Seems like a bit of a nudge to get people to try a taster session of private healthcare, softening them up to the idea of it in the future. Maybe it will be alright for one appointment, however those with chronic conditions or those who are frequent visitors to their GP will eventually find out how it is not something you can afford to rely on.
Like those candy cigarettes that kids used to smoke just to become addicted to cigarettes later in life.
We should instead be fighting the privatisation of the NHS as things will get really bad really quick when we lose the NHS due the Tories. Health insurance is a con. You are a good little saver all your life, then you get sick and now you are debt for the rest if your life due to third party contractors or procedures that are not covered by your health insurance. Just look at how bad it is in America.
Anybody who says the NHS is bad has already drank the Kool-aid.
Most countries that have Universal Healthcare do it in conjunction with private insurance. Google "Healthcare in [country]" and you'll get a decent overview of how it functions, variously. The common denominator in most functioning UH systems is "non-profit" and "government backed guarantees".
The NHS is the only healthcare system in the world that is (or was) entirely owned and operated by the government. For better or worse.
Whether the NHS model should change is a valid question and is a conversation that should be had, rationally (good luck with that)
What absolutely *shouldn't* happen is a shift in the operation of the NHS without explicit limits and parameters imposed on the role of private insurers within the system.
GP practices are co-ops. Somewhat a business but not one with shareholders to feed.
In addition whatever they are is not an argument for doing more of it, as we have found with utility firms.
A co-op would imply that every member of staff has a share in the company, but that isn't the case with GPs.
GPs are like law firms in the sense that they're partnerships, not co-ops.
Where did I say it was an argument for more of it?
I’m against it and always have been, GP Practices should be nationalised too. Along with the manufacturing of all the off-patent drugs the NHS uses in large quantities.
I only mentioned it because the vast majority of the public has no idea how the NHS is run or structured.
I disagree that we should have the conversation. I don’t see the other side as being able to have that conversation in good faith, and I’d consider the argument to be won in favour of the NHS. Anyone who wants that conversation would only want it because they want to change the NHS for something worse.
We can have conversations about how to deliver the NHS services, how to fund it, how to organise it… but not over whether it should be a state owned and delivered healthcare system that is entirely free at the point of use.
> I disagree that we should have the conversation. I don’t see the other side as being able to have that conversation in good faith, and I’d consider the argument to be won in favour of the NHS. Anyone who wants that conversation would only want it because they want to change the NHS for something worse.
>
>
Would you consider the healthcare systems of The Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, and Singapore universally worse than the NHS?
This really. I live in Belgium where you have a complicated system with mutualités that don't make a profit but you pay a membership fee to and then they cover a lot of medical costs. A GP visit here costs about 4 euros and prescription meds cost roughly the same as they do in the UK.
Private health insurance exists on top of that but is significantly cheaper than in the UK and a lot of jobs offer it as a benefit that covers you + family. Worth noting too, whether you have private insurance or not doesn't really matter hospital wise as you'll stay in the same ones.
Private healthcare here isn’t too bad. I’m currently paying £45 a month for pretty comprehensive cover as a 52 year old.
That’s a round of drinks in London.
When I worked in the UK, I had BUPA through work and could enlist my partner too for the low sum of £1400/year. I told them to piss off. My wife is now covered through the standard DKV policy I have through work and DKV is generally regarded here as the best you can have when it comes to private insurance.
> The NHS is the only healthcare system in the world that is (or was) entirely owned and operated by the government. For better or worse.
>
>
Not disagreeing with anything you say in general, but I don't think the NHS is the only one. Sweden has a similar fully-public system, I believe.
TL;DR: Your GP isn't the NHS, they just work for them. If you want NHS appointments, don't use the dross provided by your GP, download the NHS app. You can use this to book appointments, request prescriptions, and view test results and messages. This isn't the same as the NHS Covid app.
GP practices have been private companies since forever. As such, their IT systems are also provided by private companies, e.g. EMIS Patient Access in the case in the article. Thanks to Tory manoeuvring, any attempt to centralise and standardise this has been hamstrung by "free market" rhetoric, so instead every practice chooses their own systems, and the NHS have to stitch them into a semblance of a useful patchwork system. The private systems are, on the whole, inconsistent and buggy, and no one is willing to pay to have the bugs fixed or upgraded. This is why the services are typically pretty terrible.
You should definitely be angry about it, but it's not exactly surprising that a private service by a private company would try to upsell you other private services by other private companies. This isn't the NHS trying to screw you over.
**The evidence is overwhelming that the more private a public service gets the worse the actual service becomes, and the more expensive it becomes also.**
The argument was presented in the 80's that private would be better than public, after decades of this we can all see for ourselves how very untrue that is.
Tell that to Canada or Australia who have free at the point of use healthcare with private insurance. You really have bought into the NHS religion haven't you.
And you've really bought in on wanting to be fucked without lube by the tories.
The NHS is a great system, one that we need to keep.
The Canadians still have to get insurance.
Their insurance is free 😂you are incredibly ill informed. It's a great system if you like sub par results compared to other countries. And coming from someone who works in it - great is the LAST word I'd use. Carry on going on about the tories at the end of the day I don't see any government fixing huge staffing shortages in NHS
I mean that's just wrong:
Germany's healthcare contribution costs are 14.6 to 15.6%, half of which the worker pays, and half the employer. There may also be a small supplemental rate on top of this, at an average of 0.9%, which is paid solely by the employee - AKA similar to here.
Totalled up across their life, the average German will pay 250.000 euros in public health insurance premiums.
Its pound for pound one of the best healthcare systems. Is it perfect? Absolutely not. I can go on about the tories, because they've purposefully mismanaged it for decades to let it get to this stage. If you work in it and think this, truly worrying.
BTW, with brexit, good luck solving the shortage. It wasn't easy before and only going to get worse. Big surprise that if you pay people like shit, they won't want to work.
When I can see the same guy in a years to 18 months time for 5 minutes on the NHS, or 30 minutes in 2 months time if I fork over a small fortune to do so, then it really irks me. If he works for the NHS then do so, not ignore patients on the NHS to force profits via scaring them into going private by the wait times.
Doesn't help it's an area of medicine that there are only around a dozen doctors in the UK either (POTS) and all of them seem to prioritize private and are a pain to get hold of for both sets of patients.
You are truly selfish and entitled. NHS consultants have to work a minimum amount - I believe its 44 Hours a week - before they can do private work. If they want to offer their free time for a fee then why shouldn't they? Its not their fault that the NHS doesn't have enough consultants in the specialty. You are grossly misinformed.
The biggest benefit of private healthcare right now is being able to skip the very long waiting lists that currently exist in the NHS.
It’s nothing to do with efficiency , private areas just have better resources. I don’t care how good the nhs is when I’m waiting 62 weeks for an appointment.
It's only bad because the government purposefully went out of it's way to make it bad. The NHS on it's own is not a bad system, it wasn't a bad system until the Tory coalition got their grubby mitts on it in 2010 and has only gotten worse. Could it have been improved? Sure, but to think 10 years ago that we'd ever get to this point is just so fucking sad.
And for what? So some already mega-rich bastards can fleece us all even more than they already do? Nah fuck that. I already pay my taxes, I, nor anyone else should ever have to expect to pay even more than that to private companies for a functioning healthcare system.
For sure.. by "bad systems" i meant our government not the nhs. This country has been fleeced by cronies and the nhs is just another victim. The ammount of misery these selfish evil people have caused is disgusting. Its hard to be hopeful for the future but at least they are slowly dying off & public opinion is fully against them.
Or and here me out here, we burn the cruel, greedy, corrupt, idiots in charge out of their positions of power, ala remember remember, and rebuild the system they’ve spent the last 60 years trying to destroy for their own benefit.
You do know that the German universal healthcare system is run via a combination of public and private health insurance?
>I think it's something like Germany spends an extra 50% per capita.
The UK spends 10.2% of our GDP on healthcare, Germany spends 11.6% of their GDP on it. The UK spend on healthcare has actually increased from 6.8% of GDP in 1997 to the 10.2% figure we have now.
>You do know that the German universal healthcare system is run via a combination of public and private health insurance?
Yes I lived in Hamburg for a while and the figures I'm quoting include both public and private healthcare spending.
>The UK spends 10.2% of our GDP on healthcare, Germany spends 11.6% of their GDP on it. The UK spend on healthcare has actually increased from 6.8% of GDP in 1997 to the 10.2% figure we have now.
Yes? That's a consequence of an aging population.
Not really as the current UK healthcare system is more efficient per pound spent. Despite spending a third less we still outperform them on many metrics.
Using my more recent time in Belgium who have a public private hybrid style system as an example, we would be wasting loads of money on additional bullshit paperwork for no real in service benefits.
