The NHS Is Going Downhill

Dicehunter

Resident Newb
So my dad had a stent in around 2 years ago due to artery plaque, Got a completely clean bill of health after that but the doctor had him on double the dose of blood pressure pills up until that point, It was only when he switched doctor that they found artery plaque which was quickly sorted out but due to the over dosing of blood pressure pills it gave him severe vertigo, His old doctor was apparently known as the banker, Loved doling pills out to people that didn't need it.

Anyway he's been to the hospital to see his new doctor a few times which is a different doctor each time and he cannot get help with this vertigo problem which has also had another side effect of giving him irregular heartbeats, A few days ago a Jordanian doctor said to him and I quote -

"Well I can't do anything but if you go 3 doors down the hall and pay £1500 to that private company you can get sorted out within 5 minutes"

Which left both of us gob smacked, I did ask why she couldn't do anything and I was just met with -

"Hmm..."

Then she just walked off.

It seems to be getting worse by the day and many doctors are trying to make a push for privatisation which will see them get even more money with the not so well off being left out in the cold, Completely immoral.

My dad has just decided to go back to hospital to have a check-up as his heartbeat is becoming irregular again, Which is down to the over medication he previously experienced.

I think in the next year or so I'm going to get myself and my dad out of England, It's only getting worse.


/rant.
 
Last edited:
Pretty sure she can't answer why without sacrificing her career. It would be like lawyers giving you short cuts or loop holes around the law. If they are caught doing that, they are screwed.

However, I know how it is. My father was induced into a coma due to bad heart. first doctor with nickname dr Doom n gloom said he would never pull through. Reason being is because the doctor had him over medicated and a cocaine wrap heavily padded in his nose to help stop the blood that wouldnt clot.

Next doctor came along pulled a solution out of the air in 10mins. And dropped his medication by 75% over 2 weeks. so he drifted in and out of conciousness. 3 weeks later he was fully concious and perving at the nurses like normal.

Unfortunately the high medication he was put on did the damage and ruined his liver. So it came down to a continued medication but destruction of the liver, or his heart producing too much water meaning a heart attack :(

That doctor should never have been allowed near my father. His solution was to medicate and move on to the next victim. I'm glad they pull in foreign doctors who care and want to help. The useless one was English. But the one who got my father out of his coma was fresh from Iran. One of the nicest doctors I have come across, and even sat with my brother playing a nintendo DS with him while my mother stood over my dad.
 
To be fair all modern research here shows the vast majority of UK doctors, particularly younger doctors(I think you're junior for the first 7 years on the job or something) firmly oppose privatisation particularly because it incentives this phenomenon we see alot in places like America where some doctors can essentially just become useless pill pushers incentivised by money rather than actually helping people. I guess it's not rocket science to see that privatisation of public services that exist primarily to benefit the population(And therefore longer term productivity/output of the nation) turns the reliant users into short term customers/cash-sources that are milked in ways that completely destroys the point the service exists for(And does significant long term damage not just to peoples lives but therefore the nation & economy too).

But obviously, thanks to corrupt politicians who have spent the last decade chopping up public services and selling them to their friends/family, or cutting them down until they can justify letting their friends company take over the contracts, which we've seen time and time again here recently, as well as those ideologically blinded politicians who genuinely think the private sector can do a better job of healthcare even as they consistently f up and we can easily see the mess America is in from it, we're now in a situation where if a slightly dodgy or older medical professional in certain areas wants to easily earn more money with slightly iffy practices they now can do much easier.

Obviously, we've gone through half a decade of some of the UKs largest and widest spread protests regarding NHS privatisation and its effects, particularly the effects of the age old Tory tactic whenever it wants to justifying the privatisation of public services(Cut its financing to the bone, claims it's broken and inefficient, then spend several time more on tax breaks for private companies to come in and "fix" it, like with British Rail, who were world leaders in rail engineering pre-cuts). Yet there are still some even amongst the British public who were convinced by right wing publications into dismissing the protests as being about pay or income, so the chances we'll start moving in the right direction when the man who led all this rubbish is now foreign secretary is wishful thinking I guess.
 
Last edited:
There's a huge lack of efficiency within the NHS and some serious lack of common sense.

There are some amazing and talented people working in our NHS from all over the globe that do an amazing job with the resources they have. Then there are top tier management who do F all but because of how hard it is to let people go legally they stay there sucking up resources and time.

