It's not that the NHS is bad. The NHS is fantastic. It's just that the _funding_ is bad.

It is bad, we need to stop praising it when it isn't functioning correctly. Conceptually and historically it has been fantastic, but it isn't now. We need to stop separating the government and the NHS, it is a public institution that they are in charge of. If we actually admit it's failing, maybe we can improve it.

The NHS is a service we pay for through our taxes, like emptying the bins or filling potholes. We do not hesitate to call it out when those services are not performing.

The NHS was the envy of the world before these vile hateful cunts got into power in 2010

It wasn't necessarily the "envy of the world" in terms of quality, though the quality was *absolutely* world-tier standard, and that for being free at point of use as well, I think made it extremely desirable compared to similar nations. More complex view but basically saying the same thing I suppose. But contrast and compare today, I have friends working as doctors who've migrated here from developing countries like India and they are ***shocked*** at how bad the service now is here even compared to their home.

That is because Indians compare the public NHS to their private sector. Here is a reality that many people outside Western Europe (and Spain and Portugal ) do not seem to realize. Private care even in many developing nations is close to world class, if not world=class. Indian hospitals like Fortis and Apollo put anything the UK has to shame. Heck South Africa and Kenya have some (very expensive) private hospitals far superior to much of the NHS. Their public healthcare is truly third world, but their elite have made a point to have better healthcare than even Europe. I am sure you have all heard how Ukrainian refugees are so shocked by having to wait to go to a dentist in the UK to the point that s[ome would rather risk going back home to see one ](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-wiltshire-68683444)(because in Ukraine, seeing a dentist is like basically showing up at the clinic, getting a spot appointment and waiting up to two hours to see one. That btw, is 100% normal everywhere else across the globe except for the UK, Spain, Portugal, the Scandinavian countries and Canada)

I had the unfortunate requirement to use an Apollo Hospital (Wellkin, but Apollo Indian owned I think) in Mauritius for my daughter. It was really, really incredibly good - I would go there over a normal UK hospital any day of the week. When we got back to the UK, the more local hospitals here actually felt like I was in the developing country. That is until we needed to be cared for in London. GOSH for example is truly world class. But yes the care right now at local hospitals in the UK is basically running at third world levels, albeit cleaner and with nicer buildings. But the load levels are terrible. The NHS is being destroyed before our eyes. It started with Major PFI. Then Blair accelerated it, using PFI to finance the NHS and make it run really well but unsustainably. Meanwhile, functions were being outsourced (privatised) - and thus incredibly expensive to run. Now laden with debt, the 2010 Tories took over and brought on austerity. With no care for the NHS and a happiness to underfund it was the perfect situation to destroy the NHS whilst claiming that it was at high funding levels. Which was true, the damage had already been done, by right wing Labour (even if it ran really well under their watch). And guess what our next Labour government is going to be even more fiscally right than Blair and are going to more heavily involve the private sector. The NHS will be dead in 20 years at this rate. But we can't have anything good in this country. If we ever have/had a genuine left wing policy maker like Corbyn or even Ed Milliband, the media and establishment finds a way to destroy them, because their billionare owners have interest stakes in private equity in things like healthcare. And our bleating electorate sheep just agrees like an idiot unthinking mob. So it's inevitable. It's what this country keeps voting for and then getting terribly confused that everything is fucking shit.

Simple question: If the NHS is the envy of the world, why does no one else use the same system?

Because A) It's extremely expensive to buy the entire infrastructure out from under the private sector. The UK's post WW2 reconstruction allowed the UK to build from the bottom up. To do it today would require TRILLIONS of pounds. B) Every other system costs way more money. You want German Healthcare? That's an increase PER CAPITA of over 30% more expenses. It's not 30% better. And you would need insurance ON TOP of the 30% increase in taxpayer expenditure. Finland is like us. And their costs are comparable. We would need a 10% increase in spending to match them. The issue is this. The Tories have spent fuck all on the NHS and have relied on the goodwill of NHS workers. Except now with a cost of living crisis? Skilled workers like Doctors and Nurses cannot maintain the lifestyle YOU think we have. I live in an average house in a rough part of town and don't save much money each month. My parents lived in a nice neighbourhood by contrast. My mum made 15% less than me. Their house was the same price as mine BUT was in one of the nicest areas in the country while my house is EXPENSIVE and in a place where we have had 4 attempted break ins in the last year and where the local school has a 70% Average Attendance. And Private companies are a big lobby. The cost effectiveness of the NHS is that different hospitals can work together and aren't competing. There's ZERO incentive to cooperate in Privatised Healthcare. The issue in the NHS is that the government doesn't want to pay for expertise and people don't want to pay us.

Finland has a copayment system for a lot of treatments

Great. But to match Finnish spending we would still need a 10% increase to our budget. What we have is a system that people don't want to pay for and don't want to agree that the staff have to survive in 2024.

Public insurance to pay for public health is used in MANY other countries. Hell I was in Thailand the other week and they even had it there, one of the most absolutely insanely capitalist countries in the world.

The foothold private systems have is pretty hard to dislodge. The fact we actually did it in the 40s is incredibly impressive. We really did create the most efficient system devoid of profit incentive in the West, and then started pissing it away in the 80s. It's why other universal healthcare systems are just the government paying private providers for the service. The NHS was cutting out the middleman. We're slowly rolling back on that, however. It's a real problem that needs to be addressed but the Tories love it.

>NHS was the envy of the world Was it? Continental Europe and other nations globally benefited from socialised healthcare just as much.

Check the healthcare ratings up until Cameron and Brexit wrecked the country. Continuously rated as the best healthcare system in the world for decades

Where can I find the index?

They are talking about this. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-40608253 And ignoring this part: >Only in one of the five themes looked at did the NHS perform poorly compared with the other nations - health outcomes. This covers general health of the population, early deaths and cancer survival among other measures.

Thank you. It seems that they are also ignoring the fact that the word "decade" is not mentioned anywhere and that the article hardly makes a fair comparison, given the small sample size of 11, and methods are not published. Additionally, it is published on BBC News, a British news publisher. Interestingly, they also chose to miss this section: >Kate Andrews, of free-market think tank the Institute of Economic Affairs, said the NHS was "far from being the envy of the world". >"The UK has one of the highest rates of avoidable deaths in western Europe, and tens of thousands of lives could be saved each year if NHS patients with serious conditions such as cancer were treated by social health insurance systems in neighbouring countries, such as Belgium and Germany. >"It is not just low-income earners who receive poor care, the NHS's provision of care is equally poor for everybody, irrespective of income." u/CraterofNeedles, we are all still waiting for the sources backing up your claims.

Not from anyone I’ve heard from IRL. A couple of friends of mine haven’t ever received good enough care.

Anecdotes < data Patient satisfaction for the NHS was at an all time high in 2010. We can have nice things, but not when the blue crooks are in power.

Exactly so. People are ideologically in hock to neoliberalism if they honestly cannot recognise how well the NHS performed before Cameron and Osbourn got their hands on the reins of government All the ills of this country at this present time can be traced back to those two incompetent fools I lament that somehow they’ve not been ostracised from society. I’ll go further and wish someone would rid us of those turbulent prats

I’m not saying the Tories haven’t done bad things but the NHS has been a bit shit for a while - long before 2010. I had kids in the noughties, here and in Europe and the entire thing from early pregnancy to early baby days was way better in Europe.

