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

Comments

• LordOfLocksley@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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 ⁨months⁩ 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 ⁨months⁩ 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 ⁨months⁩ ago

    [deleted]

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    • purplemonkeymad@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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 ⁨months⁩ 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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    • lost@lemmy.wtf ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Yeah, but having to wait four years because you are poor doesn’t sound fair to me.

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    • LordOfLocksley@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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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• NickwithaC@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Young people want to get their shit sorted. This has been the playbook for years, starve the NHS of funds, allow private in to take over, soon enough we have the US health insurance hellscape they are trying to overhaul.

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