Whats the point of the NHS?
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My girlfriend was diagnosed with this (same as you after suffering with it for well over 1 and a half years) initially but then it turned out to be Crohns Disease after further tests and runs on various antibiotics.
She gets by OK but it does flare up from time to time which is a pain. I'm just bewildered why she has to pay for her prescription when its basically a life long condition and she will need the meds for the rest of her life!
UC is bad enough I'm glad it wasn't crohns. Although as strange as it seems my OH's nan was diagnosed with colon cancer at the same time (similar symptons) a few weeks of treatment and she's ok. It kinda makes me think that I wish I had, had that instead.
Soldato
Soldato
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I think one of the major issues now, is that the NHS still tries to do everything. Medical science has progressed much in the last sixty years and splitting patients into medical and surgical as we always did harps back to a bygone era.
Treatment is NOT there waiting. Treatment is run at full capacity for most of the time, so the service is efficient. Treatment unless emergency in nature is waited for, and often for significant periods.
We do less tests than othr nations, we have less followup, as we cant afford to pay for it.
The point of the nhs is to provide universal, adequate healthcare free and point of use. A noble idea that has become twisted by trying to do too much and treating the user with utter contempt, combined with conditioning a population to not really care about their health because treatment is free, when in reality other people are forced to pay for your needs and the consequence of choices.
Soldato
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Last point is certainly true.
Dental health in southern Ireland versus northern Ireland, and the difference is amazing, the decays rates, the incidence of children needing GA extractions. In Norn Iron less than 50% pay for their dentistry, in the south everyone does.
Same can be applied across the board, the amount of obese fat slobs who come in to me saying the doctor can do nothing for them, and its their diabetes which is giving all their problems is disturbing.
Dental health in southern Ireland versus northern Ireland, and the difference is amazing, the decays rates, the incidence of children needing GA extractions. In Norn Iron less than 50% pay for their dentistry, in the south everyone does.
Same can be applied across the board, the amount of obese fat slobs who come in to me saying the doctor can do nothing for them, and its their diabetes which is giving all their problems is disturbing.
Soldato
I think the NHS is good for 2 reasons, the poor who wouldn't other wise be able to afford health care and those who require immediate life threatening treatment. The problem is for everything else for people that pay a decent amount of tax expect a speedier service but it's just one giant queue ride.
MW
MW
Soldato
Just utter cobblers. I've just had a stint in coronary care and it was second to none. The staff were excellent, professional and caring. The patients medical need are always at the top of the list. I doubt I'd last a week working under the sort of pressure they deal with every day. I'm sure that repeated in wards all over the UK.
One of the problems with the NHS is that it has become a pawn of successive governments who try to use it as a means of scoring points with the public. Reform after reform, chase this, chase that. Waist millions on computer systems that never come to fruition. Everything is laid at their door. It's got nothing to do with the NHS, that we have a country that eats to excess, sits on their backside. Heart disease, diabetes, obesity, all preventable without ever going near hospital. The big push in the future has to be prevention, otherwise the pot will be empty form many.
Queues can be seen as negative or positive things.
The NHS cant sprawl infinitely and effectively into all aspects of healthcare. It delivers basic and urgent care pretty well and more complex things get considered as worth approving or not then queued up to be done when possible.
The NHS cant sprawl infinitely and effectively into all aspects of healthcare. It delivers basic and urgent care pretty well and more complex things get considered as worth approving or not then queued up to be done when possible.
Every-time i have had the misfortune of going to hospitals and the GP the front line staff have been fantastic. The trouble starts when i went to one of the "consultants" who seemed to think he was way way better than anyone around them. We need to pay them less so we can have more of them. There job is not that special anymore.
Soldato
Have admit I've had consultants I've been less comfortable with than others.
But I think therein lies some of the problem. We have government imposed targets on all manner of things, some sensible some ridiculous. Chasing "targets" has become a preoccupation and a focus instead of treating patients to the best of their ability not looking for this months "tally"
We have a bizarre system that says the more people you treat the more funding you get.. Up to a point!! If you treat more people than you predicted, you start to get less money per patient over and above your limit.. which is just crazy.
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Caporegime
If you pay consultants less they'll just leave. Everyone in medicine in the uk could be making more money elsewhere.
Medicine is a very high risk career with low financial reward. I fact I think wages will go up as 24hr working comes in.
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Soldato
Yup, and many of them will be working throughout Xmas, while we're all at home topping up our cholesterol and hammering our livers.. Ho ho ho..
To counter your anecdote, I would bring in gp opening hours and the weekend death rates differences to highkight the failure to respond to the needs of the patientd vs the staff.
This is not to say you cannot get good care with the nhs, but it is far too variable and poorly focused in many areas.
Man of Honour
Why don't you go to another country then where you would have had to pay a £250 to see the nurse in the first place.
My mum was recently diagnosed with Acromegaly and had brain surgery around a month ago. Before she went for numerous tests and scans which without the NHS would have run in the x0,000s. She is still having tests now and probably will do forever - not to mention the steroid drugs she has been given along with others.
In somewhere like the US she would either be dead or need very good private health care to cover the cost (which are probably into the £x00,000s now)
I suppose it all balances out that luckily hardly any of my family get ill and we have always put in.
What I dont understand is how people who never put anything in (along with their entire family sometimes) can just take, take take
In somewhere like the US she would either be dead or need very good private health care to cover the cost (which are probably into the £x00,000s now)
I suppose it all balances out that luckily hardly any of my family get ill and we have always put in.
What I dont understand is how people who never put anything in (along with their entire family sometimes) can just take, take take
Soldato
You have my sympathies fella, i was on Prednisolone for 4 months & had an awful time with it, as if the UC wasn't bad enough the side effects from the steroids nearly cracked me noodle, terrible mood swings ranging from crushing depression to raging anger with a side order of mental confusion just for good measure.
Now i'm just on a maintenance dose of Pentassa, which has kept me ticking over quite nicely so far.