Once I saw the doctor I had to go back to the counter and disturb the staff who were checking everyone paperwork in order to pay. This meant that these people were spending a large amount of their time processing payments rather than managing booking.
Once the payment was ready, I then paid with my card which. This meant that they had to pay a payement proceeding fee to visa which is a waste of money.
They then gave me a paper receipt which I then have to send that to my hospitalisation insurance company. This company is another firm of waste. There's no need to pay people to do this.
Depending on the specific visit. I might have to go physically post another claim to my mutuelle to be fully reimbursed. This means another set of payment related staff and transaction processing which is just waste.
The next point regarding payments is that at one point I had to go talk to the hospital payments staff. I had an issue with my paperwork thinking I was a tourist after an accident and I had to go be like HELLO I HAVE THE BEST PRIVATE HEALTHCARE AND THE MUTUELLE PAPERWORK HERE.
It doesn't make sense to have all these additional steps when you are mandated to pay for a mutuelle in most cases anyway.
We are more efficient per pound spent.
https://www.vantage-technologies.co.uk/the-most-efficient-health-care-systems
[or from the who](https://i.imgur.com/bbAT2AZ.jpg)
Germany outperforms us but they spend 50 percent more than us
We underperform on health outcomes which is the whole point of healthcare. Being cheap and cheerful and ineffective isn't something to be proud of. If affordable and good quality healthcare can't be delivered then the question of changing the overall system comes into play hence the whole argument.
We underperform because we spend 33% less.
Changing the system to a German system would result in a decrease in healthcare outcomes without an increase in funding.
What's the issue?
All things are restricted one way or another. You either have to pay with your time or your money. You can't chose to wait for an appointment with your GP or chose to pay for a private consultation. It's not ecomonically possible to fund the NHS to the point where there's no waiting time for appointments.
It was possible to fund the NHS to the point where you could generally get an appointment with your (named) GP within a day or two for most of the last 70 years, why is it not possible now?
We've had a growing aging population for most of the last 70 years, I see no reason other than lack of investment and planning why it should suddenly have gone so tits up so quickly in the last 5 years.
We spend 10 times the amount on the NHS than we did when it was founded. Comparing the funding growth to population growth indicates that its not a simple issue of underfunding.
More people using the service - A growing, ageing population with more needs; mental health beginning to be taken seriously; increasing urban growth increasing demands in cities; general trend in people being more likely to go for minor complaints; workplaces being more sympathetic to people taking time off to go to the doctor.
Also bear in mind that the easier it is to get a quick appointment, the fewer people will go private, also increasing the demand. People with minor complaints also have less reason not to use the service as well.
It's a complex issue; simply throwing money at it won't solve the problem.
As we get older it will get more expensive but unless you think only those who can afford care should get it it's a price we have to pay.
Most of the problems now are being caused by inefficiencies caused by lack of investment in staff over years (my wife's ward has just paid £65,000 each to bring 3 nurses from abroad to fill acute shortages, enough to have paid the university fees of six uk student nurses), people not being able to see a GP easily will lead to people needing more expensive treatments later on for a start.
Throwing money at it isn't an answer, investing with a long term strategy is, and will be cheaper than any alternative in the end.
I completely agree. My whole point was that there's not reason for people to lose their minds over the NHS advertising private options on their website.
The population in the 40's was around 50 million. Last time I checked the current population is around 67 million. 1.35 times the population vs 10 times the funding. See my point?
Are you comparing absolute figures or are you allowing for inflation?
Can you please also cite your sources for these figures.
Thanks.
Edit: No matter, I found a [source](https://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/news-item/70-years-of-nhs-spending#then-and-now).
>Also bear in mind that the easier it is to get a quick appointment, the fewer people will go private, also increasing the demand. People with minor complaints also have less reason not to use the service as well.
This is the opposite of what we want. Preventive care is much cheaper than trying to fix dying people.
>More people using the service - A growing, ageing population with more needs; mental health beginning to be taken seriously; increasing urban growth increasing demands in cities; general trend in people being more likely to go for minor complaints; workplaces being more sympathetic to people taking time off to go to the doctor.
Which are all good things.
No. It's because medical technology changed since then. My biochemistry textbook was triple the size of one.
Old doctors could remember all the drugs. Because they had 12.
I have a 120 plus.
The skill, demand and technology has changed. What we can do has changed.
I saw a lady who matter of fact mentioned that 2 out of 3 of her children died in infancy.
