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Comment on Frances Ryan: Young people want to ‘go private’ – I’m a lifelong supporter of the NHS, but I can see why

LordOfLocksley@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

My wife needed her gall bladder removed. She had many gallstones that were causing her extreme pain, which needed many trips to A&E to get Morphine based pain killers to deal with the pain. Mind you, she has a very high pain threshold. The NHS waiting time for the removal was 2-3 years.

Fortunately I have private family health insurance through work, so we went with that route. The time from referral, to having the operation was 4 weeks.

4 weeks of pain vs 2-3 years… it’s easy to see why people prefer private.

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reddig33@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
I have private insurance in the US. Trust me, it’s no faster after everything has gone private. The only difference is you pay two to three times as much, and end up saddled with medical debt. You should be thankful for NHS.

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- LordOfLocksley@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Oh I am 100% grateful for the NHS. I used to live in the Netherlands where it’s much closer to the US system, and I paid 3x more for basic insurance, than I do for private insurance in UK
  
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Photuris@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
So long as both public and private exist, and the existence of private options doesn’t create incentives to erode funding of the public option (that’s the big danger), that’s fine.

People who can afford it choosing private options frees up the queue for the public option. And they’re still finding the public option. Likewise, when the private option innovates, those innovations eventually make their way to the public space. A public option also forces the private facilities to keep costs relatively competitive, even as they do charge for premium service. They can’t go apeshit on charges like the American facilities do.

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- purplemonkeymad@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Doesn’t help that the Tories were “stressing” the NHS for years, which makes it harder for things to get back on track.
  
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- jabjoe@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Private health companies often use the same facilities and stuff as public health. It ends up basically paying to jump the queue. Also the private health companies take the low risk, glamorous stuff and leave the complex, high risk, unglamorous stuff to public health.
  
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  - reddig33@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Privatize the profits, socialize the losses.
    
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- lost@lemmy.wtf ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Yeah, but having to wait four years because you are poor doesn’t sound fair to me.
  
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  - Photuris@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    It’s not.
    
    But here in the US, we just die, so.
    
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- LordOfLocksley@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Oh I completely agree. Private and public funding options should be working in harmony, but private must be prevented from overreaching into the public sector
  
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