Therein lies my argument about time wasters and who should go elsewhere. Maybe I find all this annoying because I never go to the doctor and wouldn’t dream of seeing one for a cold, we were brought up with strict parents who never wanted to bother the family doctor for anything unless it was serious.
Yep.
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7281/
Look at how waiting lists change under different Governments.
What do we have now? Again we are being told by Tories, and of course by RefUK Ltd that it is all too expensive and too difficult. (Yes the parties of big business that claim to be able to manage everything!) But the facts speak for themselves.
It is difficult, but under Tories things get consistently worse.
Cut taxes, and spend less on NHS? Yep that puts more epople onto private care companies who make more profits for big tax payers . Win/Win
3 Likes
[quote=“Debby_Wade, post:320, topic:58508”]
the American money grab, model.
Which does seem to be how pet care in the UK is now organised. Many vets now work for big umbrella corporations owned by equity firms etc, rather than being independent. Pets are treated up to the point where insurance runs out …and then the pet dies.
This is what happened to my friends dog. I had asked another friend, who is a vet, for advice on behalf of my friend.. She said, “the dog is terminally ill, he will die within 6 weeks regardless of any treatment he receives, he should be euthanised now to prevent any further suffering”. My friend with the dog wouldn’t listen, the dog went through hell, the insurance cover ran out and the dog died.
Pet care for the uninsured has rocketed in the UK as a result of these vet corporations cashing in through insurance; 63% increase in fees in about 10 years. I suspect health care in the USA is expensive for the same reason.
My sister was charged £17.50 for 2 paracetamol for her cat, she challenged it. She was told by the vet nurse to buy the drug from Boots and give the cat 1/4 of one tablet. Cost 32 pence for 16 tablets.
Profit before care methinks.
2 Likes
The data only goes up to 2021. Waiting lists have started to come down under Labour.
Careful with that what is sometimes termed cat aspirin or cat paracetamol is not human paracetamol.
Paracetamol and aspirin from Boots etc are toxic to cats.
The graph ends 2021, yes. The link below is to separate recent HoC report and shows recent trends.
Yes, now downward again.
My nieces cat was hit by a car, last month, she managed to get an emergency vet’s appointment, ( it was a Sunday). They advised her to have the cat put down as its injuries were extensive. 10 minutes later she leaves with a bill for £867. She was naturally distressed after loosing her cat and after calming down realised she’d also agreed to a very expensive cremation. She wasn’t given time to think, she was just railroaded into it. Pretty disgusting behaviour but so normal now.
And don’t get us started on car insurance 
Fortunately she’d already paid for the vets drugs for the cat.
Maybe the advice was for her German Shepherd dog. I’ll check she got it right, I wouldn’t want Tiger to be poisoned, though I suspect Perro , the GS might!!
Don’t take my word for it, and do check, but I am fairly sure that aspirin etc is toxic to cats and maybe dogs too.
Yes, aspirin (and ibuprofen/naproxen) is toxic to cats as they don’t have the mechanism to metabolise it.
Dogs can tolerate paracetamol but you need to be very careful with the dosage
The trouble is that you as a patient with a problem cannot know whether it is serious or not … . Is that headache extreme low blood pressure or is it excess beer last night .. If that belch over indulgence or a stomach ulcer or is it severe angina .. . And people die by making the wrong choice.
2 Likes
Unfortunately, simplistic solutions often fail at the first hurdle of real world complexity. As @Dan1 says, how do the non-medically trained differentiate between what might and might not be serious?
And, yes, a fee to visit might discourage some visits we perceive as frivolous but it may similarly discourage medically necessary visits and not just from those who can’t afford it.
I’m not convinced that any of us is in a position to be judgemental about what drives others to visit the doctor as we each have our own thresholds for pain, discomfort and resilience.
3 Likes
Viewed from your your position and maybe not from someone living in one of the french towns with blocks of awful flats. If you moved back to a substantial home in say Bagshot, you may feel differently
2 Likes
how do the non-medically trained differentiate between what might and might not be serious?
I’m afraid I’m rather of the opinion, and believe me I have a great deal of personal experience of this, that if I don’t know what’s wrong with me, nor does my GP. I use GP’s as a referral service and I believe this is what their role has largely become.
It has been said, that if the NHS had been introduced today GP’s would not exist in their current form.
At the GP surgery I left in the UK 6 years ago, nurse practitioners or on- site pharmacists do vaccinations, N.P’s do asthma checks, the pharmacist determines whether you need statins or drugs for hypertension etc, etc. So the role of the GP is now largely referral.
I don’t think this is a bad thing, but it does make the salaries GP’s command and the years of training, around 7, I believe, seem rather excessive.
1 Like
My sister is a hypochondriac, and has been all of her adult life. It is a debilitating condition. Each time I speak to her, she says, " I need to see a Dr". She ends up in A and E whenever she goes away from home, last time this was in Austria. Her husband will no longer go abroad because of this, and who can blame him. She has spent most of their savings on unnecessary tests, mri’s ( which always throw up some minor problem) and consultations.
It’s worse now they have a triage system at her dr’s surgery because she rarely gets past the request unless she exaggerates her symptoms, but gets found out during the phone call. So she is spending more and more money on private consultations as a result.
Strictly speaking she’s a time waster, would introducing a fee to see a Dr change this? Not one bit.
Yes, but now only gynaecologists, ophthalomogists, and something else I firget.
My experience differs . My GP is always a bit to ready to pass me on to a consultant … But makes very good calls and reads reports … So in essence she is the captain of her enterprise … Excellent nurses doing the BP ,Bloods and vaccines . She for the bad news and the actual diagnostics .and gives strong advice
My error, I checked with my sister, she says it was the dog that the nurse said she could use paracetamol for. The dog was weighed and the dosage calculated for future use of paracetamol. Too late to avoid the excessive cost on the original bill of course.
1 Like
I am or was a GPs son and had the dubious pleasure of doing duty for receptionist 55 years ago ..surgery in the family house ..So yes there were the regulars , some for regular tasks like bandage dressings , weekly injections and others with hypochondriac , but more with real problems .This in an Ireland without a NHS equivalrnt
I have a minor health condition that when I was in the UK required yearly blood tests. Sometimes the results came back fine, others not so.
Every time the results were high I got a text from my dr that caused alarm. And I would have to wait 6 months and have another test , when all would be fine.
This went on for 15 years. Until I did my own research and realised the Dr needed to do another test that would eliminate any serious issues and she should have done this 15 years before.
It appears from a conversation I had with said Dr, that she was not looking back over my records, but dealing with each yearly blood test as a separate entity. 15 years of worry ended with the second test.
4 Likes