Then you have ridiculous things like the contracts about where certain things can be bought i.e. sterile gloves. sure you can buy sterile glvoes online for pennies but because of contracts in place NHS pays potentially 5 times more for the same product and this applies to a lot of stuff.

Then you have lack of efficiencies in the buying teams. Instead of buying million pound MRI machines from one supplier for multiple hospitals and negotiating savings, each hospital "district" can't remember the proper name will buy them on a case by case basis.

I don't want privatisation but I do wish there was more business sense and better contracts negotiated
 
yeah but when NHS can accept being over charged for a box of tablets. The same box that is provided in your local Tesco, you know that the top tier are out of touch with reality.

That wasn't an exaggeration either. what costs the consumer 23p for a packet of cheap paracetamol at your local store, it costs NHS £4.00 to give you the same. Then we wonder why they have no money...

https://www.express.co.uk/scotland/587952/NHS-wasting-31million-a-year-on-free-drugs

I still blame NHS for allowing this to happen but if we stopped asking for free handouts, then things might turn around. £31million wasted in free tablets. Think how many extra nurses that could fund?
 
I would like to spend an hour typing this but don't have the time. In short my SIL has Lupus and needed an op done.

Three times they gave her a date, then called her on the morning and said they couldn't fit her in (that's cruelty, that). She finally went in and now she's in intensive care :(

Had they done it when they said this would not have happened. Mostly because she had a bit of a cold but didn't tell them because she wanted it over and done with after all of the messing around.
 
To be fair, the NHS is still by far one of the most efficient health services in the world, still costing us significantly less while generally performing much better than the services across many European countries including France, Germany, Sweden or Switzerland, but of course things have started to slip over the last 10 years.

It's worth noting that those numbers are absolute chicken feed compared to the cost of some essential medicines, big pharma really has the NHS by the balls and the issues caused by the cost of medicine, particularly branded/patented medicines is very much a global issue, of course this is besides the fact outside of Scotland we do mostly pay for the prescription costs ourselves for most items.

But yeah, the issues of snowballing costs from cases like those above are a big part of this slip in efficiency, short term attempts to save money through cuts or reduced capacity of services end up costing people, and the service, far far more in the long run than if the service was just funded properly from the start. Most attempts at finding efficiencies so far have just led to creating much larger inefficiencies.
 
Last edited:
Down here by the sea? NHS is amazing. Go to the cities? different story.

Don't get me started on the mental health system down here though.... The tories seem to think you don't need one.
 
NHS quality is good overall. Everyone can pull up bad issues at some point in their life. There are doctors who are proficient in their field but lack the social communication with the patient and families. The issue is funding and how your government is squeezing it dry. I say "your" because I dont live there anymore.

I'm still disgusted that Paramedics are no longer recognised as such and are not considered support drivers...
 
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/...nabis-access-appalling-drug-legalised-UK.html

I just saw this article and while I know the source isn't the best out there, given they're quoting other people here I think that can slide, but I guess this kind of stuff is another part at play here, there isn't a lot of solid answers for many illness' and people hold a lot of strong views about what works and what doesn't on areas where research isn't conclusive, and it's hard to avoid possible overcaution when dealing with other peoples lives.

Alfie's mother Hannah Deacon called the legislation a 'catastrophic failure' and has even heard of a patient's doctor saying he will 'be sacked if he writes a prescription'.

A professor of neurological rehabilitation has called the situation 'appalling' and blames 'overcautious guidelines' for preventing NHS doctors prescribing the now-legal medication.
or to get down to the less emotive but more logical causes:
Medicinal cannabis is currently unlicensed so doctors can prescribe it only if a patient has a need that can't be met by licensed medicines.

Under the new rule, GPs are not allowed to prescribe cannabis-derived medicines. It has to be a specialist consultant, for example in neurology or paediatrics.
 
Last edited:
NHS quality is good overall. Everyone can pull up bad issues at some point in their life. There are doctors who are proficient in their field but lack the social communication with the patient and families. The issue is funding and how your government is squeezing it dry. I say "your" because I dont live there anymore.

I'm still disgusted that Paramedics are no longer recognised as such and are not considered support drivers...


It's not just some issues, Hospitals all over the UK are being shut down, My local hospital has 5 doctors and 10 nurses and patients are literally spilling out onto the car park, I was speaking to a nurse today and she said the government every week makes cuts to the NHS, Over the last few years thousands of nurses have been fired and over 40,000 doctors and nurses have been denied placements within the NHS.


All part of the plan to privatise it to make more money for the old boy network.
 
That's the benefit of a non government ran health system. People will always have access. Although there are many downsides as well.
 
Back in 2013 research shown pretty conclusively that the NHS had far lower waiting times than you'd get on average from American health care services, particularly in American cities or if you didn't have top tier insurance, so I'm not sure the access issue really improves with private systems, though of course private services here have naturally shorter times due to their much smaller number of users. Of course, NHS waiting times have grown consistently since then, but that seems directly linked to the fact funding and staff has also fallen in that time, and now healthcare spending in the UK comes in at roughly half the cost per person than in the US, meaning the US government spend more on healthcare per person than in the UK one does when you take into account they still fund close to 50% of American healthcare through general taxation(Though of course still fund a much lower %age than any other G7 nation).
 
And I bet all that research came from the UK? lol
Don't really care what the research says. They aren't really comparable and the health of the populations are very different. Anybody can make any statistic true and/or skewed. People do it all the time about guns, knives, crime, etc. Just to prove my point you say you have lower wait times, cool, the US also has 261 million more people. See how that's skewed? We literally have almost 400% more people. Without knowing this however it would seem yours is far better, when in reality its not. take into account we have far more hospitals and such around the country, minimum one per city/town, and access is easy and the load is spread out far more.
 
Last edited:
Back in 2013 research shown pretty conclusively that the NHS had far lower waiting times than you'd get on average from American health care services, particularly in American cities or if you didn't have top tier insurance, so I'm not sure the access issue really improves with private systems, though of course private services here have naturally shorter times due to their much smaller number of users. Of course, NHS waiting times have grown consistently since then, but that seems directly linked to the fact funding and staff has also fallen in that time, and now healthcare spending in the UK comes in at roughly half the cost per person than in the US, meaning the US government spend more on healthcare per person than in the UK one does when you take into account they still fund close to 50% of American healthcare through general taxation(Though of course still fund a much lower %age than any other G7 nation).


Average waiting time in most hospitals now is around 4 hours, In my local hospital average waiting time is 8 hours, I don't trust any of these studies as they show exactly the opposite of what I and many others actually experience in reality and not just in theory which is all most of these "studies" are, Theory, Which is not useful in the real world.
 
And I bet all that research came from the UK? lol
Don't really care what the research says. They aren't really comparable and the health of the populations are very different. Anybody can make any statistic true and/or skewed. People do it all the time about guns, knives, crime, etc. Just to prove my point you say you have lower wait times, cool, the US also has 261 million more people. See how that's skewed? We literally have almost 400% more people. Without knowing this however it would seem yours is far better, when in reality its not. take into account we have far more hospitals and such around the country, minimum one per city/town, and access is easy and the load is spread out far more.
This kind of thinking really irks me, I guess this is the Post Truth Society(tm) we live in now, combined with clickbait media misrepresenting the studies. Oh and obviously the US also has more people per capita. ;)

It's literally a matter of taking a look at the actual paper or reading a more level-headed take on the paper's results. Then you can actually think about the results instead of hiding behind a wall of this probably doesn't apply to us/studies say all kinds of things/study is fake anyway.

And wait, first you agree that US has longer wait times, yet later you mention easier access and more spread out load? Which one is it?
 
Back in 2013 research shown pretty conclusively that the NHS had far lower waiting times than you'd get on average from American health care services, particularly in American cities or if you didn't have top tier insurance, so I'm not sure the access issue really improves with private systems, though of course private services here have naturally shorter times due to their much smaller number of users. Of course, NHS waiting times have grown consistently since then, but that seems directly linked to the fact funding and staff has also fallen in that time, and now healthcare spending in the UK comes in at roughly half the cost per person than in the US, meaning the US government spend more on healthcare per person than in the UK one does when you take into account they still fund close to 50% of American healthcare through general taxation(Though of course still fund a much lower %age than any other G7 nation).

Not sure comparing waiting times to another country proves anything though. NHS wait times have never been good. 10 years ago when my father was alive. He needed heart surgery. He was put on a 12month waiting list for surgery needed to save his life. It was only because he had a heart attack again that they pushed him up. Waiting times in the Local ER might be better, but queues for serious surgeries has been complete dog s**t for as long as I can remember.

