Not quite dead: Steve H

You took the money and now you complain!

If ever a market needed some urgent regulation it's healthcare insurance.
Offering people money back to use the NHS, it makes me fucking puke.

You shouldn't BE going home FFS. After an op like that I'd want 2 or 3 days
in a lovely private hospital room with sweet attentive nurses checking and
monitoring to make sure all is well and a decent food menu for every meal.

 

You may not like the way they do business but regardless of that if they
want to keep you in it will be for a good medical reason. They won't be
needlessly throwing money and resources at you if they don't have to.

 

Well, they have saved your life, taken action to prolong it, and also
provided you (unlike most of us) with a means of being paid £100 a day
just for actually being there...

No doubt it will all be absolutely fucking super, when the bunch of
useless cunts currently in Westminster have finished with it -- after
all, they really do know how to run a country, yah?

Oh, and don't tell us "I pay my taxes". Just about everyone in the
fucking country pays taxes, and many of us relatively more than those
who can afford to pay an accountant. [2]

John

(also a victim of minor NHS administrative inefficiencies (e.g. being
made to wait several hours while the specialist[1] deigned to pop in and
pronounce a verdict), but *acutely conscious* of how things might have
been in another scenario.)

[1] Wonder where that specialist actually was, while we peasants
(patients and staff) were all kept waiting? Saving someone else's life?
Chatting with a private patient at the local Nuffield? Both?

[2] Thanks for the rant-chance, Steve: cheers.

 

Private HC is not always better.

 

UK healthcare is well known for chucking people out before they really
ought to and without follow-up care properly, if at all, organised.
And it's equally true at private hospitals, IME, as it is within the
NHS.

 

If you don't think the NHS is a poor service for the money in some parts and
can't be improved, your daft.

I'm slowly coming round to making most provision a commercial operation with
the Govmint providing everyone with a basic taxation funded healthcare
insurance which people can add to if they wish. Like American healthcare but
without the commercial sector insurance angle.

I did think for a long time that PFI and the commercial sector providing the
infrastructure and the NHS providing all the clinical staff/services was the
best model. But I'm not so sure any more.

 

Obviously you get what you pay for.

About £108/month at current rates

 

You'd think so, but no, not neccesarily.

 

Well no, as we discovered in this thread several days ago.

 

Possibly because a specialist hadn't seen it by then.

 

Nurse Tracy was a bit bouncy?

 

Coo. enough to buy two ShiteOldAlfas and still have change for the bus
fare home when they break down.

 

You're doing it wrong. A decent accountant saves you more in taxes
than he charges for his fee.

 

Absolutely. Stay where you are. You don't want to get sick again and get
dragged of to Merthyr A&E where there isn't a cardiologist, like last week.

Sadly true. A&E are the worst culprits, sending very ill people home in a
taxi rather than admitting them.

I've had to play the "unsafe discharge" card professionally and with
family. Very few people have had my training & experience to a) have the
balls and b) know the rules of the game to challenge a consultant adamant
that someone is going home.

BUPA weren't any better, sending my son home with penicillin after his
tonsillectomy despite him wearing a red "allergy" band and it written in
his notes. I had to chase around to find an out of hours GP for an
alternative prescription as all the BUPA doctors had gone home/golfing.
Then we had to find the out of hours pharmacy. My son was the last patient
to be discharged before they closed the hospital for the bank holiday
weekend.

 

Is a better response than "Sorry you almost died. We'll schedule you
for a quadruple bypass next week."

 

Or far less, if it's simply a line item taken off your pre tax
allowance as part of company benefits.

 

What's needed is something entirely different. A not for profit
healthcare model, keep the commercial efficiencies, centralise
standards, processes and procurement nationally and negotiate hard for
bulk discounts, just like the supermarkets do. In the process you'll
kil off a few thousand little consultants fiefdoms, ensuring they can
focus on the healtcare aspects of their role not the commercial ones.
Oh, and take out the one stupid government policy of not letting
public sector organisations carry budget forward from year to year.

 

Not for Profit?
That's all the Consultants fucking off into the distance then!

 

I don't say anywhere that they consultants shouldn't get paid, of
course they should, on the same salaried basis they're paid by the NHS
today.

The whole point is the _organisation_ needs to be run on a cost
neutral, not for profit basis, rather than a conduit to funnel profit
to shareholders. That way cost savings can be reinvested in providing
better services, newer drugs, etc. at the lowest possible cost to the
taxpayer.

 

Like I said, they wouldn't buy that.
But yes lots of services could be provided by commercial NFP companies, but
it has to be structured to drive productivity and efficiency. A&E services
would be a great start.