[Closed] Say the NHS gets privatised - what happens then?

Is this definitely going to happen?

the thing that really gets me, do you really see taxes coming down? there is always something to spend the money on, so not only do you have to pay for treatment but your also going to have to carry on paying the tax you do now, politicians will always have their pet projects.

mind you labour paved the way, why are the NHS trusts screwed? that'll be the amount of money they are having to pay on the PFI contracts.

[i]Is this definitely going to happen?[/i]

Only if people like you allow it to. Only if you fall for the idea that the best way to get decent high quality healthcare is to get individuals to pay for their own.

It's one of the things that this country can be really, honestly, forget political opinions, proud of.

Don't sell it down the river to make a few more bastards rich.

Only if people like you allow it to.

Bit harsh, I don't pay for health care, other than NI.

Still rather dim?

Total healthcare costs in the UK represents about 9% of GDP, the overwhelming majority of that is NHS spending. The potential profit in such a vast sector is mind boggling. There is very little left in the UK to privatise. It doesn't sound very dim to me at all. I'm fairly sure that private healthcare providers in countries like the US don't struggle to make a profit. Healthcare will always be needed - it's not a dying industry. It's fail-safe investment.

flow - Member
Is this definitely going to happen?

Fwd to 2:07

Looks like I will be moving to Scotland after all

It's not [i]that[/i] bad, surely? 😉

* erects border control *

* erects border control *

We have been seriously thinking about it. My GS's Scottish, most of her family live there. I love it up there TBH.

You'll need some signs druidh ....

[img] [/img]

GP's have always been self-employed, ever since the NHS was set up - one less arguement when it was set up.

[i]Principals and partners in GP surgeries are self-employed, but they have contractual arrangements with the NHS which give them considerable predictability of income.[/i]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_practitioner

So ... can a GP remove a person from his patient list?

CG; yes. Worse, a practice manager (IE no medical qualifications) also can. Without consulting the GP themselves, who wooduv actually overruled their decision, but too late now. 🙁

That doesn't sound right Elf. ❓

elf have you been upsetting the practice nurses again..

🙂

No not me. Some jobsworth bloody PM, decided cos I din't live in the catchment area, that I was to b taken off their list. Without asking my GP, who's medical onion is actually more important than a member of admin staff. Sadly, by the time I'd found out, my records had bin removed to the local PCT office, and there was no going back for me. Worse, the PM intercepted a letter I'd written to my GP, and she din't ever receive it.

I've submitted a complaint to the PCT and BMC, for all the good it will do. On the plus side, my new GP is wonderful.

I had to throw a patient off the list once. About 10 years ago after he was incredibly rude and abusive to the practice nurse. Is that ok?

at least you have sorted a new gp,

Makes me think about the quality of dental provision in the UK, where often the choice is private or private, or how if you have to wear glasses you have to pay, how being ill means paying prescription charges, such a wonderful situation and people think it will get better if we fully privatise the NHS.

Is that ok?

Of course it is. Why woon't it be?

Just checking

Anyway I'm going to bed now. Goodnight.

Elf - ah, catchment area. Don't know how that works. But good that you're happy with your new GP!

docrobster - definitely OK! Rudeness is just not acceptable. I suspect I have an acronym on my records, courtesy of my previous GP cos I questioned his diagnosis. Not sure that my new GP (in new area) is taking me seriously due to me possibly being labelled a pita/mmpw etc etc. 🙂

Anyway I'm going to bed now

Good idea........you sound grumpy 😀

A few years back an American friend started to miscarry.
She was married to a well off man.

Her baby died.
She nearly died.
She could never have any more children.

The ambulance came to rush her to hospital. In the ambulance she had to agree to pay an extra $20 to the ambulance company on top of the standard transport fee - or they would not ring the siren to speed up the journey.

All those who support privatisation feeling good about this story?

It beyond naive to think such things 'Can't happen here'. We just had a war based totally on lying resulting in thousands dying to please a few, yet people still claim immoral behaviour can't and won't happen in the UK cos everyone is 'too decent'.

Anyone see that documentary about 3 years back where a USA girl was in a vehicle accident in her late teens and went into coma? The insurance ran out. After a short time the parents were told to switch off her life support. They sold their home and everything they had to keep paying for her life support cos they could not face killing their child. Their lives were in ruin and debt and destitution. Bizarrely over 10 years later she awoke. They were ecstatic. But she has brain damaged and although able to interact well, would never be able to live alone or work and has to stay in care. So now they have the joy of having their kid back - and will spend the rest of their remaining lives in utter poverty and destitution to pay for her care, and live in fear of what will happen to her when they die of old age as there will be no money to look after her.

