QUALYS and Lord Sumption

[Josephine]

In the olden days you’d be put on a list for say a hip replacement. You’d wait and wait till you came to the top of the list. Yes, you’d be older and less able to survive surgery, lost years when you could have lived a productive life, pain free and less of a burden on your family and society. Some of you (and here’s where the hidden screening would occur) will have died. Then comes along a government decree that people put on a waiting list must be treated in a given time if the hospital is to get paid the maximum. Folk pushed through the system, discharged too early and staff shortage causing burnout and further shortage. Locally a whole load of midwives recruited from abroad left because they were treated better back home. Stopped a bit to do some site seeing then we’re gone. Alternatively staff from other countries who can little afford to further deplete their healthcare system loose out.

[Gilli]

I think the health service is great at dealing with emergencies and acute infections. It falls down on almost everything else, but I would still rather be treated by the NHS than by a US hospital where the only thing they seem interested in is the thickness of your credit card or health insurance plan.

No health service will ever be able to be entirely fair because rules will always have to be made in order to stick within a limited budget.

[roseymary]

I'm very glad I live in Australia where our NHS seems like paradise in comparison.

Regrettably in any system there have to be value judgements made on cost benefit. Is striving to keep a 92 year old with dementia alive "at any cost" when they are very near their end of life anyway make sense? I think not.

Having watched my husband slowly die of internal bleeding over months, which he hated, all he wanted to do was die and if that's what he wanted I suported him. We had real tussles with the local hospital to not treat him, thankfully many years previously he had DNR put on his records. Who was right my husband or the medical profession?

[Mamie]

You have a great point Roseymary. Just because we can do something it doesn’t necessarily follow that we should.

[Sarah(sjc)]

In the UK, we have fewer hospital beds per capita than Germany and various other countries. Yes, we’re great at reacting, as Gilli said - but not so good at acting. The issue of people denied life-enhancing treatment is a worrying one - my son had a trapped nerve/disc problem a couple of years ago, which combined with his mental health issues at the time, threatened to serious derail him, he was also unable to work. Even at age 23, it did not seem a priority for the nhs to get him back to work, so we went private. In the course of treatment, they discovered enormous gallstones which had been causing abdominal issues for sometime, but had been dismissed by GP (omeprazole prescribed). In fairness, these were dealt with quickly on nhs, and he’s been back at work, and not missed a day since. Given covid, he’d probably have lost his job and be dosed up on anti-depressants and strong painkillers, had I not paid in the first instance.