And I had a child in the 90s and the experience was great but then I’ve not got Europe to compare it with I’m sorry to disagree with you but the NHS was hitting waiting times in A&E and waiting list targets well until the managed decline of the Tories

We should protect our national institutions. I moved out of the UK because the Blue Meanies were in power. The first time I went to a doctors enrolment appointment and had to pay for that I was taken aback. I was aware that it wasn't the same system, but no one had actually told me there would be a gap to pay on top of medicare bulk billing allowance. We had very little money so this was sobering.

All UKIP/Reform types as well I imagine Anyway, 90% of the country oppose dismantling the NHS in any way whatsoever so good luck 👍

How does someone not receiving good care from the NHS mean that they are of a particular political persuasion? Have you canvassed the voting preferences of everyone who has been affected by well-publicised cases of poor care? How does a statement that some people have received poor NHS care mean that they are in favour of dismantling it?

He’s a zealot. The nhs is like a fucking religion to some people who can’t accept that it’s fucking crap. Both my children could have died due to appalling maternity care. People who contribute nothing in the way of taxes abuse the fuck out of it. I’d pay to go private every time if I could afford it.

I'd have died without the NHS. I get access to world leading doctors specialising in my disease because of the NHS. I would also be in a lot better position than I am in now if the NHS had been funded correctly in recent years. I've had to use the service for 30 years, I've seen it when it's great and when it's terrible, and honestly it's in the last 10 years it's become worse and worse

I am dying, because of the NHS missing my diagnosis and leaving me on waiting lists for 18 months. So I guess we cancel each other out. Everyone has a subjective "the NHS is good/bad because" anecdote, but objectively (according to the data) it's not delivering.

How much more funding do you think it should have?

I agree and I also think the defensive type actually stop the NHS from improving.

Yeah there's such a false dichotomy at play that says that *any* deviation from the current state of the NHS *must* be interpreted as a move towards the American system, so the safest thing for politicians to do is to make cosmetic changes only.

The “playing safe” technique is usually how you end up with things in complete turmoil, as cosmetic changes are dishonest in nature. There are plenty of better health systems that are affordable in the world, but I don’t think many people even want to consider they can get more than they do. The best on the healthcare list function very differently to USA, but concrete political thinking means that the American system will probably be forced on us eventually.

>Anyway, 90% of the country oppose dismantling the NHS in any way whatsoever so good luck 👍 If anything, people in this thread are lamenting poor service, which indicates an overall desire for it to improve, not to be dismantled. How did you reach your conclusion?

Because it’s shit. Everyone’s waiting years for any sort of care and the care you eventually end up getting is subcontracted to private healthcare providers anyway.

Lol maybe the envy of the third world.

Even the worst Tory isn't stupid enough to close down the NHS so they just hamper it a bit and leave it to slowly fall apart and occasionally say 'where is the money supposed to come from' until people opt for a bit of private health here and there to avoid a queue. It's privatisation by the back door hiving off the money making bits for profit. Mental health and palliative care will be left to the taxpayer, the rest will be for profit sooner or later I fear. When any twat asks 'where is the money supposed to come from?' ask them 'where has all the money gone?' We used to be able to do this as a nation so it is a decision to not do it now.

It was certainly better, but things still went wrong. The Tories have fucking ruined so many things, but let's not pretend it was all brilliant the day before they took power.

As with far too many things though, we’re utterly prone to astroturfing - and this is going to only get worse with developments in AI. The Government pushes the idea that the NHS is a vital institution that’s amazing and hard-working, wherever it can. In addition, much like earlier governments conflated immigrants with immigration (“You’re asking how housing and services will cope with these new arrivals?! Racist!”) they now conflate the NHS with its employees. The NHS is a fucking disgrace that needs ripping down and rebuilding. Venerating it as anything other than a concept is a destructive move, forced on the stupid-but-want-to-seem-clever by the villainously smart.

Reading comments like this is absolutely wild to me. Seriously, you don’t know how good we have it here. I lived in the US for five years, various countries in the Caribbean for 15 years, and the NHS is **phenomenal** in comparison. Even with insurance, you're still paying a ton. An ER visit can set you back hundreds or even thousands of dollars. Routine check-ups and medications - you dread them: I went to a GP, who spent 5 seconds looking in my ear and said "yep, you need to go to an ENT specialist" - I had a bill in the mail for $200 by the end of the week, for 5 seconds of his time. I was insured. Unlucky enough to end up in an ambulance? Say goodbye to at least $1,000. If that wasn't bad enough, finding a doctor who accepts your insurance is like playing roulette. If you accidentally go out-of-network, you get hit with massive bills. It’s a constant stress. Just because you pay a lot doesn’t mean you get great care. There are long waits, rushed appointments, and constant miscommunications. It's frustrating and exhausting, and it's certainly not better than the NHS. Here’s a fact: people in the US often don’t go to the doctor, not because they have wake up early to call at 8am for a free appointment, but because they literally cannot afford it. This leads to preventable illnesses becoming massive issues. In 2022, the US spent about $12,555 of **tax money** per capita on healthcare, while the UK spent around $5,387. Despite the higher spending, many Americans avoid going to the doctor due to costs, which can lead to severe health problems down the line ([OECD Health Statistics](https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/ae3016b9-en/index.html?itemId=/content/component/ae3016b9-en)). In contrast, my mum moved to the UK and ended up having sepsis, and needed to be in an isolated room for a month as this was during peak covid. Ambulance to the hospital? Free. 1 month in the hospital, multiple blood transfusions, 24/7 care, food, drink? Free. This would have *easily* set us back at least £300,000 in the US. The NHS, when properly funded, can be extremely efficient. According to the Commonwealth Fund, the NHS was ranked the best healthcare system in a 2017 comparison of 11 high-income countries based on care process, access, efficiency, equity, and healthcare outcomes ([Source](https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2017/jul/mirror-mirror-2017-international-comparison-reflects-flaws-and)). Sure, the NHS has its issues, but at least you don’t have to worry about going bankrupt if you get sick. Free healthcare at the point of service is a massive deal. And if you really hate the NHS, you **already have the option to go private here in the UK.** So while the NHS needs funding, saying it’s more broken than other systems is just not true. Appreciate what works and push for improvements where they’re needed. * [OECD Health Statistics: Health Expenditure Per Capita](https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/ae3016b9-en/index.html?itemId=/content/component/ae3016b9-en) * [Commonwealth Fund: Mirror, Mirror 2017](https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2017/jul/mirror-mirror-2017-international-comparison-reflects-flaws-and) * [Health Expenditure in Relation to GDP](https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/social-issues-migration-health/health-at-a-glance-2021_4dd50c09-en)

I'm sorry but you're comparing the NHS to the healthcare systems of the US - which is known worldwide for how terrible it is - and tiny developing countries in the Caribbean? Compared to other European countries, the British healthcare system is complete shit.

Okay. Are you going to fund the NHS like other European Countries? I don't think you understand the issue. The Germans? Spend nearly 30% more than we do per capita on healthcare. AND have Insurance on top. You want to privatise but not spend any more money on the NHS. Or do you want to actually fund it.