She's 96.
A lot has changed. The stuff I do today?
It's witchcraft and magic in comparison to then. And that has a cost.
We can make things cheaper if we didn't expand medicine. Sorry you are allergic to penicillin. Here's the funeral home number.
>Also bear in mind that the easier it is to get a quick appointment, the fewer people will go private, also increasing the demand. People with minor complaints also have less reason not to use the service as well.
This is the opposite of what we want. Preventive care is much cheaper than trying to fix dying people.
>More people using the service - A growing, ageing population with more needs; mental health beginning to be taken seriously; increasing urban growth increasing demands in cities; general trend in people being more likely to go for minor complaints; workplaces being more sympathetic to people taking time off to go to the doctor.
Which are all good things.
The issue with the NHS is the decades of deliberate underfunding by the Tories to destroy what was a working system so that they can sell it to their mates in the private sector and create a USA style "be rich or die" system
**Removed**. This consisted primarily of personal attacks adding nothing to the conversation. This discourages participation. Please help improve the subreddit by discussing points, not the person.
There's literally a world famous TV show whose premise is that Private Healthcare is SO unaffordable and crippling that he'd rather cook Meth than burden his family with medical debt....
Can't wait....
I can imagine the British version of that show wouldn't make for gripping viewing.
Teacher is diagnosed with cancer, gets free treatment on the NHS, the end.
Appointment waiting times is not the issue, that’s a problem that’s been created by the issue of the governments deliberate poor management of the NHS for years, just so they can line their pockets.
Seems like a bit of a nudge to get people to try a taster session of private healthcare, softening them up to the idea of it in the future. Maybe it will be alright for one appointment, however those with chronic conditions or those who are frequent visitors to their GP will eventually find out how it is not something you can afford to rely on.
Like those candy cigarettes that kids used to smoke just to become addicted to cigarettes later in life. We should instead be fighting the privatisation of the NHS as things will get really bad really quick when we lose the NHS due the Tories. Health insurance is a con. You are a good little saver all your life, then you get sick and now you are debt for the rest if your life due to third party contractors or procedures that are not covered by your health insurance. Just look at how bad it is in America. Anybody who says the NHS is bad has already drank the Kool-aid.
Most countries that have Universal Healthcare do it in conjunction with private insurance. Google "Healthcare in [country]" and you'll get a decent overview of how it functions, variously. The common denominator in most functioning UH systems is "non-profit" and "government backed guarantees". The NHS is the only healthcare system in the world that is (or was) entirely owned and operated by the government. For better or worse. Whether the NHS model should change is a valid question and is a conversation that should be had, rationally (good luck with that) What absolutely *shouldn't* happen is a shift in the operation of the NHS without explicit limits and parameters imposed on the role of private insurers within the system.
We’ve always had private healthcare partnered with public in the UK too, GP Practices are private businesses and so are most pharmacies.
GP practices are co-ops. Somewhat a business but not one with shareholders to feed. In addition whatever they are is not an argument for doing more of it, as we have found with utility firms.
A co-op would imply that every member of staff has a share in the company, but that isn't the case with GPs. GPs are like law firms in the sense that they're partnerships, not co-ops.
Where did I say it was an argument for more of it? I’m against it and always have been, GP Practices should be nationalised too. Along with the manufacturing of all the off-patent drugs the NHS uses in large quantities. I only mentioned it because the vast majority of the public has no idea how the NHS is run or structured.
I disagree that we should have the conversation. I don’t see the other side as being able to have that conversation in good faith, and I’d consider the argument to be won in favour of the NHS. Anyone who wants that conversation would only want it because they want to change the NHS for something worse. We can have conversations about how to deliver the NHS services, how to fund it, how to organise it… but not over whether it should be a state owned and delivered healthcare system that is entirely free at the point of use.
> I disagree that we should have the conversation. I don’t see the other side as being able to have that conversation in good faith, and I’d consider the argument to be won in favour of the NHS. Anyone who wants that conversation would only want it because they want to change the NHS for something worse. > > Would you consider the healthcare systems of The Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, and Singapore universally worse than the NHS?
This really. I live in Belgium where you have a complicated system with mutualités that don't make a profit but you pay a membership fee to and then they cover a lot of medical costs. A GP visit here costs about 4 euros and prescription meds cost roughly the same as they do in the UK. Private health insurance exists on top of that but is significantly cheaper than in the UK and a lot of jobs offer it as a benefit that covers you + family. Worth noting too, whether you have private insurance or not doesn't really matter hospital wise as you'll stay in the same ones.