I lost my cousin from having to wait too long for his surgery when all he needed was a clot removed from his leg. It moved to his brain. That was 8 years ago. Ever since then our family went private and its never been better. The Nurses and Doctors are not the problem, its the way the system is handled.

Too easy is it to get handouts on simple pills you can buy yourself when NHS get charged 400% more for. them. Then when the time comes that funding is badly needed, its not there.
 
This kind of thinking really irks me, I guess this is the Post Truth Society(tm) we live in now, combined with clickbait media misrepresenting the studies. Oh and obviously the US also has more people per capita. ;)

It's literally a matter of taking a look at the actual paper or reading a more level-headed take on the paper's results. Then you can actually think about the results instead of hiding behind a wall of this probably doesn't apply to us/studies say all kinds of things/study is fake anyway.

And wait, first you agree that US has longer wait times, yet later you mention easier access and more spread out load? Which one is it?

What thinking? Logic? Sure
How am I supposed to read said study without a link? Besides that the health care systems are so different it's hardly comparable. I never agreed with anything, my point about having more access is true. Which means lower wait times. For all I know they choose the top 10 US wait time hospitals.

Honestly the post truth society stuff I deal with all the time. I deal with leftists, hardcore ones at that, basically everyday. I know how it is. Gun control is the most obvious example of Post Truth Society, in the US at least. However me not caring about some UK study about healthcare against the US is not related. It's more likely biased, created by people who have not experienced both, and just reading stats. Stats don't tell everything as I alluded to. If a third party EU/UK and then a US one did the same study with them it would be much more enlightening. I don't proclaim as you make it seem that the US health system is better. I've already stated both are drawbacks. I don't believe one is better than the other. All I know is for anything critical here you don't wait. You get treated immediately, babies always go first, and non threatening issues get pushed last. As it should be. Outside of everything gets treated immediately anywhere anytime, I don't believe it gets much better. But as all the networking companies allude to, 5G bands should allow us to get there sooner than later. I'm skeptical however about that
 
Last edited:
Nope, I don't think you could be further from the truth, it wasn't a UK study, it's a (fairly well known) peer reviewed journal article in a well respected publication on health & medicine comparing the differences in a variety of health care systems around the world. In fact, it specifically deals with the lack of comparability in raw statistics as a key point of the article:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168851013001759

I was talking about waiting times to first see your doctor regarding an issue you call in about, in many American cities it is apparently common for this to take 3-5 weeks. There's definitely still big issues with it in the UK, my point was just that there's nothing to suggest those issues would ever be solved by privatisation(That's the benefit of a non government ran health system. People will always have access), which from real world examples seems to guarantee reduced efficiency of service as far more motives and many players with minimal cooperation or a desire for competitiveness are introduced into the service. But of course, the much bigger issue with privatisation is that waiting times can have a secondary factor at play: the quality of your health insurance.

Although like I said, things have definitely gotten worse since then, a few years ago I got rushed to A&E by ambulance only to have to wait 6 hours to get seen in one of the largest & most advanced/modern hospitals in the country (Queen Elizabeth Birmingham) because they no longer had the funds to keep more than one doctor on over a saturday night.
Though yeah there's always been certain types of specialist surgery's with ridiculous waiting lists but again that's a funding/staffing problem, around 10% of NHS staff positions are currently vacant, and we're talking about the fifth largest employer in the world:
chart1.png
 
Last edited:
Decent public health care like NHS or ones we have in Scandinavia runs circles around a privatised insurance focused system like one in USA, where insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies reap benefits. That changes the dynamics so that its in healthcare companies best interest to keep patients on prescription as long as possible and getting coverage with existing conditions is difficult. Using USA as an example, the system is ridiculously expensive (per capita), while many can't even afford proper care. Even with rampant obesity those are telltale signs of a broken system.

It's a shame that NHS and the Finnish healthcare system are constantly under threat when right wing parties are in power, as they'd rather tear it down. Such changes are happening here as well, where parts of the healthcare system are being privatised and results have been questionable at best. For instance, assisted living facilities have been partially moved to private contractors and as a result they're understaffed as a cost cutting measure.
What makes the situation even more puzzling is that many of these parties win votes by campaigning against immigration and by upholding traditional family values, which seems to attract votes from the working class. And they're also hurt the most when budget cuts hit public health care, pensions and so forth.
 
Back
Top