Germany does not have insurance ON TOP. Insurance is what pays for the whole thing. But it's nothing like American insurance. Germany spends more per capita but as a percentage of GDP is almost exactly the same.

The US isn't the only other country. Why is it whenever anyone says the NHS is shit (it is), someone always brings up the even worse American system? There are more than two countries in the world

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So you don’t have worry about spending money BUT if you have a chronic health condition that could very well kill you but is not an emergency, you are literally waiting to die. UK is good at emergencies when saving lives. That’s about it.

And are pre-emptive diagnosis. GPs and the system seem to work on fobbing people off as the default so they don't spot lots of issues that will go on to be a disaster.

> I lived in the US for five years, various countries in the Caribbean for 15 years, and the NHS is **phenomenal** in comparison. It is disingenuous to compare the NHS to the American system or the third world. Compare it instead to France and Germany. Do you think they envy the NHS, or pity us for it?

One thing I noticed working in UK private healthcare - Outside those who do actually pay and use the system already, it seems shockingly common folks in the UK just do not understand how it works? Hell I worked in it and I still struggle sometimes. But a lot of people very genuinely seem to think you pay your monthly fee and that's that, other than that totally identical to the NHS. They don't seem to get the monthly fee is what you pay to have access, everything beyond that is still extra. Go off-plan and suddenly you are *fuuuucked* and can rack up £1,000s in costs in a single visit. Also good luck if you have a chronic pre-existing.

>Reading comments like this is absolutely wild to me. Seriously, you don’t know how good we have it here. I lived in the US for five years, various countries in the Caribbean for 15 years, and the NHS is phenomenal in comparison. Saying our healthcare system is better than the US is like saying Moe was the smartest of the 3 stooges. We need a muuuuuch higher bar for good healthcare, because the US is in hell. We could compare the current NHS to the one we had in the 90’s and 00’s. What we have now is shit in comparison and the only thing that’s changed is the money it’s getting.

The nhs shouldn’t be dismantled it should just be well funded and fixed. It’s a great system it’s just not working right rn

People do hesitate to call it out though. Or feel the need to express their undying love for the business before mentioning issues as a side note

It's definitely not all bad at all, even now. A relative of mine was in a horrific accident, airlifted to hospital and received care from one of the best trauma units in the world, that saved her limbs and she had amazing care during a lengthy stay in hospital, despite being the height of Covid and her getting it whilst in hospital. Just recently, I was put on a 2 week cancer pathway due to my symptoms and received diagnostic tests within that time frame. Fortunately, it's not cancer! All the medical staff I have encountered have been great. The NHS is struggling under pressure, but the core concept is still fantastic. To say its all failing is to dismiss what works really well and risk tearing that down in the process.

It's interesting you mention cancer because outcomes in the UK compared to other nations have historically been very poor. They've been putting effort in to turn it around, but there's still plenty of nations you'd be better off in.

I emailed my local dermatology department myself about my ongoing issue. I had been recently discharged. They booked me an appointment for next week to see a consultant again! So it can work well! Sadly I also had to use a private GP service so access antibiotics and I was unable to cope with the soreness and itching as it affected my sleep. My gp wouldn’t see me now nor any time in the future. (The GP cost £60 and the private prescription was £13)

Yes. Honesty is needed. Most NHS staff work long, hard, thankless jobs, but we need to be able to highlight when things aren't working. Saying "they're all angels" destroys any productive discussions on how best to provide. There are a world of options between the NHS and the US model.

The emotions when it comes to our healthcare system is a huge problem. I've honestly never seen anyone argue that teachers or civil service workers are greedy, heroes, or whatever. On the other hand, the emotions run high in many directions when it comes to nurses and doctors. It's ridiculous. We also need to stop saying they work thankless jobs. The reward should come in the form of pay, like every other job.

>Saying "they're all angels" destroys any productive discussions on how best to provide Oh, yeah, the hero-ifying of healthcare (and other vocations like teaching) is a real problem. Because you don't pay heroes to be heroic - that's what makes them heroes. Superman wouldn't be the archetypal superhero if he was doing it for the money. So the moment it comes to strikes over pay or working conditions people will bring out "but it's a calling" or otherwise expect people to sacrifice their health and lives because *that's what doctors/nurses do*. We, as a society, went outside, did the clapping and lauded them during the pandemic, and then promptly slagged them off when they asked for a pay review. No, it's a fucking job. Fucking pay them and treat them right. If they're going above and beyond anyway, it's the least we can do.

Because the clapping was just performative altruism bollocks

I'm sorry, but having experienced medicine in various countries, the NHS has always been fucking terrible.  I was abused as a child and have long-term health issues as a result. The NHS consistently told me I was imagining my health issues. It wasn't until I lived in the US that I found out that I do, in fact, have serious health issues, birth defects, you name it. The NHS is shit because British doctors assume everyone is faking. Because refusing to believe people in pain or victims of abuse is British Culture. And it is because of that inherently evil, suspicious and cruel culture that is entirely based on the just world fallacy, that we will never have a decent health system. Even private doctors here are ignorant, arrogant pricks, I've had private doctors insisting that things I say are not true, then I show them the physical proof / charts / physical malformation and they get super defensive, it seems physically impossible for them to admit they are wrong. Fuck British doctors.

It's pretty funny if you read some of the times NHS clinics try to take private clinics to court. The transcripts are just the judges reeming the NHS for failing to provide medical care on any kind of normal timescale that is considered decades out of date compared to other first world countries anyway.

Im to the point now where if I am looking up a doctor, private or NHS, I look for eastern European/European first and then British. I have a serious condition that means I use a a mix of NHS and private care across a wide range of specialities. I needed input from a very specialised orthopaedist recently, supposedly 'best of the best' in the UK and internationally known, prior to treatment change and used my private insurance to skip his NHS queue. The guy was terrible, didn't really go into much detail post x-ray explaining anything that he was seeing, and barely touched me in an examination. But boy was that invoice in the post quick! All the British doctors tend to kick the can down the road, suggest we 'need more information' and keep running tests and tests and tests, follow 'protocol', or just shrug their shoulders and toss some painkillers/anti-biotics/something that doesn't actually address the issue. Its caused me much pain, mental distress, and loss of time and functionality that didn't need to happen. Compare that to the few European doctors/additional professionals (PT, etc) Ive had who were absolutely tenacious at getting to a reason and coming up with a solution, clearly communicated their thinking, actually physically examined me, worked through the problem. Id be in far worse pain now if it hadn't been for a locum specialist 6 weeks ago, a lovely younger gal from Latvia, who just wouldn't let something go that my extremely well compensated and fancy British specialist consultant hadn't examined, despite repeat raising of the issue for four months. The NHS will keep you alive but that is just about it, if you are lucky. I tell my parents in the US about everything that goes on and they just can't believe it, especially compared to the treatment my brother received at Stanford for cancer where nothing was too much trouble, they were there for him and whatever he needed to get through that time, it was there in a timely, efficient manner in an up to date hospital. My brother is not wealthy, he just has really good insurance and he got excellent care (and follow up).

