Private healthcare

Narj said:
Yeah, I've seen people at work in their 40s and early 50s say the same, then suddenly, BAM - something goes wrong, or even worse, it's a cancer diagnosis.

You have no idea what will happen in the future. Just saying. :)
Click to expand...

I had previously heard that NHS - despite the awful rep these days - were actually quite good with cancer wait times and accelerated action when dealing with cancer stuff? Is that not the case? What are people's experiences of it?
It's my main fear...me or the wife get a lump and then have to wait so long that it could have been stopped if action taken earlier. For that private, is priceless.
 
jaybee said:
I had previously heard that NHS - despite the awful rep these days - were actually quite good with cancer wait times and accelerated action when dealing with cancer stuff? Is that not the case? What are people's experiences of it?
It's my main fear...me or the wife get a lump and then have to wait so long that it could have been stopped if action taken earlier. For that private, is priceless.
Click to expand...
From what I can tell with family members' experiences, cancer care is generally very good once you're with a consultant but as with most other things with the NHS, you do have to have sharp (pointy?) elbows to make sure things are pushed along in a timely manner. My sister did a hell of a lot of chasing up for my mum, it was quite stressful but generally critically urgent stuff should be within 2 weeks.

Personally I would still be minded to get initial diagnostics done privately then get referred to the NHS if I didn't have cancer cover. Also, if given the all clear I'd pay for a private full body scan to be sure because we were told my mum was all clear and she unfortunately wasn't. I hate the fact that I didn't think about doing this for her at the time.
 
Last edited:
Keep it OP.

Been paying into one for 20 years... Never touched it until last year where I need some knee surgery. 5 weeks from seeing the Dr, seeing the consultant till under the knife.

NHS wouldnt touch it due to me being old and its part of getting old, I was 52.........

I am firmly believer the NHS is not underfunded its just very very very badly managed.
 
£176 sounds really cheap. Mine is a lot more than that, I used to opt out as mentally I've always been in the camp of that's what NHS is there for but decided to take the family cover as getting appointments with our GP is basically impossible.

Had to wait 18 months for a consultation with NHS for an eye issue and then another ~6months to wait for an op, the problem is it seems most private clinics won't do a GA.
 
Our employers give private healthcare and a colleague opted out of it shortly before having a stroke. He was treated under the aNHS and had to wait ages for physiotherapy etc.

I used it for physiotherapy on a MCL injury and it got set up straight away.
 
Our work is with BUBA, sadly they don’t offer it to family so I’m currently going through getting wife and kids their own policy, probably looking at around £90 pcm because of the outpatient banding of £500/£1000/Unlimited. Choosing unlimited adds around £30 pcm to the policy :(

Might give them a call and see if they can give me a discount on the basis that I’m with them through work. I hate having to have it, I hate the government for what they are doing to the NHS and I hate the fact that I’m in a way supporting its demise. All that said though, people are dying waiting for treatment.
 
tonys said:
I didn't say it was crazy to cancel. What I said was, all the private healthcare did was to allow them to see a consultant
and get treatment quicker. The way in which they would have been treated would have been the same all apart from the time factor.
Click to expand...
No, this simply isn't true. It isn't just speed although that's a huge benefit along with the working to your schedule and nicer surroundings.
The other big benefit is that privately all your consultations, diagnosis and surgery will be done by the consultant himself. On the NHS you have a huge team of trainee and junior doctors working for the consultant who do most of the work. This is a significant difference in treatment.
 
Last edited:
SPG said:
I am firmly believer the NHS is not underfunded its just very very very badly managed.
Click to expand...
Yeah, it's easy to blame management and I'm sure it is less than great. But it's also interesting to look at funding (ONS data from 2019) compared to other countries:

UK: £2989
Norway: £4596
Ireland: £3510
France: £3737
Spain: £2444
Canada: £3647

So it does look as though our funding levels could benefit from being improved. Plus maybe get some managers in from those public healthcare systems that seem to work better. My brother lives in Spain and is very pleased with the system out there on the couple of occasions he has used it.
 
Hodders said:
Yeah, it's easy to blame management and I'm sure it is less than great. But it's also interesting to look at funding (ONS data from 2019) compared to other countries:

UK: £2989
Norway: £4596
Ireland: £3510
France: £3737
Spain: £2444
Canada: £3647

So it does look as though our funding levels could benefit from being improved. Plus maybe get some managers in from those public healthcare systems that seem to work better. My brother lives in Spain and is very pleased with the system out there on the couple of occasions he has used it.
Click to expand...
My intuition based on those numbers is that funding is about right after applying GDP per capita.
 
jaybee said:
I had previously heard that NHS - despite the awful rep these days - were actually quite good with cancer wait times and accelerated action when dealing with cancer stuff? Is that not the case? What are people's experiences of it?
It's my main fear...me or the wife get a lump and then have to wait so long that it could have been stopped if action taken earlier. For that private, is priceless.
Click to expand...
My Aunty was taken into a room and told by a really non empathetic consultant that she maybe had 8 months to live and all the NHS could offer was Chemo. He then pretty much ended the conversation and said is that all and left. Her bowl tumor had apparently metastasised in her lung and one other place.

This was after coming back and fourth tot he accident and emergency 4 times and being sent home with a stomach that had bloated up so big she looked like she was pregnant. The final time they realised there was a blockage which turned out to be a tumour in her bowl and had an emergency operation to remove it. They had failed to catch it earlier.
In any case, we searched for treatment elsewhere and ended up in Germany where they did targeted chemo/laser ablation and a few other things. Here we are a year later and she is doing well and her cancers are in remission, now she is on watch.

If we had not found her treatment in Germany she would be dead, this country completely fails people on a daily basis. Our NHS is broken on so many levels.

My mother went through similar issues, she got diagnosed with a brain tumor but not before being sent away from the hospital 5x being told she is fine and its just her sugar levels (diabetese) that were out of control which were causing her symtoms. Not once did they do a CT scan until the 5th time where we ACCIDENTLY got seen by a senior consultant who recognized these issues were likely neurological. On two occasions she said she felt like she was dying, she was so weak and was still sent away. Thankfully that last visit and the consultant caught it and it got treated swiftly. The nightmare didn't end there however because she contracted meningitis due to negligent aftercare which I just don't really want to get into, last year was hell.

In the end she came out of it okay but she is EXTREMELY lucky not to have cognitive issues.

I guess what I'm trying to say is they are ******* **** at identifying and detecting anything, trying to get the right scans and tests done trying to be taken seriously is where the NHS is failing completely. Once they identify the issue they generally are quick to respond but they are limited, see my aunties case.

I will be getting private insurance now and never relying on the NHS for anything serious, its a ******* shambles. It depresses me.
 
I don't have it through work anymore and paid a few years myself, was like £1500 a year but we got way more back out of it for my wife's conditions before they jacked the price up unsurprisingly.

Now we use the one where it only kicks in if the NHS can't see you within x number of weeks, as it's only a few hundred a year.

If work are offering you less than £200 for full cover I would rip their arms off, if you do ever need it then you'll easily get £5-10ks worth out of it for even relatively minor stuff.

With the NHS it's complete pot luck as to whether the person you see knows what they are doing or gives a **** what might be wrong with you. At one point we had 2 years of seeing the GP with no diagnosis, a single private health check/blood test and they said "it looks like you could have this", took it back to the GP and they went, "oh, yeah, it's probably that, here have pills for the rest of your life" (hypothyroid).
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom