FabSwingers.com > Forums > Politics > NHS Vs private medical care
NHS Vs private medical care
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"Should we have the option to opt out of national insurance contributions if we are financially able to provide for ourselves?? " Just because someone can afford to go private today, it doesn't mean they will be able to next year or in a decade's time. | |||
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"Was revealed this week that County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust spent more than £600,000 to fight their own nurses in court over the use of female changing rooms. They lost, of course. " Derriford hospital Plymouth leased a floor of Chris Dawsons new HQ Brand new building located next to the hospital. They spent £60,000 changing heating systems and furnishing, then vacated a year later tied into the lease; £250-300k at least. Things like this everywhere in state run departments. | |||
"Was revealed this week that County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust spent more than £600,000 to fight their own nurses in court over the use of female changing rooms. They lost, of course. " NHS spent £3.1 billion on medical negligence compensation in 2024/25, a 10% increase from the previous year, as reported by NHS Resolution. Costs are projected to reach £4.1 billion by 2029-30, driven largely by high-value, long-term care claims, particularly in maternity | |||
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"Was revealed this week that County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust spent more than £600,000 to fight their own nurses in court over the use of female changing rooms. They lost, of course. Derriford hospital Plymouth leased a floor of Chris Dawsons new HQ Brand new building located next to the hospital. They spent £60,000 changing heating systems and furnishing, then vacated a year later tied into the lease; £250-300k at least. Things like this everywhere in state run departments. " Absolutely. Also a lot of nepotism and corruption in these contracts. | |||
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"Here's what people forget in such a debate. You may be able to afford private now, get a serious illness and premium bumps up. Also part of my love for having the NHS, is friends and family can get treatment, not die like they do in other countries. Anyone who seen the 2999s doc on it about UK doctors volunteering to diagnose US citizens, because they can't afford healthcare, would surely get why universal healthcare is a human right. I get private with work, won't use it out of principle. All in it together " You know the NHS is stretched and struggling, you have a free alternative and decide not to use it? What is the principle you are working to? | |||
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"Here's what people forget in such a debate. You may be able to afford private now, get a serious illness and premium bumps up. Also part of my love for having the NHS, is friends and family can get treatment, not die like they do in other countries. Anyone who seen the 2999s doc on it about UK doctors volunteering to diagnose US citizens, because they can't afford healthcare, would surely get why universal healthcare is a human right. I get private with work, won't use it out of principle. All in it together You know the NHS is stretched and struggling, you have a free alternative and decide not to use it? What is the principle you are working to? " you know the same doctors in the NHS have private clinics. My principle is not to remove them from the NHS more often and not to lead to full privatisation. More have private health and use it, more it becomes normal | |||
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"Here's what people forget in such a debate. You may be able to afford private now, get a serious illness and premium bumps up. Also part of my love for having the NHS, is friends and family can get treatment, not die like they do in other countries. Anyone who seen the 2999s doc on it about UK doctors volunteering to diagnose US citizens, because they can't afford healthcare, would surely get why universal healthcare is a human right. I get private with work, won't use it out of principle. All in it together You know the NHS is stretched and struggling, you have a free alternative and decide not to use it? What is the principle you are working to? you know the same doctors in the NHS have private clinics. My principle is not to remove them from the NHS more often and not to lead to full privatisation. More have private health and use it, more it becomes normal " I understand some doctors will also take on private work, it is another sign of the broken NHS model that no government is ever going to fix. Not using private healthcare although it is free will not change the private work being undertaken, it will however add one more to the back of the NHS waiting list. | |||
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"IMHO… 1. The NHS is too big. This creates the need for multiple tiers of managers. It needs to be broken up into smaller more manageable chunks. The entire system needs reinventing from the ground up. " NHS in England handles approximately 600 million patient contacts across all services, averaging 1.7 million interactions daily. (This includes GP appointments, hospital treatments, and ambulance service interactions). In the year ending June 2025, GP teams alone carried out 383.3 million appointments Good luck rearranging this | |||
"IMHO… 1. The NHS is too big. This creates the need for multiple tiers of managers. It needs to be broken up into smaller more manageable chunks. The entire system needs reinventing from the ground up. NHS in England handles approximately 600 million patient contacts across all services, averaging 1.7 million interactions daily. (This includes GP appointments, hospital treatments, and ambulance service interactions). In the year ending June 2025, GP teams alone carried out 383.3 million appointments Good luck rearranging this " So just carry as it is because fixing it is hard? | |||
"IMHO… 1. The NHS is too big. This creates the need for multiple tiers of managers. It needs to be broken up into smaller more manageable chunks. The entire system needs reinventing from the ground up. NHS in England handles approximately 600 million patient contacts across all services, averaging 1.7 million interactions daily. (This includes GP appointments, hospital treatments, and ambulance service interactions). In the year ending June 2025, GP teams alone carried out 383.3 million appointments Good luck rearranging this So just carry as it is because fixing it is hard? " Still waiting repair of c10,000 buildings with life threatening cladding 10 years after grenfell, failing to stop 40k small boats, 14 month backlog at HM Land Reg. 120,000 retiring/retired civil servants with no pension/lump sum/ projections, some living on credit cards after govt privatised the pension scheme administration Aspirations to rework a 600M caseload for nhs on top. Not seeing it | |||