It could be your family.

Good point and well made, Midnighthour.

I propose that everyone who supports the US healthcare model moves there, and then we won't have to worry about your opinions as you'll enjoy the system you like and we'll keep our NHS. Sound fair?

I propose that everyone who supports the US healthcare model moves there, and then we won't have to worry about your opinions as you'll enjoy the system you like and we'll keep our NHS. Sound fair?

Like anyone has said they support it 🙄

Quite a few have actually, Flow, on other threads at least.

I don't support the privatising the NHS completely but it isn't the wonderful thing that so many suggest it is.
6 years ago I had bilary colic, after waiting months for an operation the surgeons managed to make such a mess of the keyhole surgery that I needed another 6 operations within days of each other to sort it out. I had various MRI scans done by a company that owned the machine within the hospital. On what should have been the last operation my abdominal artery was cut but I was still stitched up. When I came round from the operation in HDU I kept complaining something wasn't right but was ignored repeatedly. The nurse on the HDU ward emptied two drain bags full of blood but still failed to see something wasn't right. At this point despite all my shouting for help I tried to get out of bed to find help but ended up in a heap on the floor, another patient grabbed a passing doctor. He took one look at me and had me rushed into theatre at this point, I couldn't raise my hands or barely move I'd lost that much blood. In theatre they raised my feet above my head to get blood into my body, as they put the mask on me I threw up. Not the heaving that normally occurs just my mouth and nose rapidly filling up with vomit as I suffocated but I couldn't do a thing other than think this is where I die. The next thing I remember is coming around in ICU. I was told that I had 8 pints of blood put back in me plus another 2 whilst in ICU. I was left that weak that I had physio to be able to sit, get out bed and walk again.
3 months after I was discharged I had an incisional hernia that went from my just below my sternum to my groin and protruded about 6 inches. My GP referred me straight back to the hospital, the doctor put me on a waiting list but told that I could bypass the waiting list if I had it done privately. When I enquired about private I was told it would be the same hospital and doctors. In the end I went to a solicitor and the matter was resolved very quickly and I was bumped to the top of the list.
As far as I see it we already have a two tier NHS system where the ones who benefit are the directors and doctors who are allowed to take on private work at the expense of the NHS and the public. I believe the NHS has grown into a administrative monster that is now incapable of been efficient without the competition that is required to ensure it reacts. Their finances are out of control with £Bns overspend, the bill picked up by the tax payer. An element of privatisation is required to increase the speed of change.

The problem is that private healthcare makes more mistakes and has worse outcomes.

Thats a story of a clinical muck up of serious proportions allied with some adminstrative muck ups. Privatising would make that worse not better

Oh - and the research show that reorganising the NHS stops the year on year improvements for around two years for each reorganisation

Craigxxl that has nothing to do with funding but clinical errors, don't think for one minute that privatisation will make individuals stop making mistakes.

If a private hospital cocked up so badly its reputation would ensure that no one would choose to go there and it would fail. Under the NHS nothing happens other than inspectors go there, write a report and things change slowly on what was picked up on. You still have no choice in the hospital you go to. Other areas are still run inefficiently and budgets are exceeded knowing the tax payer will pick up the bill.
I have witnessed a relative in Spain who was diagnosed with cancer and his treatment started the same week. This was a decade ago, 5 years ago my Grandma was passed from waiting list to another waiting list ensuring she wasn't any one list for more than the governments target of 6 months. She died 15 months after been diagnosed without an operation.
I know a couple who went for fertility treatment, they had their free go with the NHS and then had to pay for the next two tries at around £4k a go with each failing. This was at Leeds General Infirmary which supposed to be one of the best in the UK. They decided to have another go but went to a private fertility clinic in Sweden after loosing faith with the NHS which cost them around £8000 for 3 attempts paid in advance. On the initial tests they detected something wrong with her and operated on her after which they returned to the UK. They conceived naturally 7 months later.

Drac, the errors were clinical as you said but the fact I could have had my hernia fixed, which was a result of their errors, by the same doctors that would have done it on the NHS. Can't really see how funding doesn't come into it.
The example I gave of our friends who had IVF received better treatment privately and cheaper than the NHS could provide.
As I stated though I don't want a privatised NHS as so many people would fall through the cracks but it can't carry on the way it has without delivering better actual results and not just government target tick lists.

