The NHS - is it free healthcare? Can you even get it?

Despite Michael Moore's rose tinted view of the NHS -- which we admit, is a perfect "concept", just badly implemented -- many still cannot get the care they need or even afford it ... which is strange considering it is touted as FREE healthcare. (I personally have paid over £10,000 in the space of three years for this "free" healthcare and am still paying through the nose regularly.) The more expensive services are constantly being cut, such as Gynaecology and Obstetrics or even Cancer treatment, whilst the NHS is quite happy to pay lawyers fees in excess of £165 million pounds for negligence claims of over £633 million pounds. You cut funding, services and hire cheap staff then you get negligence claims - any business would get that. But the NHS is not run as a business. The main concern is that people are generally unable to help themselves as having private cover often excludes you from parallel NHS services which just seems ridiculous. Anyway, look forward to your comments.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• nhs
• insurance
• health insurance
• national health service

[ClTIZEN]

If you don't like our system, and you don't live here, then no one cares what you have to say. If you don't like our system, and you do live here, then you can buy your own private healthcare. My experiences with the NHS have been nothing but excellent, and I have never had to wait for treatment. You can visit your doctor any day you wish, and you pay nothing for the drugs needed to help you. Nothing, nothing whatsoever. Not even one penny. We believe in free healthcare for everyone, so wheesht.

[noclaimsdiscount]

@ClTIZEN I do pay. I pay a lot for this health care system. Because it is wasteful and badly run it probably costs me more in taxes than if it were private and I had to buy insurance. It's not FREE unless you don't work (pay taxes). But that's beside the point ...

... I have to pay NOW too. I'm glad every illness you've had has been covered by the NHS and that your prescriptions are free. Mine have not. I've had to spend over £10,000 already. Handed direct to the NHS, not some private hospital.

[harr7959]

It makes me sad to see people like this guy whining about his healthcare system when here, in the USA, we lose 44,000 people every year because they cannot afford access to healthcare.

In the USA, we pay twice as much as you do, and still millions of us cannot have ANY access to healthcare. What a pitty that you are so pessimistic...

[noclaimsdiscount]

44,000 out of 304,059,724 people is 0.01% of your US population. 0.01% of the UK population is 6139 people. A hell of a lot more than six thousand people a year die because the NHS is a cut-budget death trap. If we could reduce the number of people the NHS refuses to treat and who subsequently die to 6000 people a year - we'd have made progress!! Remember, the NHS refuses to treat people because they don't want to pay far more than under the US system.

[hauskalainen]

Someone from an insurance company telling everyone how BAD the NHS is?

err.. biased or what?

Fact! Less than 10% of UK population has private health insurance and most of them get it as an employer perk. Less than 2% actually buy their own insurance.

This is because the insurers (even in the UK) do not cover pre-existing conditions, will not cover seeing a general physician, and won't cover you for childbirth, diabetes and so on.

NHS v Private?

Really. Its no contest!

[krazykeys88]

The devil is setting aside the hottest palces in hell for health care insurers.

YOUR system is based on ripping people off and charging them for what they already get for free. YOUR system is about maaking profit out of peoples suffering. I Love the NHS and will die to defned it from wvil vile leeches like you, you fucking evil bastards. HOW DARE YOU PUT A PRICE ON HUMAN LIFE!!!!!!! EVIL

[KuraIthys]

Why is everything you cite about how bad the NHS is apparently sponsored by an insurance company? You think the government is biased, but private insurance providers aren't? What are the interests of such insurance providers in making the NHS look bad? That's hardly unbiased research.

[richardcadbury]

@krazykeys88 UR AN EVIL CUNT. SEE MY POST ON THIS VIDEO

[MatchCard]

@cwood4ever Man this is confusing... who is telling the truth? Maybe once I get into college I'll learn to sniff out the facts...

[cwood4ever]

@harr7959 you're statistics are fake. No one dies because everyone in America still gets heath care. Its against the law to turn anyone away. Stop copy and pasting false information on youtube fuck tard.

[ComidianTwiizk]

Evil man is evil.

[TiberJai]

But on average British people do live longer. Also, i'll agree for acute illnesses if you have the money america is better, yet for chronic illness you come the britain. But still america has an expensive system, where you pay three times the amount we do. Also tobacco use here is also a big crisis, with huge NHS campaigns trying to break the habits, as well as obesity.

We have a higher life expectancy, as well as a lower infant mortality rate.