I would love it if ** any ** government, any where could legislate common sense into anything. Alas, 'tis not to be. Common sense will forever remain a contradiction in terms.
Same thing happened to a Japanese friend of mine who was ill when visiting the UK. She nearly fainted when they told her there was to be no charge. It took about 10 minutes’ explaining the concept before she understood. She was very impressed.
It took about three readings to parse this sentence.
I think the NHS is an amazing thing. Yes, it’s underfunded and badly managed. And yes, one can get much better care quicker in the US. But OTOH, if I need a doctor, I don’t want to have to check my wallet first before I decide how healthy I can afford to be. My experience with both the various GPs I’ve had and the specialists I’ve seen has been, with one exception, excellent. And the one exception was a GP the wife and I complained to the Head of the Surgery about, and she subsequently took “early retirement”. The system works as long as you know how to complain constructively and don’t abuse it.
And the US has its share of idiots abusing the system too, as any 911 operator will tell you.
thinking… thinking… Nope, I can’t remember. Could anyone remind me, isn’t there a policy in place for non-emergency ambulance calls in Canada?
E.g a friend of mine worked at an eye clinic and a man came in with a painfully detached retina. He’d come by bus because he said he “didn’t want to pay the $120 fee for a non-urgent call” to which my friend responded that his condition would have qualified as an emergency.
I know that there are subsidized non-emergency services available – such as moving someone who is bed-ridden by stretcher from hospital to convalescent home. But I thought there was a fee for ambulance rides that weren’t life-savingly urgent (like, cut your finger? take a cab don’t call the paramedics.)
Could someone please refresh my memory or clarify this for me?
And when did the subject of this thread become the health system of the United States? I didn’t hold it up as a shining example of What’s Best, now did I? My comment was made only to show what happens when such a basic economic law is ignored.
How you got an approval by me of the U.S. health care system out of my post concerning solely economics is puzzling, to say the least. Methinks you are showing a socialistic bias when you jump to that conclusion—it in no way logically follows from my statements.
And anyway, even with the socialistic system currently in place in England, it appears some of the subjects of that country aren’t getting the health care to which they believe they are entitled. And what makes the English (and apparently Canadian, too) situation even worse than our more capitalistic system is that these people have already paid for health services through their taxes, very much unlike the U.S. where a person isn’t charged for a service they will not receive.
So, which do you prefer? A system in which the population pays for services they may not receive, or a system in the people pay only for services actually rendered. Me, I prefer not to have my pocket picked. Especially when it’s the government doing the picking.
UB, please do us one favour and refer to Britain rather than England. Pretty please?
One question to which I’m curious though. In the event of you not claiming on your health insurance, do you get a refund? If not, aren’t you paying for services you don’t receive.
Or even the UK (they have the NHS in Northern Ireland).
Indeed, the part of taxation that funds it is called Nationail Insurance. It’s like a cheap medical insurance policy for all.
Okay, Britain and or the UK it is. My apologies for any offense given. It twas certainly not meant. Is the health care system that the OP speaks of in force across Wale, Scotland and Ireland, too? I was trying to refrain from making that assumption by using England only.
Right. Heatlh Insurance refunds. Nope, never received one. But then my heatlh insurance is a benefit received through my employer. I don’t contribute a single penny towards its cost. You do make a good point though that insurance is just that and failure to make a claim on it does not entitle the holder to a refund. I shall consider this; I failed to do so previously.
However, one of the arguments here in the states concerning health insurance is very similar. It is postulated by some that since those with health insurance do not necessarily need to consider the cost of services rquired/requested that this has led to much the same situation the OP’er is complaining about—lack of universal availability through inefficient use of the rescources. That is to say, some people cannot get services which they require because these services are being consumed by those who do not really need them.
Except it’s not. Some people pay nothing for their “insurance,” while others pay more than the average. This is not insurance. It’s simply a subsidy for some at the expense of others. Insurance is nothing like that. Insurance costs, for any individual (assuming identical coverage) are equal. And the U.S. govenment calls our Social Security program insurance also. It also is not insurance. It, too, is a subsidy in the same fashion as your National Insurance.
I have worked for a good while in the NHS, and I have found that the main problems seem to stem from very unproffesional managers in non-medical areas.
I am talking about terrible personnel policies which are incredibly cumbersome, disgraceful sickness rates, in excess of 10%(and that is the managers BTW)
Poor leadership, initiative overload, demoralisation of ancillary staff due to threats of redundency or being contracted out to private service providers on worse pay and conditions, and an “old school tie” system of promotion that prevents the able being upgraded, in favour of “people like us”.