If a private hospital cocked up so badly its reputation would ensure that no one would choose to go there and it would fail.

I would think that is naivety bordering on stupidity, as you have admitted the hospital, the doctors, everything in fact would have been the same whether your treatment was public or private.

The only difference, your compensation would have come with a non disclosure clause.

Doctors are human, mistakes happen, it is a $hit situation but it happens. Use a private hospital where the profit motive says cut corners, do you really see that being any better. The NHS isn't perfect and what is really needed is for politicians to stop playing games. Yes spending has gone up, but it is to pay for PFI and not to improve care, make hospitals compete but for what? your average patient wants to go to the local hopstal get there treatment and go home.

Privatisation works where you can compete and fails where you can't.

Mrmo, in a private system the hospitals are privately run too billing the insurance providers/ patients for the treatment they are given. If they hospital is badly run the insurance company sends the patient elsewhere knowing they would have to pay for further treatment if they sent them to badly run hospital in the first place.
Read my post and you will see that I don't want a privatised NHS but I want and an efficient one instead available to all that can compete with what the private ones can offer better and cheaper for those who can afford it.

Why should the NHS have to fund IVF? Having babies is a lifestyle choice.

I used to think the NHS was pants as all my dealings with them had been drawn out to get where I wanted{fixed}, but then I moved to Canada and realised how good the NHS is, I can't get a GP as there is a shortage due to the fact they can all go down to the US of A and become millionaires, wait times in A and E are even bigger also

a private company being paid to manage the NHS might not be a bad thing but full take over I would imagine will end up expensive one day
you can get a car reprayed for hundreds, an insurance company can only get a car resprayed for thousands

Surrounded By Zulus - Member
Why should the NHS have to fund IVF? Having babies is a lifestyle choice.

craigxxl, my gut feeling is that the situation you would get is one of vertical integration, the insurance companies owning the hospitals or at the very least having arrangements with specific hospitals. So if the hospital screws up you'll still be in the same place, your care is not the driving force, your wallet is. Yes publicity is an issue, but that can be solved with money and PR staff.

The current situation sees hospitals having to pay for things they don't necessarily need because of the way PFI works, politicians and their agendas have got us to where we are and they are determined to take us where it suits them. And the worst part, until the NHS has gone we won't know how good it is.

I don't know why but they do

More specifically some parts of the NHS do, some don't, as they say postcode lottery.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-13670615

You still have no choice in the hospital you go to

Yes you can you can ask to referred to certain hospitals.

The problem with PFI is that the Trusts they were offered to didn't understand them and rushed into them much the same way as the public went crazy on easy loans. These were offered when the economy was still doing well and the government should have been funding the building of new hospitals out of the budget. This was probably because the government then knew the NHS had become a problem that couldn't be controlled. If you remember all the big NHS spending increases announced at the budgets came with strings attached with improved performance. Unfortunately most of those improvements came in ways to cheat targets and added bureaucracy rather than just improved patient care.

Why should the NHS have to fund IVF? Having babies is a lifestyle choice.

Why not have a serious conversation with those trying to conceive and needing IVF, instead of making silly provocative comments?

Oh, and I assume you don't expect your kids to receive any health care at all, as after all; they're only a 'lifestyle choice', right?

You really are such a silly Billy sometimes, Glupton. Do you not think before you say stuff? Do you revel in the fact others think you're a wally?

You still have no choice in the hospital you go to

When I had to have an operation to have a hernia repaired, I was given the choice of four different hospitals.

If I'm being taken to a hospital by Drac or one of his colleagues I couldn't care less where they're taking me - I'm happy for them to make that decision.

Oh and:

Why should the NHS have to fund IVF? Having babies is a lifestyle choice.

Need I say it? No, not really. But, oh go on then...

Poor Troll.

Drac, you can ask, but for how many is the theory a practical reality. If you are in hospital and are going to be there for a few days would you want to be near friends and family or hundreds of miles away, for some people in an scheduled situation then there may be some choice, but depending on the follow up needed...

If you have a fall are you going to consult the brochures to see which A&E your going to want to go to? When you think a lot of admissions are via A&E, choice falls apart.

Elf, Glupton may be being provocative, but the question remains, should IVF be paid for out of the public purse, would the money be better spent on treating those who are ill rather than on creating new lives?