"IMHO… 1. The NHS is too big. This creates the need for multiple tiers of managers. It needs to be broken up into smaller more manageable chunks. The entire system needs reinventing from the ground up. NHS in England handles approximately 600 million patient contacts across all services, averaging 1.7 million interactions daily. (This includes GP appointments, hospital treatments, and ambulance service interactions). In the year ending June 2025, GP teams alone carried out 383.3 million appointments Good luck rearranging this So just carry as it is because fixing it is hard? Still waiting repair of c10,000 buildings with life threatening cladding 10 years after grenfell, failing to stop 40k small boats, 14 month backlog at HM Land Reg. 120,000 retiring/retired civil servants with no pension/lump sum/ projections, some living on credit cards after govt privatised the pension scheme administration Aspirations to rework a 600M caseload for nhs on top. Not seeing it " I don’t see what a civil servants pension has got to do with GPs refusing to see patients | |||
"Still waiting repair of c10,000 buildings with life threatening cladding 10 years after grenfell ..." The cladding isn't life-threatening, it's just a small increase in fire hazard, which is easily mitigated against. And all those buildings are privately owned. Why are you blaming the government for not having done something? And what the hell has that got to do with whether the NHS is too big or not? | |||
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"Some thoughts: 1. Eliminate all waiting lists, by any means. This should include shipping people overseas for treatment (why pay for Pakistani or Indian doctors to come here, when we could simply push the operations there at a fraction of the cost?). If that means paying private, then do it. 2. Decouple social care from hospital treatment. Declare an emergency and use the Nightingale hospitals for the thousands of beds being taken up by those who do not need the hospital beds, but cannot be discharged because of living circumstances. 3. Utilise offshore practitioners more. Apart from clearing the backlog, understand where this can be done and how it can work. 4. Integrated AI for diagnosis. Two things: (1) diagnosis itself, with human oversight, and (2) as a second-opinion. In phase 1, AI simply monitors all information and diagnosis. It provides shadow-recommendations, which are reviewed and the model is trained. In phase 2, it enriches a human's diagnosis, supporting or challenging, which is then sent to a human for arbitration. Phase 3, the mature AI model is used in the first instance by (say) nurse practitioners, who then sanity-check it and are themselves reviewed by senior doctors. A similar approach should be rolled out across other areas, not just primary care. Especially pharmaceuticals. The underlying AI would not be like the LLMs we see today that hallucinate, they would be much more "rules based" and less conversational (for those who worry). 5. Remove the concept of of registered doctor. It's rooted in the practices of the last century. Nowadays, most people don't really have a family doctor who knows and cares for patients (this does exist in some areas). GPs should be available in medical centres around the country, who provide standardised services across the country, with no "postcode lottery". GPs under the NHS should expose their availability and should be bookable by anyone (but there should be some system to restrict or limit inefficiency based upon distance). Phone/video appointments should be used wherever possible, but not by face-to-face GPs (without a solid reason, e.g. under the care of a specific doctor/specialist for some reason). These doctors could live in less expensive parts of the country (or indeed outside of it). Where required, a visit to a local medical centre (injections/physical exams, etc.) can be scheduled by these remote GPs. Again, unlike in the current system, these could be anywhere in the country. 6. Training doctors and other medical professionals. (a) Scrap limits. We need more medical staff, to the point that we import them. Train more. Simple. Screw the industry bodies that artificially limit the intake. (b) Huge debt, repaid by the NHS in full. Look at the actual training cost of training a doctor. No caps, no subsidies, just take that whole cost and add it to the account of the trainee. Reduce that in equal parts over 20 years of service - if they leave before then, they pay the remainder back. The country will take on the full financial burden of training medical professionals (should be extended to teachers and all key workers), provided that we get 20 years out of them. Simple. 6. Mental health - treat this as an emergency, as in point 1 above. Much of this can be offshored, and train mental health staff as in point 5 above. Especially for children and teenagers, 7. Fire the non-productive people. Overhaul the processes and red tape and stop treating the NHS as a holy cow that is above reproach. 8. Include all critical and emergency dental treatment for everyone, and actually make it happen. This has massive consequences for overall health. Train more dentists (as above), since we will need them. Or, import more dentists, or offshore, as above, as needed. 9. Better prevention/early intervention. More on smoking/drinking/weight management. 10. Make private health insurance premiums tax deductible. It's insane not to incentivise people to pay for their own health and be less of a burden on the NHS. This is very successful in other countries. 11. Don't fund non-medical/illness-related issues. This includes elective operations such as cosmetic surgery, IVF and gender reassignments. This will almost certainly cause an uproar (on this forum, as well), but these are not the same level as a broken leg. These surgeries SHOULD be provided, however they should be funded either privately, or through tax-deductible donations (perhaps not nose-jobs or teeth whitening - you get the idea). There is a hierarchy of needs in the NHS, with things like A&E, childbirth, cancer treatment at the top, and prescription gluten-free pizzas for coeliacs at the bottom (thankfully, we've stopped that now). At a certain point, the taxpayer says "stop - that's it". Nevertheless, good people can and should fund those other services, such as IVF and gender reassignment. It's just unfair to burden the NHS and the tax system with this, while some people are being denied basic medical/dental care. Which services and where to draw the line should be a public consultation, with clear costings and tradfe-offs." Some very good points there 👍🏻 | |||
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