We are watching the demise of the NHS with our eyes wide open.

If you're a 'fan' of private healthcare you should know that there is the possibility that, should you need high-risk surgery, you might not get it - even with the most expensive and comprehensive healthcare 'plan'.
Private Practise surgeons guard their reputations (and are wary of claims for clinical negligence, naturally) as their success is built on it.
I recently had such high-risk surgery and my NHS consultant-surgeon informed me of this fact when I mentioned this issue to him. He had years and years of experience in this discipline and was prepared to undertake the surgery. Without it, I would now be living the life of a recluse, permanently hooked up to intravenous feeding.

When things go 'wrong' in the private sphere - it is the NHS which often picks up the pieces, because of the expertise and knowledge gained through working in this public institution.

Our local practice closed down completely (4 surgeries) for a couple of days last week due to a lapse in insurance. I wonder if this is due to the blame and claim culture? Is this the start of another form of erosion of our health service? Certainly something to watch out for

Scones

Annie1 You know, I do think we would get on like a house on fire. I do agree with you about the Brexit patriotism and I had a good laugh at your granddad's comment. So funny and so probably hit the nail right on the head. Let's hope we get a fantastic leader from any party who will pull the country together and on to great things.

There were several things in Annie1's excellent post with which I disagreed. However, the comment on Jeremy Corbyn made me reflect again on the ridiculous “perfect storm” of the referendum being proposed by a leader of the Conservative Party who was at heart “remainer” and opposed by the leader of the Labour Party who was at heart a “leaver”.

SueDonim

Costs certainly need to be reduced - I don’t understand why managers don’t negotiate better deals for drugs, for instance. The A&E unit where my dd currently works won’t prescribe paracetamol except in extreme circumstances because it costs the department £9 for a box of 16 tablets, the same ones you or I could buy for 35p in Tesco. That’s madness.

That is absolutely ridiculous, and I also know it's true as my DD went to have surgery last week and had to take her own Paracetamol and Ibuprofen with her! Surely the whole point of NHS Procurement is to get 'deals', and am sure Superdrug would be delighted to supply the NHS with it's 35p Paracetamol and Ibuprofen!

NHS costs for paracetamol are calculated by including dispensing costs and the time for the medical consultation. The NHS isn't actually paying these astronomical sums to the supplier.

Private medicine will make things worse. Timewise, private patients expect and take much more time- and are much more demanding in many ways. OH inherited a large private practice from his older partners- and got rid of them all, little by little. Because they expected to be treated differently- have many more stuff on prescriptions which they expected to 'dictate', operations even, and out of hours visits which they expected to be the norm.

With a shortage of doctors curently, you could double that and more if people went private.

Most current GPs I suppose have totally forgotten the days when GPs did a lot of home-visits on top of full surgeries, including nights on a rota basis, and week-ends- normally 1 in 4, or one in 3 if a colleague was absent on holiday or illness. And that was always on top of a full 80 hr week, with NO time off in lieu. So if a GP was called 3 or 4 times at night and went to visit, and returned home at 5am- s/he was still expected to be in surgery for a full day at 8.

The sale of parts of the NHS to companies (including US companies) is the most disastrous thing. WRITE TO YOUR MP telling him/her that it is imperative to keep the NHS in the hands of the British Dept of Health. Once sections are sold off, there will be no come-back when service goes down and costs go up (because shareholders need to make a profit off our NHS.)

Sheian62

HannahLoisLuke, I agree, again there is huge waste on medical equipment, implements, nuts and bolts etc because appliances are charged at astronomical prices by greedy medical equipment and pharmaceutical companies. We have been held to ransom long enough. Government should look at changing rules re these companies

They are probably provided by mates of the Government so that won't happen!!

Regarding the PPE debacle, and the millions of £'s spend on stuff we couldn't use, Track and Trace etc, anyone else who got bad service or the incorrect goods would be entitled to a refund, these companies need to be told to repay the money back into the public purse, but obviously won't as they all have friends in high places!