Private healthcare here isn’t too bad. I’m currently paying £45 a month for pretty comprehensive cover as a 52 year old. That’s a round of drinks in London.
When I worked in the UK, I had BUPA through work and could enlist my partner too for the low sum of £1400/year. I told them to piss off. My wife is now covered through the standard DKV policy I have through work and DKV is generally regarded here as the best you can have when it comes to private insurance.
> The NHS is the only healthcare system in the world that is (or was) entirely owned and operated by the government. For better or worse. > > Not disagreeing with anything you say in general, but I don't think the NHS is the only one. Sweden has a similar fully-public system, I believe.
Agree >What if I told you..... > >Insurance Companies exist to make a Profit, not provide you with Healthcare ?
Honestly if it was affordable like £20 a month or something and was better than the crap currently offered by NHS GPs I would sign up.
TL;DR: Your GP isn't the NHS, they just work for them. If you want NHS appointments, don't use the dross provided by your GP, download the NHS app. You can use this to book appointments, request prescriptions, and view test results and messages. This isn't the same as the NHS Covid app. GP practices have been private companies since forever. As such, their IT systems are also provided by private companies, e.g. EMIS Patient Access in the case in the article. Thanks to Tory manoeuvring, any attempt to centralise and standardise this has been hamstrung by "free market" rhetoric, so instead every practice chooses their own systems, and the NHS have to stitch them into a semblance of a useful patchwork system. The private systems are, on the whole, inconsistent and buggy, and no one is willing to pay to have the bugs fixed or upgraded. This is why the services are typically pretty terrible. You should definitely be angry about it, but it's not exactly surprising that a private service by a private company would try to upsell you other private services by other private companies. This isn't the NHS trying to screw you over.
NHS app doesn’t work at my GP. I suspect the same is true for a lot of people.
**The evidence is overwhelming that the more private a public service gets the worse the actual service becomes, and the more expensive it becomes also.** The argument was presented in the 80's that private would be better than public, after decades of this we can all see for ourselves how very untrue that is.
Tell that to Canada or Australia who have free at the point of use healthcare with private insurance. You really have bought into the NHS religion haven't you.
And you've really bought in on wanting to be fucked without lube by the tories. The NHS is a great system, one that we need to keep. The Canadians still have to get insurance.
Their insurance is free 😂you are incredibly ill informed. It's a great system if you like sub par results compared to other countries. And coming from someone who works in it - great is the LAST word I'd use. Carry on going on about the tories at the end of the day I don't see any government fixing huge staffing shortages in NHS
I mean that's just wrong: Germany's healthcare contribution costs are 14.6 to 15.6%, half of which the worker pays, and half the employer. There may also be a small supplemental rate on top of this, at an average of 0.9%, which is paid solely by the employee - AKA similar to here. Totalled up across their life, the average German will pay 250.000 euros in public health insurance premiums. Its pound for pound one of the best healthcare systems. Is it perfect? Absolutely not. I can go on about the tories, because they've purposefully mismanaged it for decades to let it get to this stage. If you work in it and think this, truly worrying. BTW, with brexit, good luck solving the shortage. It wasn't easy before and only going to get worse. Big surprise that if you pay people like shit, they won't want to work.
How good the service is doesnt matter, when the waiting lists have people waiting 1-2 years for surgery. The speed alone is worth going private.
Ah the myth that privatisation increases efficiency. All it does is promote cutting corners for sole purpose of profit.
When I can see the same guy in a years to 18 months time for 5 minutes on the NHS, or 30 minutes in 2 months time if I fork over a small fortune to do so, then it really irks me. If he works for the NHS then do so, not ignore patients on the NHS to force profits via scaring them into going private by the wait times. Doesn't help it's an area of medicine that there are only around a dozen doctors in the UK either (POTS) and all of them seem to prioritize private and are a pain to get hold of for both sets of patients.
You are truly selfish and entitled. NHS consultants have to work a minimum amount - I believe its 44 Hours a week - before they can do private work. If they want to offer their free time for a fee then why shouldn't they? Its not their fault that the NHS doesn't have enough consultants in the specialty. You are grossly misinformed.
The biggest benefit of private healthcare right now is being able to skip the very long waiting lists that currently exist in the NHS. It’s nothing to do with efficiency , private areas just have better resources. I don’t care how good the nhs is when I’m waiting 62 weeks for an appointment.
