No offense taken Craig .

I will not try and defend the NHS as no defense is possible, waiting lists are as bad now as they have ever been.  The problem is simply one of workload.  There are too many demands on the system for it to cope.

Please just remember that those of us who are the little cogs in the very large machine are trying as hard as we can to make what we have work properly.  Unfortunately it never will to the complete satisfaction of even 10% of our users.

I hope you get sorted out soon mate.

Best wishes.

Will

Hi Will its not so much the medical staff themselves i have a problem with, i know they are working as hard as they can to get this sorted, but in the end it wont really be possible. Its the people who have screwed the system up so badly that people with serious heart conditions are forced to wait a year and a half for surgery, during which time they could die.
as for it being free, i would right now prefer to pay to get it sorted, the amount it would cost, is nothing compaired to what i am going to loose because i cant work.

sadly i cant afford to pay for it right now. its that usual cycle of need job to pay for treatment, but need treatment to get a job:)
i am going back to my GP this week and going to see what she has to say about it.

Not all private patients are wealthy or have fancy names. Many are ordinary people just like me, forced to fork out the money from their hard-earned savings to get the treatment they need before they die or deteriorate waiting in the the queue. Private operations are often carried out in the same NHS hospital by the same surgeons & theatre staff. An old crony of mine just paid a small fortune (in advance) for a quadruple heart by-pass (fortunately successful so far) & this happened in his case. He was not allowed inside the door until he paid up. Just as well he took his credit card.   He was in the same ward as the NHS patients & received no special treatment. He told me the food was inedible & he had to ask friends to bring something for him when they visited. To rub salt in the wound he will lose his old age pension money for the period spent in hospital, partly to pay for the food which he couldn't & didn't eat. This is where the problem is & it won't be sorted until the system is changed. The government, any government, couldn't run an orgy in a brothel.

I'm fortunate to have private medical insurance as part of my retirement pension. I've also paid the full NHS contributions all my working life so in reality I'm paying double for any treatment I need. For this I'm treated as some sort of outcast queue-jumper or worse. I resent that. You can't have it both ways.

PS. Meanwhile a complete stranger can enter this country today, claim political asylum & get better medical treatment than I can completely free of charge. Something wrong somewhere don't you think? ???

once again, i am not criticising most of the doctors, they do their job 90% of the time as they should, as for private treatment like i said, if i could afford it i would, however i wouldnt pay for it in this country, i would get the treatment abroad. why take away from someone who needs something more important checking out because i have the money.

Mixed emotions here.

NHS seems great, in theory.

Unfortunately, in order to do something similar in the US it would require a significant tax burden, and we'd be paying substantially more taxes already.

Not to mention that there are already, IMO, enough government programs, I really don't need to pay for another one.  lol

But on the flip side, look at health coverage in the US.  It is ridiculously expensive.  I know people that pay 600-700 per month, for just their own coverage.  Absolutely outrageous.

The reason for it is twofold.  Yes, there are morons out there who fraudulently bill the insurance companies.  But if you've ever seen what hospitals bill these companies...I mean come on.  Does a band-aid really cost $18?  Do aspirin cost $7 a pill? 

Because insurance companies (most of them anyway, there are exceptions) are privately owned corporations, there's someone at the top who is making literally millions of dollars a year to run them.  THIS is where the problem is.