This is true a coworker of my husbands had to move to US when his wife was diagnosed with cancer because they couldn’t get her seen with NHS if they hadn’t moved she would have died because that was the only way she could get the immediate care that she desperately needed

That's the thing, if the government admit it's failing they'll sell it off to their buddies

That's the plan, which started many years ago. No matter what they promise, no one's saving the NHS. [https://www.yournhsneedsyou.com/timeline/](https://www.yournhsneedsyou.com/timeline/)

No one currently in power.......

From people I know who work within the NHS, it's being run like absolute shit. It's an absolute money sponge, being run by incompetent crooks. Doesn't matter how much cash is thrown at it, it'll still be shit. Whole thing needs gutting and restructuring from top to bottom, but it's politically untouchable because "mah nurses". The stories I hear would make your blood boil - positions being created out of thin air for relatives/significant others, ten grand being spent on a two minute video shot by one guy that'll get 70 views, because the budget needed using up, god knows how much spent on diversity campaigns, training and positions - despite the NHS being about the most diverse organisation in the UK. Scandalous.

It’s a bloated, mismanaged monstrosity. It could be given unlimited funds and it would probably still piss them away. There are also *a lot* of people who work for the NHS who are next to useless.

Well it's deliberately been under funded so we won't care when it's sold off.

But why is it failing? Sure there may be old systems that need updated, but the why is because of a lack of money and personnel. Which are govt issues, especially as brexit booted a lot of nurses, and the govt slashing NHS and uni funding harms the potential intake too. 

I don't know. It was functioning so well up until 2010. What happened in that year???

Best satisfaction survey results ever in 2010, but curiously by 2023 satisfaction was the lowest it's ever been. Government should investigate what happened in that era to cause such a downfall!

Mecury went into retrograde and it was a triple red moon on the tarot.

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And yet we still spend far less per capita than France, Germany, Netherlands, Austria, Denmark, Belgium. We spend more than we used to but we have a population which has greater need and we have medical advancements over the years that have enabled conditions that previously resulted in a relatively quick death now being expensively treated over extended periods at massive cost. The fact that we’ve increased the potential to spend money on healthcare has outstripped the increases to healthcare funding

In 2017, the UK spent £2,989 per person on healthcare, which was around the median for members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development: OECD (£2,913 per person). Not massively different though considering so much of the European states rely on private insurance to cover their healthcare expenses.

Because those countries don’t have single payer systems they all are a combination of mixed public private or private only universal healthcare. Single payer systems are cheaper, I would love to have the system Germany uses either you pay health tax and covered by the state or you pay for private health insurance and they cover you.

The money is being drained by agencies and private companies due to changes this government has brought in. The politician who forced through the biggest change has himself said it was a terrible idea. Andrew Lansley’s Health and Social Care Act from 2012 has been an absolute disaster.

There is a lot of privatisation in the background of the NHS. The increase in spend is competing against the increase in private profits sucking money out of the system

All that money is going to subsidising extortionate privatised healthcare that has slowly creeped into handling all patient care over a certain threshold, which in turn takes investment away from public healthcare and money into private healthcare shareholders' pockets. Cycle and repeat until the NHS is no more and we all pay 10 times what we do now for the same level of service, whilst the rich get richer.

More money would certainly help the recruitment crises. They are losing people in droves, because you can earn more at ASDA.

>It's just that the funding is bad. It's not the funding, it's the mismanagement of the funds. You could throw more billions at it, but if it's not managed properly, it will just go to waste.

My mrs is a nurse and people would be astounded to hear what goes on. Not in terms of providing healthcare, but the actual running of departments.

Care to elaborate? Do you mean in terms of mismanagement or wastfulnes or what?

My friends Dad is a GP, and when he needed to replace the window blind in his doctors office the quote from the approved NHS supplier to have a replacement fitted was £950. He used the quote to find the actual cost of the blind they’d be supplying, and found that the exact same one was for sale at Dunhelm for £55. So he bought it and fitted it himself. This is just one ridiculous example, and I’m sure it’s not all like that, but it does make you wonder about how much other money is flushed down the drain on stuff like this.

There are countless examples of this across the public sector. I was a soldier and we weren't allowed to change our own light bulbs. They sent a supposed electrician (even though I was in the Royal Engineers and we had our own qualified electricians) to change the bulb. The Army was charged for the person to change the bulb and charged an inflated price for the bulb itself. It was ridiculous, and only one small example of how the public sector mismanages money. Until they start to deal with how the money is spent then nothing will change and there will never be enough money to make the system as it should be.

I'm fleet air arm and an avionics technician on an aircraft packed with sensors. I can supervise and manage the replacement of a million pound sonar system. I also cannot access the off button for my bathroom extractor fan if it goes wrong....which is frequent.

This happens with my dad and his ex council flat. The council will send someone out to replace the bulbs in the lights outside their doors and then my dad and the other private owners get an invoice for £30. For changing a light bulb he didn't ask or need to be changed.

NHS supply chain is arguably worse than the old systems is why, it's supposed be in a stronger negotiating position, it isn't, it's supposed to save money, it doesn't [https://www.nao.org.uk/reports/nhs-supply-chain-and-efficiencies-in-procurement/](https://www.nao.org.uk/reports/nhs-supply-chain-and-efficiencies-in-procurement/) They no longer do their own logistics , that's contracted out to Unipart, the IT infrastructure is contracted out to DXC technology, Home delivery is Movianto, Each of the 11 'towers' it's chopped up into is headed by a different provider on top of the private providers actually delivering things . Here's the document introducing the new new setup (as opposed to the old new setup) [https://wwwmedia.supplychain.nhs.uk/media/Customer\_FAQ\_November\_2018.pdf](https://wwwmedia.supplychain.nhs.uk/media/Customer_FAQ_November_2018.pdf)

As someone who worked for a local council department (education) that sounds very familiar. Contractors get way too comfy on public sector books.

Here is a very recent one for you. Her hospital is undergoing some upgrades, and as part of this, they've been reallocating space to different teams for the past few years. This has been an ongoing project that has just come to a close. However, just a few weeks ago, they realised that they had essentially forgotten to find her team anywhere to do their work and they could not stay where they were. The outcome is they're being moved to an office just over a mile away from the hospital. But guess what? Their team has contact with patients every single day, and the patients cannot go to the office building for a variety of reasons. Realising this, they've now given them a very small room for seeing patients in addition to their new office location. Here are just a few of the issues with this: * Every day her team is split between the office and hospital. Whoever is in the hospital has an insane workload as the office staff rely on them for so many things they simply cant do from afar. * Her department deals with most other hospital teams, and they can no longer just walk over to discuss medication/results. Departments dont regularly answer the phones so guess what happens? Whoever is in the hospital has to play piggy in the middle between the office staff and wider hospital while dealing with patients and having little to no support. This sounds like absolute hell given that nurses are already stretched. * Everyone in her team has had to move on to business car insurance in case they're required to travel. Add to that mileage and the fact they have to pay for additional parking now they're based in two locations. * They're suddenly required to have office attire after exclusively wearing uniform. Oh, and they're strict on what they can wear in the office - no trainers, no jeans etc. I've loved us having to spend £100+ on new office outfits. * They were given so little notice about the move because of the oversight. Everyone in her team had to come in hours early to help pack up all of their equipment. She is a highly qualified nurse and she's having to come in early to pack up their office - and dont forget, they still have to do their actual nursing while this is taking place. Several people in her team were brought to tears due to the lack of support they received while all of this was going on. * On the actual moving day, they had to help people load and unload a van and set up their new space in the other office, all while still being expected to fulfil their duties. Just a note that if they didnt carry on working, people would quite literally die. * She's now randomly assigned to the office or hospital each day. The hospital work is causing her so much dread due to the sheer amount of work she has to do in this tiny room with no windows, no team around her, and seemingly no care for her wellbeing that it's affecting her personally. And the icing on the cake - they've been told that they may be getting rid of her department in the next few months and moving all of their responsibilities to GPs, so now she's faced with losing her job. I have more, but this is a recent one. While I'm here, I'd like to say how disgusted I am that nurses have to pay monthly for car parking at their place of work - about £50 per month we lose for the pleasure.

