Is The Nhs Failing Us?

[pdq1]

Thinking outside the box what if the NHS health budget every year was distributed to all its citizens so they could decide where and what they decided which private treatment they wanted to take up.

Obviously the healthy people could build up a pot for future use and the unhealthy can get immediate treatment. The money could only be used for health problems.

Is this a step too far?

[tamborine]

Private health service depend & use NHS facilities. If they didn't put the extra pressure on NHS, all might run smoother & quicker.

[factor-fiction]

Would they get vouchers or cash? If cash, what if they spend it on other things- would we refuse treatment if they then need it?
The amount given to you may be more than enough if you just get colds but would be totally inadequate if you get cancer or need a major operation

[factor-fiction]

>Private health service depend & use NHS facilities. If they didn't put the extra pressure on NHS, all might run smoother & quicker.

Are you referring to unecessary ops, tamborine?

[sunny-dave]

The total spend per head of population the NHS is about £1,700 per year.

So your theory sounds interesting for people who enjoy moderately good health and then die fairly quickly without any expensive attempts to save them.

The real snag is that no-one could ever build up a big enough pot to cover chronic (continuing) illness like COPD, or the more exotic cancer treatments, or expensive transplants, or virtually any 'intensive care' episode ... the list goes on.

The NHS can only afford these treatments by pooling the money not spent that year on the healthy part of the population. It's not perfect (there are some scandalous lapses in care, there are some weird 'postcode' anomalies in treatment provided) but in terms of healthcare delivered I'd take it over just about any other system.

[sunny-dave]

... and I agree with Tambo - the private health companies are a leech on the NHS - doing the easy stuff & then feeding patients back into the NHS at the first sign of expensive problems.

[Baldric]

Private treatment is OK until something goes wrong, then you are back with the NHS so quick you don't see it coming, why do you think private practices were set up in the first place, to give those that run them a higher salary than they could get via the NHS.

[pdq1]

Using NHS facilities to treat private patients may have been a cause of concern in the past but the tables are turning. More and more NHS patients are now being treated in private hospitals.

Is the NHS there to be concerned about the jobs of its staff or for the benefit of patients. You get the impression its the former! No longer will they be state employees. The assets would realise countless £billions to the private sector who would jump at the chance.

[IggyB]

If you had a major car crash resulting in significant injury would we just leave you at the side of the road if you didn't have enough treatment cash built up?

[rojash]

"More and more NHS patients are now being treated in private hospitals."

Only because successive governments, starting with Thatcher, have been more concerned with funnelling money to the private sector than with maintaining the NHS. (The worst example was under Labour's version of the PFI, where a hospital that needed a few million quid's worth of refurbishment would end up with a new building costing squillions, lumbering itself with enormous debts, because private companies weren't interested in small deals).

Simple logic says that a non-profit organisation can produce services for less than one that needs to pay its shareholders.

[boxtops]

It doesn't work like that, though, pdq. With all the changes coming up in April, the processes are becoming clearer. If (for example) the new clinical commissioning groups only commission say 60 hip operations from one hospital, that's the amount of money that hospital has to perform that procedure - they couldn't then take your voucher and do another one. At the beginning of the financial year, they cost up how much 60 hip operations will be (including the staffing and accommodation and equipment to do that) and if the hospital bid is accepted, the CCG will hand over that amount of money for those operations. The private facilities you speak of then have to be paid for - your voucher would have to pay the consultant surgeon and all his team, over and above their NHS work (most do both). I can't see how your suggestion would work - and with the state of the NHS budget, there's no way people could "build up a pot for future use". If you want to build up a pot, you take out private health insurance.

[Zacs-Master]

Not a very well thought through question. If ALL the money were distributed, how would casualty departments operate? People don't choose to be ill. Some operations cost 10s of thousands of pounds whilst a visit to casualty could only cost a couple of hundred.

[boxtops]

... and ditto a visit to the GP, zacs. The prescribing bill is going through the roof again at the moment. People think of the GP as free, o no it's not....

[LazyGun]

Hope everyone had a most excellent christmas!

I am not sure that I would accept your basic premise. By what measure is "the NHS failing us"? You have to offer some concrete figures to support that assertion. You also would have to demonstrate that private companies can run elements of the health service more efficiently than the current NHS setup, and examples such as Circle at Hinchingbrooke and Harmoni, the privatised out of hours GP service, suggest very much the opposite.

Remember also that, in this country at least, private healthcare is entirely dependent upon the NHS for its trained staff, and for its ability to act as a backstop to private hospitals in the event that something goes seriously wrong.

Personally, I think your basic assertion and proposed solution fatally flawed...

[rojash]

Perhaps the question should be:

"Are successive governments failing the NHS?"

[boxtops]

Investment is certainly reducing IMO - the number of people being reorganised and losing their jobs as the PCTs move into the new commissioning arrangements might evidence that, but I fear that they are throwing out the baby with the bathwater, and a huge amount of expertise and knowledge is going to be lost, as it was when the Health Authorities were disbanded in 2002.

[Sqad]

Just one or two points.

Yes at one time, the NHS provided the tools for Private Practice, but those days have gone.......most, but not all Private Hosptals have up to date facililities. The NHS needs Private Medicine as much as Private Medicine needs the NHS.

Remember if a patient goes privately they still are paying their taxes and National Insurance and are entitled to NHS care should it be necessary.

If Private Medicine was abolished, there would be an exodus of NHS consultants either abroad to to set up Private Only medicine.Neithe the NHS or the Consultants want this.

My advice.......if you can afford private health care, then do so

Me

[Baldric]

My OH is an NHS 'professional' with over 35 years front-line service, she is seriously thinking of packing it all in, as patient care is being replaced by target focused management looking after number one!

[boxtops]

Wise words, sqad - there is evidence in our neck of the woods that many procedures are now being commissioned by the NHS from the private sector, as the public sector can't handle the numbers.

[boxtops]

..community, baldric....?

[factor-fiction]

>"being replaced by target focused management looking after number one".

I think that also applies to education, and many of the private sector industries I've worked in.