The waste is horrific, but also quite often the care is too. My local hellhole is dreadful - just basic care needs are not met, for example, last time I was in June this year, and quite frankly this has occurred in most of my 24 surgeries, poor old ladies are just left with their tables/drinks where the cannot reach them and become very dehydrated. There was a lovely tiny lady opposite me who could do nothing for herself at all - no one came to give her drinks, and several times her dinner tray was left in front of her by one person, then 45 mins later it was collected by someone else saying. 'oh you're not hungry today?' .... she was left with the sun streaming in her eyes, and was sometimes sat there shivering .... Being on the 'Covid Ward' (although none of us actually had it!) we weren't supposed to get near each other, but I just could not bear seeing her like that, so ended up giving her drinks, opening and closing curtains for her, tucking her in etc - she was so sweet and just smiled every time bless her ... just BASIC stuff, and half of them had no idea!! Seen it many times over the years. I trained in the NHS in the late 1980's and it wasn't great then, but now, it's absolutely awful .... worse thing they ever did was get rid of the SEN's. They were the vocational nurses, who wanted to care, and were far more knowledgeable than the other qualified nurses, but as time has gone on the qualified nurses are definitely too posh to wash with their degrees, generally nowadays if you are lucky, you just get thrown a bowl of soapy water and left to get on with it, whether you can manage it or not ....

Marian Nicholson wrote:

The sale of parts of the NHS to companies (including US companies) is the most disastrous thing. WRITE TO YOUR MP telling him/her that it is imperative to keep the NHS in the hands of the British Dept of Health. Once sections are sold off, there will be no come-back when service goes down and costs go up (because shareholders need to make a profit off our NHS.)

I am one of those annoying people who like to see what the evidence is for your assertion. Can you explain to me which parts of the NHS are being sold off at the moment? I read that a couple of GP practices had been sold to companies, but then GPs are not NHS employees. They contract out their private business and treat NHS patients for which thy are paid. They are at liberty to sell their businesses as they choose in a free democracy. Maybe the GPs have too much power in your view?

This seems to be a very comprehensive web site about NHS privatisation:

www.nhsforsale.info/nhs-privatisation-overview-2/

It seems to me that introducing the profit motive to NHS services runs entirely contrary to the whole original ethos. We are, in effect, paying not only for the outsourced service, but part of the payment is hived off in the form of dividends to shareholders. I can't see this as being anything but more expensive for the nation. Private enterprise already has plenty of opportunity to profit from supplying the NHS with all the resources it needs. I don't see they need to profit from actually treating patients.

Annie1 It isn't just GP practices which have been sold off to private companies. In many areas, there are private companies such as Babylon, which cherry pick patients for GP services, leaving the NHS with the chronic and expensive cases. The money which GPs would otherwise receive is transferred to Babylon.

Nearly everybody is served by one organisation or other which carries an NHS logo, but is in fact owned by a private company. Much mental health provision in England is now privatised, as are out-of-hours hubs, diabetic eye screening services, etc etc.

I've never been able to find one, but I'd be interested to see a study which shows how much of the NHS budget is paid to profit-making providers.

Thanks for that article Maizie. It claims that 18% of the NHS budget was spent on private/non-NHS providers in 2017/18, but not how much. Admittedly, some of the money is a saving to the NHS, but some of it is profit, but I don't know how much.

growstuff

Thanks for that article Maizie. It claims that 18% of the NHS budget was spent on private/non-NHS providers in 2017/18, but not how much. Admittedly, some of the money is a saving to the NHS, but some of it is profit, but I don't know how much.

It wasn't particularly the one article, growstuff, I just couldn't get back to the Home page to copy the link. There's a lot of information on the site and I haven't investigated it all. It might have something that answers your question about profit.

It has a lot of stuff under 'issues'. This is one section on contract failures:

www.nhsforsale.info/privatisation/impact-problems/failures-of-private-provider-contracts/

Anniel

Marian Nicholson wrote:

The sale of parts of the NHS to companies (including US companies) is the most disastrous thing. WRITE TO YOUR MP telling him/her that it is imperative to keep the NHS in the hands of the British Dept of Health. Once sections are sold off, there will be no come-back when service goes down and costs go up (because shareholders need to make a profit off our NHS.)

I am one of those annoying people who like to see what the evidence is for your assertion. Can you explain to me which parts of the NHS are being sold off at the moment? I read that a couple of GP practices had been sold to companies, but then GPs are not NHS employees. They contract out their private business and treat NHS patients for which thy are paid. They are at liberty to sell their businesses as they choose in a free democracy. Maybe the GPs have too much power in your view?