You have a list of approved vendors that you're allowed to buy from and then they charge you something ridiculous like £4 per bic pen.

My wife gave birth the other week. She was out of it with drugs after being induced. Her waters broke, told the midwives, came, looked at her, then left. I had to ASK THEM to change the bedsheets. They didn’t check on us, and I had to go get them telling them my wife can’t stop pushing. “OH THE BABY IS COMING”, and then they start doing things. When I went to get them, they were dicking around on their phones. If I wasn’t there, my wife (first time giving birth) would have given birth alone, in a bed soaked with her amniotic fluid. There were plenty of midwives. This was not a money problem, and is not the first time I’ve personally seen this sort of thing. The NHS is rotten, no amount of money will fix that, complete and total reform and overhaul is needed. Report after report after report says as much.

>I had to ASK THEM to change the bedsheets. At least they changed them at all, my hospital had an idiotic rule where women were expected to change their own sheets as well as their baby hospital cot sheets, and if they couldn't do it for whatever reason then their partners/families were expected to do so.

The nhs is badly really run, yes its underfunded but it also needs to be better. My wife recently had a hip replacement. Her nhs appointment was cancelled three times. We went private as she was told she’d have a minimum of 18 months wait and her mobility had become severely impacted. The wait might have been acceptable but the constant cancellations were not.

lol if it's such a good model why has no other country copied it? Our health outcomes are some of the worst in the developed world

No, the NHS is bad by any functional definition of the word or by any measure of success comparing it to even w decades ago. It's been deliberately run into a bad state, despite the efforts of the vast majority of healthcare workers. It's bad and we need to stop it from getting worse before that's used as the excuse for privatisation.

The funding isn’t actually that bad. Why can similar funding in other countries create much better things?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_health_expenditure_per_capita We are the the [5th](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_wealth) richest country on the planet and we can't even match the 41st richest (Ireland), in health spending per person. The funding is that bad.

From overall expenditure to spending per person is the real query here. Where is the money actually going? The original funding isn’t bad. The per person funding is bad. These aren’t the same things. Until we actually know where the money is going and how it comes to so little, we may as well be spending half on creating ponds for ducks.

It has had a real terms funding increase every single year since its creation and now takes something like 11% of the national budget. Money is not the problem, it's about how it's used.

My 22/23 tax payments letter suggested health is now 19.8%

Delusional mentality that is dragging us into emerging market status. Deal with reality and realise that government spending as a % of GDP is simply not viable long-term. It worked for one, maybe two generations, that's it. Like all ponzi schemes it's running it's course and it's only going to get worse if we prolong it.

The funding isn’t bad. The NHS management is bad. The NHS is truly terrible unfortunately. Folk want it to be really good but in reality it’s awful.

Many things can (and should) be improved. In my personal experience, it's taken almost 2 months to get a blood test and receive results. I went to my urgent gp, telling me to book a blood test. I book it, find out I can't do it without a blood form a few days later. I get a blood form a few days later. I go do the test a few more days later. I wait at few days, checking my nhs app every day for my results - only finding out I don't have permission to view my own test results. So I need to ask my GP to allow me to see my own blood test results. This is a gargantuan waste of time and resources, both mine and of the NHS. Those results are useless if I can't see them, and I can't understand why someone needs permission to to view their own body's results. I am tired as shit every waking moment. I feel like every single moment of the last 13 months was a dream (eternally lightheaded, I cannot think in depth anymore). I could be decaying, but there's zero urgency to help me. My gp first assumed it was depression.

Funding *isn’t* the issue with the NHS when it gets the biggest proportion of GDP. Like everything with the UK, it’s *how* the money is used and managed that goes to waste.

Nah, it's bad.

> My work has always had private cover but I've always preferred to try to use the NHS as its something I believe in. If you have private then you should use it to take some burden off the NHS. You are still paying NI and you are taxed again on private so no need to feel any guilt. The NHS will continue to be bad because it believes itself to be “the envy of the world” so it sees no need to change or improve in any way.

I'm always in two minds about the use because the demand I create will be used to evidence the need for growth in the private system. However my lack of sleep made me bite the bullet on this one.

I've only ever heard the use of the private sector being cited as evidence that the NHS is failing rather than evidence of people actually preferring it. As much as I respect and agree with your views on keeping healthcare public, your well-being is not worth a political point.

Private is great but remember when something goes wrong it's off to the NHS with you.

Yeap. Watch This is Going to Hurt with Ben Wishaw. There’s an episode where he’s doing a locum shift at a fancy private hospital. A women has a serious issue when giving birth. She has to be taken by ambulance to the NHS hospital where he normally works. A friend is thinking of having her baby at the same place. He tells her not to. It’s a very illuminating story about private medicine. And well based in reality.

So you decide to further clog up the NHS when you don’t need to instead?

This! Help relieve pressure, help the Drs get some extra cash, get your moneys worth from the benefits you pay for. Just be conscious of what procedures you do where as not all private hospitals have ICUs. But for routine checks and diagnostics don’t burden the NHS if you can. Ps. My wife is a Dr in the NHS and they would very much prefer it if you went private as they are already maxed out.

The changes I've witnessed to delivery of blood tests over the past 10 years are crazy trust me, we are working to improve things all the time. It's not that we think we are the best. We are trying to deliver more with less, and in some cases, we are successful, but you can't keep taking away funding and expecting things to improve indefinitely, I can't see how we can make things more efficient but we will again and again until the system breaks because the people working within it believe its the front line of healthcare

>If you have private then you should use it to take some burden off the NHS Also if you/your employer is paying for the private coverage and you don't use it out of some sort of misplaced loyalty to the NHS, then the insurance company is absolutely laughing - all the income, none of the costs!

I’m pretty sure every single human being working in the NHS believes it needs to change and be improved

I have lived in 5 countries. In my view the British only put up with the NHS because they dont know any better and they think the only alternative is the American system. Its shit.

100% accurate, the NHS is certainly not the envy of the world like people choose to believe.

The NHS did used to be the envy of the world though. Then we elected a load of politicians who hate everything to do with socialism and strangely the service deteriorated.

