NHS collapsing....

It would be an unpopular move but yeah actually NI should go up.Pay more and get a better service.

That’s awful icanhandthemback.

Anyone in hospital who has dementia really needs someone, family or friends, to be around to act as advocate.

I agree with this. When my late OH was in hospital following repair of fractured hip, one of us was there all the time during the day to make sure they fed him, provided bedpans, gave him drugs on time (he had PD and getting drugs on time was important.). Even with us there fighting for him dreadful things happened.

happycatholicwife1

I know everybody thinks healthcare in the United States is awful, but my husband and I and, indeed, most of the people I know have had very good outcomes most of the time.

I'm sorry if my previous text was too long and not put in paragraphs. I was given some very helpful advice about using paragraphs which I forgot!!

Anyway, back to the remark about how awful it would be if you went to the American model, I just want to say that I hear far more desperate complaints on GN about your system than I ever do about the system here.

I'm 76, and my husband is 78. You can't trust him to sort anything with the doctor because he really never complains, so I usually go along if it's anything really important. I'm pretty good at sussing out who's treating me and what they're doing. It does take a lifetime of practice in taking care of other people and then yourself to figure out what's what.

Very good luck to you all. However, I will say I would much rather have our system than yours.

I don't think 'everybody' thinks healthcare in the U.S. is awful in fact I think its probably excellent IF you can afford it!

If you live on the state pension in the UK there is no way to afford private health care. 'Going to the American model' would mean no treatment for the low-paid. You think that's a good idea? The rich have absolutely no idea what real life is like.

Travel insurance which covers the USA is a lot more expensive than anywhere else in the world because of the high cost of health care there.
You must be comfortably off catholicwife, but I wouldnt want to be poor and sick in America.
Ours is a National Health Service which covers everyone not just the wealthy. Its in crisis because its been run down deliberately with profit in mind over the last 10 or more years by our conservative government, with the aim of having a system (like yours) which covers the wealthy but not the poor.
You are welcome to your system. Most of us would much prefer ours. Vive le difference.

Oreo

It would be an unpopular move but yeah actually NI should go up.Pay more and get a better service.

But we wouldn’t get a better service would we. The NHS is a bottomless pit. The more we pour into it the more it needs. We need to recognise that NHS is not fit for purpose and stop trying to improve things by tinkering at the edges. I whole new system is required. One that is fit for the 21st century.

I know it is just a TV programme- but did you watch Casualty on Saturday?

There is no real evidence that the tories want to destroy the NHS. They might be trying to make it work better and failing but that isn’t the same thing at all. And yet the narrative keeps getting repeated. Just because you hear something often doesn’t make it true.

Guess it was more left wing propaganda.

Casualty that is.

Oh if you only knew!

Plenty of evidence available that they want rid and go for US style system.

Just downright awful ....

They do not care - Rishi promised £500m to social care - more social care = freed up hospital beds = A&E can free up = Ambulances can hand over their patients and go to new calls.

... and then he halves that money. There are 165,000 vacancies as it is, and it's all going to get much much worse.

www.theguardian.com/society/2023/jan/22/nhs-crisis-existential-risk-for-the-government

I am fairly certain that my massive hernia is going too strangulate again soon, and I am absolutely terrified this time.

Interesting thoughts on the American health care system. I understand that the outcomes in the UK are better than those in the States but their cost is (I can't remember the actual figure) twice (or more) as much. A huge percentage of their health care goes to their insurance companies who run much of the system.

I have health professionals in the family and I hear time and time again that the government is fixated about bringing the NHS to its knees and introducing something similar to the American model here, which would be simply awful.

We have several sets of friends in the States and those not born and bred in the UK just cannot understand why we would pay into a system so that we could look after the health of the chap round the corner whilst gaining no benefit ourselves.

Apart from lack of funding, not making medical staff working here welcome (and we probably poached them from countries needing them more) and not training enough doctors we urgently need replacement beds - we removed many thousands some years ago and people wonder why the system is clogged with bed blockers.

I will be unpopular here but I have had had fairly extensive stays both in private and NHS hospitals and have observed quite poor (non-medical) care in some quarters. Examples are patients asking for the loo but being ignored - not because the staff were busy elsewhere but finishing a gossipy conversation; food being left beside those too unwell to eat and water jugs being deposited on the far side of a room when the patient was too ill to walk to collect it. Fairly minor things but I doubt whether any of these would have happened fifty years ago.

We have had to visit hospital twice in the last few weeks. Both times we were there for nearly 6 hours. A few staff looked smart but many were very scruffy in shabby old trainers and ill fitting uniforms. Some were grossly overweight and bulging out of their uniforms. Some were so huge that we wondered how they manage to keep walking on a long shift.

Some depts were pretty good, others poor. After various tests, We waited over 3 hours just to get a very short discharge letter printed off and some medication. We told the doctor the medication she was prescribing had been used in the past and had caused nasty side effects but she still went ahead with it. She spoke very poor English and was wearing a mask so the conversation was slow as we had to keep asking her to repeat herself. This is embarrassing for both us and her I’m sure but not our fault.