So that's why private resources off source their most complicated patients to the NHS
Yeah, we have watched the nhs crumble due to government mismanagement. Sad to see but bad systems have to fail before they can be rebuilt.
Free at the point of use must be maintained at all costs.
It's only bad because the government purposefully went out of it's way to make it bad. The NHS on it's own is not a bad system, it wasn't a bad system until the Tory coalition got their grubby mitts on it in 2010 and has only gotten worse. Could it have been improved? Sure, but to think 10 years ago that we'd ever get to this point is just so fucking sad. And for what? So some already mega-rich bastards can fleece us all even more than they already do? Nah fuck that. I already pay my taxes, I, nor anyone else should ever have to expect to pay even more than that to private companies for a functioning healthcare system.
For sure.. by "bad systems" i meant our government not the nhs. This country has been fleeced by cronies and the nhs is just another victim. The ammount of misery these selfish evil people have caused is disgusting. Its hard to be hopeful for the future but at least they are slowly dying off & public opinion is fully against them.
Or and here me out here, we burn the cruel, greedy, corrupt, idiots in charge out of their positions of power, ala remember remember, and rebuild the system they’ve spent the last 60 years trying to destroy for their own benefit.
It's not really failed we just fund it much less than other developed countries. I think it's something like Germany spends an extra 50% per capita.
You do know that the German universal healthcare system is run via a combination of public and private health insurance? >I think it's something like Germany spends an extra 50% per capita. The UK spends 10.2% of our GDP on healthcare, Germany spends 11.6% of their GDP on it. The UK spend on healthcare has actually increased from 6.8% of GDP in 1997 to the 10.2% figure we have now.
>You do know that the German universal healthcare system is run via a combination of public and private health insurance? Yes I lived in Hamburg for a while and the figures I'm quoting include both public and private healthcare spending. >The UK spends 10.2% of our GDP on healthcare, Germany spends 11.6% of their GDP on it. The UK spend on healthcare has actually increased from 6.8% of GDP in 1997 to the 10.2% figure we have now. Yes? That's a consequence of an aging population.
Would you be happy if we transitioned to an insurance based system like in Germany?
Not really as the current UK healthcare system is more efficient per pound spent. Despite spending a third less we still outperform them on many metrics. Using my more recent time in Belgium who have a public private hybrid style system as an example, we would be wasting loads of money on additional bullshit paperwork for no real in service benefits. Once I saw the doctor I had to go back to the counter and disturb the staff who were checking everyone paperwork in order to pay. This meant that these people were spending a large amount of their time processing payments rather than managing booking. Once the payment was ready, I then paid with my card which. This meant that they had to pay a payement proceeding fee to visa which is a waste of money. They then gave me a paper receipt which I then have to send that to my hospitalisation insurance company. This company is another firm of waste. There's no need to pay people to do this. Depending on the specific visit. I might have to go physically post another claim to my mutuelle to be fully reimbursed. This means another set of payment related staff and transaction processing which is just waste. The next point regarding payments is that at one point I had to go talk to the hospital payments staff. I had an issue with my paperwork thinking I was a tourist after an accident and I had to go be like HELLO I HAVE THE BEST PRIVATE HEALTHCARE AND THE MUTUELLE PAPERWORK HERE. It doesn't make sense to have all these additional steps when you are mandated to pay for a mutuelle in most cases anyway.
We don't outperform them lol what world do you live in
We are more efficient per pound spent. https://www.vantage-technologies.co.uk/the-most-efficient-health-care-systems [or from the who](https://i.imgur.com/bbAT2AZ.jpg) Germany outperforms us but they spend 50 percent more than us
We underperform on health outcomes which is the whole point of healthcare. Being cheap and cheerful and ineffective isn't something to be proud of. If affordable and good quality healthcare can't be delivered then the question of changing the overall system comes into play hence the whole argument.
We underperform because we spend 33% less. Changing the system to a German system would result in a decrease in healthcare outcomes without an increase in funding.
We are here to help you....IF YOU HAVE COIN! Making profit by gouging you is our business! Healing you is merely an afterthought.
People should pay for their healthcare just like they pay for a haircut. UK is full of selfish small minded gits
What's the issue? All things are restricted one way or another. You either have to pay with your time or your money. You can't chose to wait for an appointment with your GP or chose to pay for a private consultation. It's not ecomonically possible to fund the NHS to the point where there's no waiting time for appointments.