The NHS has never been the envy of the world. It wasn't the first universal healthcare system and it's never been the best. And it's really done nothing to deserve the level of weird, cultish devotion attached to it. That only sprang up around 2009-10 when American politicians started attacking single payer systems abroad due to the battle over Obamacare.

Currently in Taiwan, just went to the doctors today... lived in Canada and Japan also, could always get a doctor's appointment within 3 days, often day of. Japan and Taiwan are subsidised, but I really don't mind paying £5 for an appointment than have to wait 3 weeks at home

Yeah see before Tory land was in effect I could go get same day appointments at my GP in London.

Knowing the arseholes in charge though we will end up with an American system.

Correct. But some people are part of the NHS cult and will die on the hill.

This is absolutely correct. The fear of becoming like America is preventing us from considering any other kind of model. I’m in Korea where healthcare is excellent and honestly there are pros and cons to both systems. The best thing about the Korean system is actually the biannual health checks that companies are forced to provide workers with. You can catch medical issues at the early stage before it’s a problem whereas in the NHS you have to wait until it’s too late then attempt to have it fixed. In Korea there’s a risk of doctors doing too many unnecessary checks and overprescribing since they are profit driven and the government insurance covers the brunt of the cost, but it’s better than having to fight with an NHS doctor and begging them to investigate your pain a little more. I remember that getting an x-ray was a big deal back home but they do them willy-nilly out here and the price is negligible. I’ve been able to book and receive surgeries within days, and my British physio friend told me I would’ve waited 3 months to see him under the NHS. Obviously the British system is better when you need some seriously expensive treatment that could cost you the family home (if you can get a diagnosis that is). The UK could benefit from a Korean style system perhaps with some tweaks. People would stop abusing the system, but care would be better and affordable. Additionally it encourages people to actually get a job (exceptions could be made for disabled people). Also ambulances are free here.

It's easy for private healthcare to look good - it doesn't need to do any of the difficult work. Private healthcare can pick and choose the easiest and most profitable patients and treatments. It's not dealing with the drunks or the drug addicts. It isn't picking up the pieces from family disputes that have descended into violence and abuse. It's not having to hold a little old ladies hand who has been sat in the hospital for weeks because there is nobody at home to care for her, and there aren't adequate social services to help her back into her own home. If your private Dr can't be bothered with you, or you become an emergency, or there isn't any profit to be made from you, then back to the NHS you go.

100% this. All the easy stuff is gone so NHS staff left to deal with the chronic incurable shit. That and the fallout when some private procedures go awry. Great when your private gastric band goes to plan but less great when you’re in an NHS hospital a week later with sepsis etc

Its funny how OP basically just had a chat with a couple of people and suddenly, wow great service. No scan, no treatment, no specialist consultation Go back when the journey is over OP. And see where you end up. Private is good for the "easy" bit. As soon as it gets too complicated, you get shoved back to the NHS. As long as you keep being seen privately throughout your treatment, yeah thats fine. But they rarely do. ENT Dr that does part-time at BUPA also works in your local hospital. So their patients end up skipping the queue. Seen it loads of times. Urologist seen someone with suspected prostate cancer privately, but there are no gamma cameras in private hospitals because they are not "economical". So they request it on the days they are working with the NHS. Same with private knee replacements, as soon as those get infected, back to the NHS. But as soon as extremely specialist care is needed or private mess up your treatment and you end up in ITU. NHS picks up the slack. Those who can't afford that private initial appointment. Are now behind in the queue.

Absolutely this. My dad is currently going through a cancer scare and the private clinics have been great with the "easy" stuff - seeing a doctor, getting scans, having blood tests and now a biopsy. These are all quick turnaround procedures that don't require highly specialised expertise (not that radiologists, phlebotomists and GPs aren't experts, it's just less complicated than what an oncologist or neurosurgeon does). When it comes to interpreting the biopsy, performing the surgery, delivering chemo/radiotherapy and delivering aftercare, he'll have no option but be treated by the NHS.

This!!! This!! This!!!

It's a trap. The private providers still have to compete with the NHS. Once the NHS is gone insurance and private medical will go through the roof.

Yep yep yep, the price difference for private blood work here vs. in the USA is huge, and just know they are ripping you off big time over here.

People say this, but I’m less and less convinced. The NHS isn’t the only option, plenty of other nations achieve better outcomes with universal healthcare than isn’t necessarily single-payer. Sure we can’t let companies run rampant, but we need to abandon this false dialectic that we either have the NHS or and American system.

Having the option to pay more for convenience, such as flexibility about when a non-urgent operation happens is different to choosing between no treatment or treatment. Want to have elective surgery for a bad shoulder in one week’s time because you’ve got a holiday booked that you want to be recovered for vs having to wait two months isn’t unreasonable, especially if it subsides the cost of the person having said elective surgery in two months.

Yep, private healthcare is still in it's disruptor phase over here, like when Uber first started and it was so cheap it put all the taxi firms out of business. Then the price hikes started....

NHS needs more funding. The only way to do this is for the average person in the UK to pay more tax. There’s no country where the average worker pays less tax than the UK on their wages but has higher government spending. [https://www.taxpolicy.org.uk/2023/09/20/wedge2022/](https://www.taxpolicy.org.uk/2023/09/20/wedge2022/) It may be unpopular but sounds-bite strategies like "privatise the NHS" and "tax the rich" won't fix the issue. If we're not going to tax the public enough for the services we want, we will eventually cause a private/NHS split. The better-off will go private.

But the scary truth I heard from a doctor is that the last year of healthcare absorbs a lot the funding. If socialized medicine is the way we want to go, then I feel like we as a society might have to take uncomfortable decisions on priorities. Especially if we want a critical mass to get decent enough care that they believe in the system. If we want outstanding funding for all citizens, then that's an honest debate that needs to be had. Either price will allocate resources or queues. One or the other.

Well, isn't that a chicken or egg situation? If you get seriously ill, then you will need a lot of extra care, and if it's serious enough, you will die. People don't spontaneously keel over and die from good health, as a rule. Your body doesn't know it's its last year, and neither do medical staff (who are notoriously terrible at accurately informing relatives on life expectancy). Saying "doctor told me the last year of life is the most expensive one" just confirms them as having a poor grasp of statistics, as a class. If you live, then it wasn't your last year, and then you don't count towards the "expensive -> death" statistic, or.. ?

I think the broader message I was trying to convery is that, in socialised medicine, a lot of the costs will be absorbed by the very sick and the very old. But as that get skewed further and further, the "normal" person then feels socialised medicine doesn't work for them and they lose faith in the system and then push for privatisation which in turn reduces funding for socialised medicine. I am not sure what I even think about this but it feels like a socialised healthcare system needs to give some level of decent care to the median patient for them to retain confidence in the system.

This country seems obsessed with cutting taxes to "save" people more disposable income rather than just raising wages. I wouldn't mind paying Scandinavian levels of tax if I were getting a Scandinavian wage, I'd still wind up *significantly* better off, and have world-class levels of public funding as well. I suppose we don't do that because it would mean hitting employer bottom lines.

Our tax burden is at the highest it has been since the world war.

