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> (like eg the British NHS does, modulo the option to go to a private hospital for enough money) IME it's more complicated than that. Firstly, the NHS allows
by denton-scratch 3y ago
> (like eg the British NHS does, modulo the option to go to a private hospital for enough money)
IME it's more complicated than that.
Firstly, the NHS allows consultants to do private work, making use of NHS resources, including beds, radiography and theatres. Secondly, a consultant can refer you back to the NHS for treatment, effectively "jumping the queue".
I would never rely on a private hospital. They never have an emergency department, and emergencies happen in hospitals too. Many private hospitals can only treat certain types of case; I wouldn't want to be stuck in a hospital that couldn't treat anything that happened to me.
- DanBC 3y ago> Secondly, a consultant can refer you back to the NHS for treatment, effectively "jumping the queue". The patient would go to the back of the NHS queue, so I'm not sure how they're jumping anything. The real problem is that private healthcare over-treats people with unnecessary surgery, and cherrypicks the easy stuff, but dumps patients back into NHS care as soon as they get complex. https://x.com/ShaunLintern/status/1700778868666216542?s=20 https://x.com/ShaunLintern/status/1700778868666216542?s=20
- denton-scratch 3y ago> The patient would go to the back of the NHS queue This is not true. I went to the NHS over my kid's glue-ear. We had to see a consultant, but the earliest appointment was 9 months, and the hearing problem was impeding our child's language acquisition. So we went private, and had an appointment with the consultant in a few weeks. The consultant recommended surgery to install grommets (wow!), and a few weeks later we attended for NHS surgery, to be performed by the same consultant. This was 30 years ago; but I've been told recently (a couple of days ago) that this still goes on.