I worked in a hospital power and services section, maintaining environmental systems, high voltage switchgear, generators, HVAC, process instrumentation, incineration and sterilising plant, plus a whole lot of other stuff.
We operated pretty much autonomously from the main hospital sites, and we cut down maintenance time, numbers of staff, amount of sick leave to less than 1% and that figure included long term illnesses and so was artificially high.We made operating profits over £1million per year and still provided all our services to the hospital sites themselves at a much lower rate than available commercially, and for our pains we were sold off to a private company that now takes all the profit.
An example of the low standards of the hospital senior engineers(one of whom is in fact a fucking carpenter!!).
A high voltage cable had slipped its securing mounts and needed to be hoisted into place, this requires that part of the system be isolated with permits to work and certificates issued before doing anything at all.It was only possible to do this on a Sunday when the electrical load was at its lowest.
Everything was inplace to lift the cable in place, and this involved a dozen tradesmen, we were all ready to go, but the senior hospital engineer decided that it was their break time and overruled the senior power station engineer.
The job stopped until those senior engineers return over an hour later, it took us around 4 minutes to actually resecure the cable.
In total there must have been around 16 people involved, and all these were bing paid double day rate for the job.
That tea break must have cost the NHS several hundred £.
It annoys the hell out of me that I have higher academic qualifiactions, and a good decade or more experience than some of those senior engineers, but there was absolutely no chance of joining their level.
The NHS has extreme difficulty in getting rid of incompetants because of its own employment and personnels policies, the sickness rates among the shop floor workers is horrendous, frankly any other employer would have let many NHS staff go a long time ago.
I have seen individuals suspended for months on end, only to find them reinstated because the management were incapable of following this own rules.
I am not trying to tarnish the skills of the medical staff, but the strict heirarchical nature of the NHS does not allow ideas to circulate from the lower levels, if something is plainly wrong, senior staff will only accept this if they are told by other senior staff, there is no respect for the competance of staff from other disciplines.
In the estates department, I attended one meeting, where virtually all of us were present, there were 22 shop floor workers present but to support and manage them there were 42 other grades, secretaries with secretaries of their own etc!(I kid you not)Many management individuals are paid in excess of £30k with one getting over £70k, but the shop floor workers get around £16k.
Twenty years ago there were nearly twice as many shop floor workers(38 actually) and there were two supervisors, four chargehands and two senior managers.
You can see where NHS money goes, and the picture is hardly any differant for other staff.
It is not that there is anything inherently wrong with socialised medicine, the great malaise of the NHS is an almost supine management that seems incapable of dealing with issues directly but must use computor generated bumph as a substitute for actually managing.
I would also point out that it matters not a jot what the US thinks of the UK NHS, because it was the fear of creeping privatisation by the prevous administration that was a seriously significant factor in that administration being resoundingly kicked out of office by the electorate, and it is the suspicion by the lectorate of that administarion over issues such as this, that has made that party completely unelectable, and may do so for years to come, in other words, the UK electorate likes its NHS, it may moan and complain, but woe betide any politician who even hints at privatisation even by using such words as “choice” (which means exactly the opposite - George Orwell was right eh?)
I could identify a good 10% or more of the workforce that does not contribute anything useful to the NHS, very many of those are managers, but there are large numbers of lazy bastard workers who exploit every possible avenue to either carry out work for themselves, attend work whenever they have no other alternative, take items home for their own personal use, and take five times as long on a job than is actually required.
I have seen this and far worse, corruption on a very high level among senior medical staff, political infighting, department empire building.
Grrrrrr!!!
I too would like to congratulate London_Calling on the sentence “I was hit up the arse last week by some skunk-freak at a considerable lick.” Marvellous.
Akatsumi:
As Gary said, please do elaborate.
L_C:
Absolutely. As I said, I work on the non-emergency side. This means out patients are booked days, weeks, months in advance. They are booked to be taken into hospital and out again if necessary - return journeys are standard. What I get cross about is when these patients simply didn’t need transport booked for them in the first place. They could’ve got a bus. Quite often, we turn up to pick them up and they’ve driven themselves in because we were ten minutes late.
They’ve been booked transport because they’ve whined to their doctors that they don’t like driving in the morning. Or because their daughter doesn’t want to take the afternoon off to drive them in. Or simply because it’s free.
And that’s not what we’re here for. We should only be taking patients with a medical need for transport. Gah!