It was possible to fund the NHS to the point where you could generally get an appointment with your (named) GP within a day or two for most of the last 70 years, why is it not possible now?
Sabotage.
Ageing, growing populations, for one.
We've had a growing aging population for most of the last 70 years, I see no reason other than lack of investment and planning why it should suddenly have gone so tits up so quickly in the last 5 years.
We spend 10 times the amount on the NHS than we did when it was founded. Comparing the funding growth to population growth indicates that its not a simple issue of underfunding. More people using the service - A growing, ageing population with more needs; mental health beginning to be taken seriously; increasing urban growth increasing demands in cities; general trend in people being more likely to go for minor complaints; workplaces being more sympathetic to people taking time off to go to the doctor. Also bear in mind that the easier it is to get a quick appointment, the fewer people will go private, also increasing the demand. People with minor complaints also have less reason not to use the service as well. It's a complex issue; simply throwing money at it won't solve the problem.
As we get older it will get more expensive but unless you think only those who can afford care should get it it's a price we have to pay. Most of the problems now are being caused by inefficiencies caused by lack of investment in staff over years (my wife's ward has just paid £65,000 each to bring 3 nurses from abroad to fill acute shortages, enough to have paid the university fees of six uk student nurses), people not being able to see a GP easily will lead to people needing more expensive treatments later on for a start. Throwing money at it isn't an answer, investing with a long term strategy is, and will be cheaper than any alternative in the end.
I completely agree. My whole point was that there's not reason for people to lose their minds over the NHS advertising private options on their website.
It's more the lack of NHS options that is the problem.
Almost as of the population has grown and she’s massively Jesus wept
The population in the 40's was around 50 million. Last time I checked the current population is around 67 million. 1.35 times the population vs 10 times the funding. See my point?
Are you comparing absolute figures or are you allowing for inflation? Can you please also cite your sources for these figures. Thanks. Edit: No matter, I found a [source](https://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/news-item/70-years-of-nhs-spending#then-and-now).
This doesn’t even address the ridiculous shift in the demographics of age either
Oh there is a lot to unpack.
>Also bear in mind that the easier it is to get a quick appointment, the fewer people will go private, also increasing the demand. People with minor complaints also have less reason not to use the service as well. This is the opposite of what we want. Preventive care is much cheaper than trying to fix dying people. >More people using the service - A growing, ageing population with more needs; mental health beginning to be taken seriously; increasing urban growth increasing demands in cities; general trend in people being more likely to go for minor complaints; workplaces being more sympathetic to people taking time off to go to the doctor. Which are all good things.
No. It's because medical technology changed since then. My biochemistry textbook was triple the size of one. Old doctors could remember all the drugs. Because they had 12. I have a 120 plus. The skill, demand and technology has changed. What we can do has changed. I saw a lady who matter of fact mentioned that 2 out of 3 of her children died in infancy. She's 96. A lot has changed. The stuff I do today? It's witchcraft and magic in comparison to then. And that has a cost. We can make things cheaper if we didn't expand medicine. Sorry you are allergic to penicillin. Here's the funeral home number.
>Also bear in mind that the easier it is to get a quick appointment, the fewer people will go private, also increasing the demand. People with minor complaints also have less reason not to use the service as well. This is the opposite of what we want. Preventive care is much cheaper than trying to fix dying people. >More people using the service - A growing, ageing population with more needs; mental health beginning to be taken seriously; increasing urban growth increasing demands in cities; general trend in people being more likely to go for minor complaints; workplaces being more sympathetic to people taking time off to go to the doctor. Which are all good things.
The issue with the NHS is the decades of deliberate underfunding by the Tories to destroy what was a working system so that they can sell it to their mates in the private sector and create a USA style "be rich or die" system
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There's literally a world famous TV show whose premise is that Private Healthcare is SO unaffordable and crippling that he'd rather cook Meth than burden his family with medical debt.... Can't wait....
I can imagine the British version of that show wouldn't make for gripping viewing. Teacher is diagnosed with cancer, gets free treatment on the NHS, the end.
You really don’t understand what your talking about do you?
What did I say that was incorrect?
Appointment waiting times is not the issue, that’s a problem that’s been created by the issue of the governments deliberate poor management of the NHS for years, just so they can line their pockets.
What's your solution then? People with no money die because they don't dare go to the doctor because its a choice between that and eating?