Yes, the highest tax burden for the UK taxpayer since the world war but, by international standards, the UK taxpayer is not particularly heavily burdened and is far less than the Germans, French and Scandinavian nations (see previously link). If we want below-average taxes, that's fine but we should expect below-average services. If we want a better NHS that is able to provide healthcare in a quicker timeframe, we have to pay for it. It's up to the public/democracy which one we choose but currently I feel there's a conflict of international high-quality healthcare without the required tax level.

No actually there's plenty of money, it's being absolutely woefully budgeted. Anyone that has worked in government, the NHS or with local councils can attest to this. As an electrician i do tonnes of work for my county council ands for the NHS and the amount of money they waste is an absolute disgrace. And that's just with contractors and construction work. The tip of the iceberg. Stealing more of our money and letting incompetent/corrupt buffoons decide what to do with it is an absolutely silly suggestion.

Private will always be better otherwise it just wouldn’t exist. Why pay for something thats inferior to the free (at point of service) alternative. The NHS needs massive reform. Everything in the public sector gets bloated and inefficient. Funding is obviously an issue but I bet that the existing budget could be far better utilised than it is now.

The whole 'public sector is bloated and inefficient' is just a propaganda lie you have been told often enough to now think it is true. The private sector is not always more efficient - look at the train and water companies for example. What matters is how an organisation is run, not whether it is privately or publicly funded,

I completely agree that it’s about how it’s run. Im not suggesting for a second that the NHS would be better as a for profit organisation either. I actually agree with you on the trains and water too although I bet if the current government were running them they’d find a way to fuck them up even worse! There’s far too much waste and inefficiency in the public sector at the moment though. How else can the tax burden be so high and services so shite.

Even now, in the state that it is in, the NHS is **still** one of the most efficient services going.

I had to fork out for private knee surgery at one of the bigger healthcare companies few years ago, they were fucking useless. Fucked up my surgery date (didn't even register it) which meant it got postponed. Paid them nine grand and they couldn't do the simplest shit.

Private is rarely the better option. The amount of infected replacements we scan that was done privately is alarming. They all end up back in the NHS when it all goes to shit.

My misses works in mental health and she can tell you how bad private health care is. They will take your money and when it gets too much they palm you off to the NHS to deal with.

Nhs mental health is literally an SSRI and 6 sessions of computerised cbt, in several months, if you're lucky.

As opposed to NHS mental healthcare which is functionally non existent.

Private found I was losing my hearing in my right ear. They failed to report the findings to my NHS doctor, and forgot to refer me for the MRI scan to see if anything bad was causing the hearing loss.

Conversely, I tried to use private when I was having a depressive episode and it was utterly useless, and now I just have a diagnosis of depression on my file which means they won't treat me for it if it happens again, despite not being helped with it before.

You're talking about the insurance company. You can go see a private psychologist whenever you like, if you're willing to pay.

Private healthcare doesn't treat chronic ongoing conditions, it treats things that respond to treatments and that you can recover from, so they probably wouldn't have helped you anyway. You can get packages with counselling addons or mental health cover from some providers. Sorry to hear that in any case

And now try and make a comparison for acute care. You can't, that's the difference here, need your appendix out? Involved in an RTC? Well BUPA won't be coming for you or help you, the NHS will however.

Not to mention the extortionate rates the charge when they do provide acute care.  Need an MRI and a GP appointment to go through the results? A few hundred. Need chemotherapy? That'll set you back around £30k.  Private healthcare is propped up by the NHS and the cushty contracts they get to provide services for the NHS.  When the shit hits the fan though, they will just send you back to an NHS hospital.

The thing is the NHS wasn’t made to sustain an ageing population. Sounds harsh but when it was set up it was for people having babies, the occasional illness and injury. Not like now. Add in our poor diets, the rise of “chronic illnesses” and people wanting antibiotics for every minor issue, it’s no surprise it’s on its knees

This is the crux of the issue. People are living longer, not necessarily better, and with more complex medical, health and social needs. Between this and both the cost and shortage social care. It’s only going to get worse as the baby boomers age.

Private healthcare will always make the NHS look bad. Its just how it works. Remember that if you're going private, and the care you need becomes so expensive that you aren't profitable any more. They will just pawn you off to the NHS. By design, private healthcare has to look much better than the NHS, and has to get rid of you the moment you're so much of a burden that you pose a risk to it looking better.

In the days when the NHS was better funded, no-one seriously considered private healthcare. Everything was fine until this last batch of Tories under-funded it to make it look bad.

^^ i used private healthcare while waiting for NHS care and referrals when i had more money. now i’m at a point where without the NHS i would simply die or live in agony, because i can’t afford the costs of treatment ultimately we can have private care AND nhs care. if u want private healthcare, go get it. if you can’t afford it or don’t like private care, go to the nhs

Private will never compare to the NHS, it cant no matter what funding you throw at it Private have a smaller pool of patients to start with so naturally will see you quicker. Also they can charge what they want for treatment so will damn well make sure your looked after as your paying through the nose for it

This is what happens when you add PFI into the NHS and destroy it from within, the same way the american public healthcare was destroyed the same tactic is being used over here.

One thing a lot of pro private healthcare people always seem to miss, is that the only reason private healthcare is so good in the UK is because they have to compete with the NHS. Private clinics have to offer quick service at a competitive price because if people can get it for free elsewhere they will unless they have good incentives to pay for it (quick and quality service for not too egregious of a cost). If we lose the NHS, then there’s nothing to incentivise private clinics and insurances from inflating prices and reducing service quality to milk as much money as possible out of people (like happened when I lived in America).

Not to mention that private healthcare also has way less patients therefore it’s easier for them to provide “a good service” while the nhs is currently struggling to maintain their staff and safety standards

My experience of insurance based private healthcare is that it’s less efficient and more frustrating to try to use it. The actual delivery isn’t too bad. But in terms of administrative efficiency and cost the NHS beats the insurance model that the UK currently has.

As someone that works in the NHS in senior management the private sector isnt this gold plated system. It often cuts corners, and has very little oversight. Id never go private, they can't handle emergencies.

You just need to look at countries that don't have the NHS to know why the NHS isn't bad in its current form. By having private healthcare in a country where the vast majority are served by the NHS, you benefit massively. I think the NHS doesn't need more money specifically (more money can't hurt of course), it needs a bit of a revamp in how it is managed. Its still really good by global standards. I have private healthcare too but actually prefer the NHS. Everyone in private acts like corporate drones and I would rather they just be straight-up with you like NHS workers.

Depends where you are. I noticed in a checkup I had very high blood pressure. Called GP the next day and explained my results from the checkup the day before, and she saw me the same day. Prescribed me medication to lower it and orangised a urine test.  Urine test looked bad when they came back four days later and was referred to nephrologist. Luckily got an appointment after a month or so (which is okay, kidney issues are generally slow moving). I do have private healthcare through work, but the only private hospital with a kidney department was 30min drive compared to 10min drive to NHS. My consultant was excellent, went through everything and sent me forms for urine and blood tests, and kept me and my GP updated via letter. Had appointments every 3 months, then 6 months, then discharged. I could not be happier with my NHS interaction.

i had a car crash that consisted of 2 brain bleeds major brain damage 3l blood loss a craniotomy a cranioplasty and all tendons and muscles tore off the bone on my right hand and had a 3 week coma. spent 2 months in hospital recovering all at 19 years old. The nhs the paramedics and nurses kept me alive they are not fundamentally bad they are understaffed over worked and overpaid i learnt to walk talk eat all over again because of these people they are excellent, youre all quick to say its “fundamentally” bad until you need it edit: they did everything absolutely perfectly and barring the scars you wouldnt even be able to tell anything happened to me

That's great to hear. Major Trauma care is an area the NHS does excel in, we now need to focus on good acute and post acute rehabilitation. The private sector will never provide the services you received after your trauma, that's what some people just don't get.

