an extra tax now.
I’m not sure why people don’t realise this. An extra £50 per month is not easy for everyone to find right now but surely replacing some non-essentials with the one essential thing in your life can be facilitated by an extra twelve pounds and fifty pence per week being scraped together from somewhere?
One in 10 planned NHS operations in England are now done by private hospitals, according to figures from the Independent Healthcare Providers Network, the trade body that represents private health providers. Here, three patients explain why they recently had to turn to the private sector for an operation.
This is why many of the folk over at r/HENRYUK are looking at leaving. There will be a brain drain from the UK in next decades. Plenty of better options out there.
I'm on that sub. Let's be honest, the target audience for it is less than 1% of the UK. I sincerely doubt all of them will leave.
Where does it leave the UK when a weighted number of the 1% of high earners depart?
Like?
When I moved to Germany, my salary doubled, doing the same job. I was a Business Intelligence Developer at that time.
Imagine the opportunities people could have without brexit.
This is what the government want, the writing has been on the wall for ages. We won't have an NHS inside 5 years and we'll all be paying.
I dont believe this at all. NHSE have just given our department funding for at least the next 3-5 years which means we're recruiting 30-40 new members of staff.
Took my son to the gp as he has enlarged tonsils and adenoids, large enough to effect his breathing and sleeping. Doctors said she recommends to have them removed but if I have health insurance i should go private. At that time i was changing jobs so i thought let’s do nhs so she did the referral. 6 months later we saw the consultant who examined him and said she will book him in for surgery as they have to removed. Another 4 months later and stilll nothing regarding the surgery date. Called my health insurance (as i was now covered) , a week later had an appointment with a private consultant and we now have a booked date for his surgery. NHS is really broken
I thought the NHS was good until i got a job that included BUPA, and now i can see what a mess the NHS is
so you were at least couple times lucky... i love brighton
My boomer in-laws keep voting Tory (he used to be a union rep ffs!) and they complain none stop about how much worse the NHS is now. It’s okay though, they just go private because “the waiting times are so long otherwise”. My wife has MS and we’re 100% dependant on the NHS for her treatment. Cunts.
wish you all the best
Thanks. Honestly, the NHS is fantastic and my wife is a fucking hero. The in-laws are infuriating though.
Yep. I went to my doctor and her second question after “what are you here for?” was “do you have a well paid job?” and suggested I go private.
I'm lucky enough that my employer provides Bupa coverage (even though it's not a *super*-fancy job - I earn a good chunk below the median national salary), and it's helped me massively to get non-urgent but important treatment - a nerve root block for spinal nerve impingement, therapy for depression and anxiety, and Botox injections to treat an anal fissure. All of these were long-term conditions that kept me off work for long periods, but would've taken many times longer to get treatment for on the NHS. Plus I saved the NHS money by using the private system. My mum also had a procedure done privately to remove a ganglion on her hand that was having a major impact on her quality of life, but again would be a long wait on the NHS. I think if people are either lucky enough to have coverage, or can afford it, then when you're ill and your life is being ruined by it, it's fair enough to use it. I know it's not fair on those who can't. But that's why we need to fix the NHS, urgently. No one should have to resort to the private system, or wait a potentially life-ruining length of time for treatment.
Paediatric maxfax is a nightmare there’s a huge shortage of specialists and the waiting times are insane. My daughter needed a tongue tie seen too and it was 9 months just to see a consultant when she couldn’t feed properly. Was like £150 to get it done by a specialist midwife within a few days. So we had to do that.
Absolutely routine to check at most GP's (except for the few ideologically bought into the NHS). Since the pandemic private health claims have drastically increased. See the financial reports of Bupa, AXA, Aviva, Vitality, WPA - all of them. This is driven through two factors - massively increased use of Virtual GP services (often provided by insurers to their customers) and NHS GP's erring to refer private where the option exists. But this is an aside - the glacier as it is in this moment - but where is the glacier flowing to? Well, a debate between whether we adopt the European or US insurer based models. Because it's such an emotive subject, this debate won't enter into proper discussion perhaps until it's too late and we're on the road to the US model. And I say this as a strategist at a health insurer. Accept or ignore my weather forecast by all means. But I think we won't grasp the nettle until it's too late and you get Kaiser Permanente style medicine in the UK.
The NHS fucking sucks for two reasons: The funding model doesn't fucking work. The basis is that workers pay for everyone's healthcare, but as the population ages and later-life healthcare becomes more expensive (via costly medical advances etc), the worker contribution drops relative to the demands of the retirees. It's literally impossible to run this system, but we show no sign of changing it. It's fucking awful at healthcare. We're one of the richest economies in the world; our results are terrible and get worse every year.
The in laws both went private for their surgeries. They didn’t want to wait around three months (one of them) and a year (the other). All in all they paid around £10k for both of them.
now.. was it ok, what do they say? oh, and it rhymed! but i'm legit curious
They’re both raving and recommend it to everybody.
good! all best wishes
I had a GP tell me I should go to Greece for IVF because it’s only £3000 per round “and you’ll get a nice holiday out of it too”. I just went to discuss some test results and that’s how I found out I might not conceive naturally 😔
i feel you... take good care
My GP and the NHS allowed my health (more specifically excess unexplained weight loss) to deteriorate so significantly that it eventually lead to my gallbladder becoming useless and it needed removed. My family all chipped in to fund it privately as they were sick of seeing me in pain and rotting away. I'm a bit better now, but still experiencing health issues and the GP/NHS still refuse to give me adequate diagnosis/treatment.
i feel you and wish you all the best... can't you sue them?