Many have been gone for years now!

publicmatters.org.uk/2019/10/08/how-much-of-the-nhs-in-england-has-already-been-privatised/

www.patients4nhs.org.uk/how-is-the-nhs-being-privatised/#:~:text=There%20has%20been%20an%20element%20of%20private%20provision,beds%20for%20private%20patients%20within%20some%20NHS%20hospitals.

fullfact.org/election-2019/ask-fullfact-nhs-privatised/

Really informative links MadeInYorkshire. Thanks for posting them.

MaizieD

growstuff

Thanks for that article Maizie. It claims that 18% of the NHS budget was spent on private/non-NHS providers in 2017/18, but not how much. Admittedly, some of the money is a saving to the NHS, but some of it is profit, but I don't know how much.

It wasn't particularly the one article, growstuff, I just couldn't get back to the Home page to copy the link. There's a lot of information on the site and I haven't investigated it all. It might have something that answers your question about profit.

It has a lot of stuff under 'issues'. This is one section on contract failures:

www.nhsforsale.info/privatisation/impact-problems/failures-of-private-provider-contracts/

I'll have a look later to see if I can find the figure I've been looking for, but it must be billions, which put missed appointments and "waste" into some kind of context.

I remember being gobsmacked in my youf to learn that private consultancy clinics were not separate specialists from NHS, they're the one and same bunch! The thoughts of chairperson Gigi? Either docs decide to work private OR NHS. Not both.at least stipulate that private clinics only allowed when other lists are at either very low or nil capacity.plus- medical degrees should still be FOC , many many poorer background docs would never have gone into medicine had they had to pay! Think who we're chucking away in universities' greed for fees?
We paid for the whole exorbitant lot of the training up of our current consultants (later ones have loans to pay off) then they jump ship and use our quals to set up a very nice big earner thanks-in private practice!

Durga

So interesting to read all this as we in the US are being sold the advantages of NH.

4 or 5 years ago we had a holiday in New York, staying in Brooklyn. One of the things we noticed were the number of handicapped people in wheelchairs which we concluded was because of the cost of health care. More than we would see on London or other large cities in the UK.

Last year a friend fell down some concrete stairs at his home, badly injuring his back. He received excellent treatment - he was lucky because his wife works for one of the major health insurance providers and he was covered by her policy. Without that he may not be alive.

The NHS is going through a hard time at the moment, mainly because it's being starved of cash, but we do need it and most of us are grateful for it.

What many people don't seem to realise is that private healthcare doesn't cover people if they have a recurring illness. The son of a former neighbour developed lymphoma. Through his employment he was covered by BUPA and had treatment that at first was successful.

One August he went for a checkup and everything was OK. Later that year he became ill again, BUPA wouldn't cover the cost of all his treatment and he was transferred to an NHS hospital in London where they did all they could but he died that Christmas Eve.

On the other hand my DD had an NHS cataract op at a private health clinic free of charge. My friend paid £2000 for the same thing.

Since 2010? Sorry but it started long before that. The Tories fought hard to prevent the establishment of the NHS back in 1948 and Bevan had to agree to doctors keeping on some of their (well paid) private work in order to secure their agreement. The Tories have chipped away at it ever since - the most blatant being when Thatcher introduced the "free market" into the NHS starting with their cleaning services. Don't listen to what politicians SAY about the NHS, look at what they DO.

Doctor EXPOSES Plan to Sell NHS to American Corporations

m.youtube.com/watch?v=IwM-JwoCvlI

varian

On the other hand my DD had an NHS cataract op at a private health clinic free of charge. My friend paid £2000 for the same thing.

I don't have a problem with the NHS buying in services on an "ad hoc" basis to clear waiting lists, as happened with cataracts and (I believe) hip replacements. It's different when private companies are able to buy control of the agenda and leech money from the NHS.

The NHS remained in control of who was having the cataract ops. If private healthcare had been in control of all cataract ops, they would have decided who would have the procedures, based on a person's ability to pay.

I don't necessarily agree that the NHS needs fewer managers, but it needs those at the top to focus on patient health rather than making profits and a spreadsheet mentality.

Interesting opinion piece by Simon Jenkins in the Guardian:

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/26/nhs-money-hyper-centralised-local-authorities