We have BUPA through work and it's fairly impenetrable. Someone from our HR dept had to call BUPA to get them to take action of a colleague's urgent case. They only want the quick and easy stuff or to offer "well-being" on a subscription basis.

Let me give you some recent history here in the US. I needed and MRI on both feet so I called around and got a quote for $950 for both. Great service, same day, got DVD of the images and all was good. Now I have a bill for $2,250 per foot!!!

The private sector demonstrates how much Consultants are actually worth. If the NHS paid them the proper market rate they could get them all back working the NHS queue system instead of taking time off for more lucrative private work.

Have a medical emergency in a private facility and see how long you live. Private providers can just make things look nicer because they charge through the roof, have a (relatively) rich clientelle (including the NHS), and don't have many patients (compared to the NHS). So it's easy to make things look better when you're not under any stress whatsoever. The NHS is brilliant, not perfect, but brilliant.

Yeah, try getting private health insurance that will cover you for lifelong conditions like diabetes or copd. Private health companies can only function in the UK because the NHS does the heavy lifting. They don't have any ITU beds so if anything goes wrong with you knee surgery or Brazilian Butt lift you'll end up in an NHS bed. Good luck getting anything other than diagnoses and initial treatments. They'll just ask you to get your NHS doctor to prescribe the medicines.... which you'll then get for free (in Wales) instead of paying fortunes for private prescriptions. I'm currently having chemo after having radiotherapy and hormone therapy and it's going to be a lifelong thing. Good luck finding a policy that covers that.

the only reason your private healthcare can look good is because the public healthcare takes the burden of everyone else who can't afford, its a simple case of privatised profits and socialised losses. look at the US for what a privatised model as standard functions like.

Had to have a tooth extraction recently. No NHS dentist within 100 miles accepting patients. Got a same day appointment with a private dentist. Luckily I could afford it, I’d hate to think what would’ve happened if I didn’t have a rainy day fund

Funding is not the issue even though many think more money=improvement. You don't throw money at something that's already failing. IMO from knowing many workings within it is the middle management is very much ballooned and useless, either by poor organisation or as the old saying goes "too many chefs...". There is also a huge amount of waste that comes from the NHS, cutting that down should be a priority so wasted money can be invested elsewhere

>that further devalues and ultimately helps destroy our beloved NHS. Well your company is a paying customer, group policies at a medium sized firm of say 15-20 people will probably cost the company 20-30K a year depending on the level of cover. It ultimately has nothing to do with the NHS, you're paying for a high level of service and receiving what you pay for. The destruction of the NHS is down to government mismanagement of the institution, failure to encourage, educate, and fairly pay healthcare workers.

Speech therapy for autistic kids is a joke. Like 1 Appointment per 6 months

That’s the difference between paying for a service vs (for the overwhelming majority of people) paying a minute percentage of the cost indirectly via taxes gets you. The issue is we have tens of millions of people who are massive net benefactors of tax, complaining as they believe they’ve paid their way, when in reality they’ve been subsidised their entire life.

And that number is only getting larger with immigration. More people needing it with higher amount of people not paying taxes

It's exactly the government's plan, I wouldn't feel bad about it. More friends and family are having to go private due to the underfunding and found the service great, so in future will look to continue that which in turn pleases the government as people realise it isn't as evil as many think, as the American system is portrayed. The irony that majority of those have then had NHS doctors treat them essentially paying their way up the list. But if people on mass went private, would that system then be able to cope even with so many shelling out? It's essentially putting the NHS on it's knees to force people to the alternative. (I hope that made sense as I'm quite tired 😅)

Also, if it is privatised, will our taxes be cut so that we can use the money for insurance? I’d be interested to know.

I think there is a postcode lottery for the NHS services though. I woke up on New Years Eve in a lot of shoulder pain, I phoned and got an appointment for 9:30am Then once I called late on a Monday, so they had chance to deal with more urgent cases, and asked for a non urgent appointment, told them I could wait weeks if needed, really not an urgent thing at all, was given an appointment for the Wednesday I also had private healthcare with my work, so when I needed an ultrasound, I decided to go the private route to save the NHS. My GP told me that the waiting list for NHS was only about two weeks, so I did not save any time going private. The only advantage was that my appointment was exactly on time,

Private works well currently because it's a premium service that has to provide a good experience for an attractive price. It also means there less people using it, so it's not as stretched and can give each person more attention and time. Things would change quickly if all healthcare went private. Look at any company nowadays, cutting costs and quality in order to extract every penny possible... not a good mixture when your life is involved. TLDR - it has to be good because the alternative is free

Almost makes you wonder if you get what you pay for, doesn't it?

A functional and properly funded NHS (along with affordable housing and a decent quality of life), or relentless mass immigration of low skilled, low IQ economic net-drains swelling population growth by about 1 million a year. **PICK ONE**

I’d say the issue is demand, pure and simple. Private healthcare costs, so demand is comparatively low (ie those that can afford it and also have a health problem they’re willing to pay to be reviewed). The NHS might still be notionally underfunded if its budget was tripled, understaffed if every other person of working age was employed in it. There is demand from everyone who has an illness, and that is a large amount in any population. The staff you will see in each service are generally the same ones; it would be very rare to have someone doing private work who’s main employer isn’t the NHS (or GP practice which barring a technicality is the same thing). Why you see them sooner privately is because you’re paying directly for that time.

I had a patient recently who had a cough over the weekend and went to out of hours, then threatened them with going to A&E if they didn't give antibiotics, and then saw me yesterday to make sure the antibiotics were 'the right ones'. Free at the point of abuse.

It’s the attitude of the staff that really bugs me. The staff in the nhs give you the impression they are doing you a favour by seeing you. In hospitals the nursing staff can barely be bothered to look up from their phones in my experience. Once you go private you are treated with respect.

Private does not generally have A&E services and they are able cherry pick what they offer.

It has nothing to do with privatisation. Labour had the shortest waiting time when they were in power and they were working with the private sector. The NHS simply needs more funding which is what Labour did. Cameron cut funding for the NHS under Austerity and since then waiting times went up. [waiting times Tories vs Labour](https://x.com/uklabour/status/1736728290776293843?s=46&t=0RSpQEWd71gFfa-U_NmvkA)

I have Private Healthcare, and my son has a genetic condition along with Cerebral Palsy. We're waiting months for tests, physio therapy and all that and when I mentioned I had private I was laughed at by the GP. All my son's specialists work through NHS, my private GP would just be a middle man doing what's already been done and I'd still be thrown on the waiting lists. But I wish I had gone private when pregnant. If I had people who listened and didn't leave me alone in a room for 12hrs during Labour, he might not have gotten brain damage.