The heading of this forum section is
“A place for high-spirited discussion of matters often overheard in the airfield hangar (or bar!).”
so this is OK. Perhaps unusual, but we have had other non aviation topics here before. Keep it friendly and it’s fine.
My experience of the NHS is that once you are being actually worked on, they do a very good job. Many people still “go private” because you get much faster treatment and you can choose (after doing due diligence) who works on you – even if the location, the equipment and the people are the same ones. As for GPs, I see their primary task as preventing the general public from going to the Gods (the consultants) directly 
Actually you can’t do that anyway; a God is not contactable except via his/her secretary Come to think of it, neither is a GP (you can only visit, write or fax). As with so many things in life, it is worth taking control of your own life, health and destiny, and the more quickly you can bypass a GP the better, but the vast majority of people have little detail interest in what happens to them. And most GPs will happily tell a 120kg patient with cancer / heart disease that it is fine to eat all food “in moderation”. As regards gaming the system, any system will get gamed near the boundaries of the rules. Pilot forums get some small % of posters probing the limits of the mod policy. GPs have been known to make very nice money by making themselves available for night callouts while subcontracting the actual callouts to young keen doctors from India/Pakistan. In this way one can get c. £500/night, minus say £100 paid to the “subcontractor”. OTOH, GPs do have a pretty crappy job IMHO, with little scope for job satisfaction.
I think you can go to God directly now, well via his PA, the GPs are no longer yet another gateway (well privately that is). On the NHS there are still multiple gateways through which you must pass.
I believe you still need a GP to fax a referral letter… although obviously it becomes a bit of a fait accompli.
There may be a totally “private GP” route, which is something I have not explored.
Peter wrote:
I believe you still need a GP to fax a referral letter… although obviously it becomes a bit of a fait accompli.
I can’t recall using a referral letter for the any of consultants I’ve seen. There were no issues whatsoever booking and appointment or getting insurance to pay out. (and I’m not a doctor myself)
It may vary, but up to and including Harley Street, they are happy now to accept direct consultations and I gather no professional constraints from their doing so.
I think the original Poster was very brave to bring up the topic and is also quite correct! The NHS in the UK has become one of those ridiculous subjects where it has become a religion and any critical discussion is banned. It gets depicted as people bouncing in beds in the British Olympic opening ceremony (immediately after the evil Industrial Revolution and depiction of the nasty factories which create the wealth to pay for it).
It is a shame there is not more open discussion. Parts of the NHS are excellent but it is full of restrictive practices. For example, really experienced nurses with 20 years or experience are not allowed to do functions/jobs they could easily do as it is “doctors” job. As well at the excellence I have seen huge waste.
In France they tend to deliver their NHS with elements of the private sector. The private sector does a perfectly good job of retailing food (which is after all a pretty essential need). Unfortunately botched PFI contracts get the private sector a bad name when in actual fact clueless bureaucrats totally out of their depth are responsible. Ditto not prescribing generic drugs etc etc. A mix of public and private involvement is good.
It can still be “free” at the point of delivery.
Not “brave” Archer-181 just so peed off with the hand wringing and total mis-information about the need for more amd more money for the NHS. No one would dare to put me (or many more like me) in charge of even a hospital because the changes for the better and the reduction in costs would see so many redundancies there would be an outcry. I have spent my life in administration of my own companies and everyone employed has a job that is relevant to the business and earns money for the business. No one wanders around with a handful of papers doing little.
Hello @Fenland_Flyer
I was not going to respond to this thread but after reading your post I felt completely lost. I literally have no idea what you are talking about. I cannot see how this post has anything to do with “Euro” or “GA”. Again, I might be completely outside of the flow and this is indeed relevant, but if I was running my own forum and somebody posted what you posted I would have thought it was an automated spam bot post and deleted it.
Yes but as Peter says this section is “Hangar Talk”. We often speak about these sort of topics in our local Aero Club Bar along with Brexit and many other issues!
Brexit has become so divisive that I think it’s correct that Peter has banned it for the good of the forum. However, a chat about not wasting the huge some of money that I and others pay to HMRC should not be that controversial. We are taking about efficiency not shutting it down!
Yes I thought there was a dedicated topic for this sort of stuff.
I’d really be annoyed if the “active threads” discussion suddently had a ton of non-aviation stuff. What if suddenly we had a thread about Gilets Jaunes, another one about the mayoral elections in Portugal, or on when is the best season to put my Ducati Hypermotard for sale?