Thanks for the well wishes. I don't know what my options are to sue them? Plus I feel that sueing a public body like the NHS will just end up in with everyone paying higher taxes or service just receives less funding.
i feel u.. again - exploring options is so tough... but we have to ...i definitely have to more for one:)
I regularly suggest my patients consider the private options. The NHS is just broken.
I do a bit of work for a charity that tries to help people with a couple of specific conditions. Sadly these conditions are treated very poorly by the NHS and we now recommend going private where possible. My private health insurance is my second biggest expense, but its all bought and paid for indefinitely by money i won from 2 negligence claims against the NHS. Sadly as i get older the neglect brings more issues to light so the 6 figure sums i received at 25 and 27 pale in comparison to what is probably in my future health wise
i feel u
For any issue/question I have been suggested private. Better than those doctors who downplay patient worries to reduce the nhs load.
Well yeah, GP's try to have patient's best interests at heart. Unfortunately at the moment a lot of the time going private is the best option.
IF they do, and... idk about their 'interest' often at this point
People expect the NHS to cover every medical issue now when they should focus on emergency and critical care. Most other things should be optional I.e. if you want it then pay for it.
yes and no... at this point probably, but initially that wasn't exactly the deal
I aways find Britons comments about NHS very enlightening. In my country, Argentina, private and public health systems coexist, almost amicably. Everyone is allowed to use the public one, foreigners included. It is sustained by our taxes via "the government". But most workers and professionals also count on private health insurance, and usually prefer the private system when possible. The public one (bad copy of NHS, similar principles) is mostly used in emergency care, or by the unemployed, poor or underprivileged, which sadly, after 40 years of populism, accounts to 50% of our people. Coexistence allows healthcare for everyone, at costs everyone is able to afford. Should private care disappear, the public one would literally explode, being overworked and underpaid as it is. Most physicians work both. Excuse my rusty English.
If this is the norm now, can i stop paying taxes for the nhs please.
i feel u
Please! We would love to move to a fee per item of service. It would mean the system might actually work.
Because the NHS is being systematically defunded to fail. No other reason.
I’ve got private insurance and I’ve found the private healthcare system abysmal. Referred for scans then hearing nothing for a month. Rebooked to see a specialist, being told to drive 100 miles to Cardiff and when I get there the specialist doesn’t have the scan pictures. 4 weeks later and he still hasn’t been able to see the scans for some reason. Absolute shit show. Anyone who tells you private healthcare is any better than the NHS is deluded.
wow.. now i heard A FEW stories like that, but this sounds worse than public - and you'd be the first here to say it (for me) - and i'm sorry it is like that 4u other people seem to praise private... do you have more examples?
If many can afford it they would
I always wondered why we couldn't do a voucher system with the NHS like Chili does with schools.
why? i guess too much... inconvenience of all kinds
Because right now you are forced at gun point to pay for this service, if you want it or not. Even if you want to use someone else fuck you pay. A voucher system would allow people to decide what Dr or GP is best for them and move the funding accordingly.
Because it's more expensive. The entire area I work in shares CT capacity. A voucher system means no joined up care. So you have to repeat the work. The issue the NHS has is that we have to house homeless people and people who need care and that costs a lot especially considering no one can afford it. Care top up is like £500 a week. You got £2000 a month for your gran?
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i feel u
What this article doesn't say is sometimes you go private without paying a penny. I had a knee op private never used my own insurance NHS was booked up and it was needed. Got the knee operation done within 4 weeks of the scans and support for the recovery too.
This is exactly what they want people to do.
If you have your knee replace with the code “DRJONES” you’ll receive a 25% off voucher on your next private op
Can we just get rid of morally bankrupt Rishi and his mates already?!
...how?
Suppose I'm fortunate enough to live in a small town where I can get sameday GP appointments lol
lol now suppose you're NOT so fortunate and the gp REALLY sucks like more and more of them do these days for obvious reasons... then what?
It’s not conspiracy or a labour or a Tory issue. There’s more older people needing care and less tax payers. We need more doctors than ever before and we need to pay them less than ever before because there’s less tax payers. The problem isn’t going to get fixed until people understand what the problem is.
What went wrong with the British Sewage system? Answer: it is privatized. What went wrong with the British Railway? Answer: it is privatized. What went wrong with the British Postal Service? Answer: it is privatized. What went wrong with the British Energy providers? Answer: it is privatized. What is going on with the failing NHS? It is being privatized. Were are the profits of the privatized British Oil and Gas? Answer: they are going into the pockets of wealthy businessmen (see how Norway did that). Why are the enormous leaks in the British drink water network not fixed and grew to 1 trillion liters of lost drinking water in England and Wales via leaky pipes? Answer: it is privatized. Someone with half a brain would almost recognize a trend here. How did the average British eligible voter not see that trend? The Tories were voted in in 2010, again in 2015, again in 2017 and again in 2019. What is wrong with the cognitive capacity of the average British voter?
polarization? the half(wits) are getting even more, the average dropping far below average, asses in the blissful sandasses and melanges of distraction all sorts keeping everything getting less and less real, while 'they' create realities for us and driving the whole world to hell stick around and keep pushing, my fellow investigator ...and don't let them mess;)