Casdave - you’re right, the NHS is generally very poorly managed indeed. Staff sickness levels are appalling and a lot of staff try to get away with whatever they can (isn’t that the same in most large organisations though?). However, as regards where the money goes, I can assure you that in our ambulance trust it’s not a matter of bigwig fat cats. It’s only the directors who earn over £30K. Managers earn mid-£20K and it’s scaled down from there. Ambulance drivers are paid less that £14K (tell THAT
Oops, posted before I was ready…
Non-paramedic ambulance drivers are paid less that £14K (tell THAT to the firefighters). My manager worked 17 hours Monday, 15 Tuesday, and 12 hours yesterday and today. I clocked up overtime hours worth a whole extra week last month. Like I said, we’re overworked and underpaid.
On a more positive note, I’m glad I do my job. It is rewarding and I’m glad I work in a field that has a direct effect on people’s quality of life. But it’s a pain in the arse sometimes.
I have to ask-what about dental? I have several cavities, I need two root canals*, a bridge, and some caps-and I can’t even get a check up because I’m uninsuranced and can’t afford it. Is dental covered?
*one tooth is unlikely to be saved-it’s crumbling out of my mouth. I’m 24 years old, and I take care of my teeth, but I desparately need to see a dentist, which I absolutely cannot afford. I’d love to smack people who complain about “socialist” health care robbing the people.
Dental is covered on the NHS if you’re a child, a student, an OAP, unemployed or receiving a certain amount of benefits. I think if you have urgent work that needs doing (ie, not cosmetic) and can’t afford it, you can apply for funds.
Yes, dentistry is covered as part of the NHS - my sister is an NHS dentist.
I’m sorry if I took it the wrong way, but the criticism of one system tends to be perceived (by me, at least) as lauding the other.
Anyway, I’m a pinko socialist and I’m sure we have different beliefs. However, though others are doing this too, I just don’t see this thread as the place to bash the British NHS or the US system.
Back to bashing stupid people for me, thank you.
Steve: Not necessarily. When I lived in the UK (as a resident, so my nationality didn’t matter), I did not have NHS dental insurance. Strangely, my ex-wife did. It was something to do with how our individual colleges filed the paperwork. Anyway, NHS denture coverage is apparently not a universal right.
No Beer, you’ve misunderstood.
There is no price, by analogy or in any other way. Period. There is a demand but it’s based on a qualitative need, a qualitative threshold (if you will) that’s supposed to be measured / determined by the Doctor (who authorises the transportation).
The customer / patient can say “I want” but it doesn’t mean anything, the Doctor gets to say “You shall / shall not have”. Discretionary, based on any factors the Doc might deem relevant.
Fran’s issue is really, IMHO, with the Doctors who too readily allow transportation, with the Health Authority itself or the funding mechanisms. Not with the patients wanting a free ride.
If you buy insurance – for anything, not just healthcare – but you don’t bother to read the small print, then make a claim for which you’re not covered you’re heading for a disappointment.
There’s a responsibility on the NHS generally (or perhaps specific agents of it) to make clear what ambulance services can be expected under what circumstances. There’s also a responsibility on the part of the patient to understand what they’re entitled to. Until this is sorted out Francesca’s annoying problem will keep recurring.
None of this is an argument about whether socialised or private medicine is better, other than the fact that patients tend not to ask questions of the NHS until the ambulance team has already been inconvenienced.
*Originally posted by UncleBeer *
Is the health care system that the OP speaks of in force across Wale, Scotland and Ireland, too?
No, not Ireland, but that’s a whole other matter – you meant Northern Ireland
No idea why I should have written Beer rather than UncleBeer, very ungracious and I apologise UncleBeer. Must have been strangely distracted. Sorry!
Dental treatment is covered by the NHS, but you are required to pay a certain amount toward treatment, this amount is capped and the remainder comes from government funds.
I had a bunch of tooth x-ray, it would have cost around £90 but I was required to pay £15, this is partly to encourage people to go for checkups and the like as prevention is better than cure.
I had one extraction, it was described as difficult, too nearly an hour and cost me £15, it would have been very much more.
I had two very big fillings, cost £32 again the full cost would have been much higher.
I do not like going to the dentist, hence the large amount of treatment, I still have to go back for more, but the thing that put me off most was that very many patients cannot get on a dentists NHS list and I thought I might be looking at over £400 in treatments, which just after the christmas season, is not an easy amount to find.
Fortunately I was pleasantly surprised, but then I have paid my taxes all my 27 years of working life, so I reckon that I have recieved some of what I am emtiteld to.