Online consultation/prescription services UK

[Trajal]

Err, I'm a massive capitalist (and libertarian) but I have to take issue here. Private Healthcare, by its very essence of existence, is means tested. If you can't afford it, you don't get it.

 

[Bioshockszz]

Err, I'm a massive capitalist (and libertarian) but I have to take issue here. Private Healthcare, by its very essence of existence, is means tested. If you can't afford it, you don't get it.

That’s not means tested! Means tested is saying to poor people, you can’t have private healthcare. Poor people CAN have private healthcare! Maybe it costs a months earning for treatment, maybe they need a loan, doesn’t matter they still have access to it. Get it?!

Benefits are means tested, you only get them if you are eg unemployed or sick.

Student grants (not loans) are means-tested. Some student get grants if their parents earn below a certain amount.

Means tested is a test that you must pass in order to qualify for government assistance by its definition. Nothing private is means tested.

Getting private healthcare is not means-tested. Getting a new Mercedes is not means tested. Bloody hell should not be done hat difficult lol

 

[Bioshockszz]

You can’t “prove” an economic model. You can have real life examples that validate economic models and the more examples that back up the model the more likely it is to be true. It can never be proved. That’s why you have conflicting theories: classical, neoclassical, Keynesian. The fact you have overlooked that tells me you have no fundamental knowledge of economics and have done a quick google search on healthcare. I’m no economist, but I studied modules as part of my degree and your post and the number of your post count tells me you have a lot of spare time to paraphrase the internet without any real life application of what you jibber about on here. Maybe I swallowed a book on economic modelling. That booked and the time invested paid dividends as out of it came a degree and a career that repaid the price of that book and the time invested in reading it. Funny that I actually remember reading in one of my economics books and that you are reading this book in the hope that one day you will receive a return on both the original purchase and time invested in reading the book.. And I did ��

 

[Bioshockszz]

It looks like you swallowed a book on economic modeling and theory without actually testing it for proof.

If your proof is based on an assumption about private healthcare in the UK, then it's flawed because we don't truly have a private system. We have a parasitic private adjunct to the NHS that provides no emergency care (there are no private A&Es because they aren't profitable), borrows (at great cost to taxpayers) most of its workforce from the NHS, and that cherry-picks profitable services while handing any procedure that would prove costly back onto the NHS. Private providers don't even pay to train nurses or doctors, the NHS does, then BUPA or whoever nabs them after. Pure parasitism.

As for the idea of competition in healthcare: lol. Healthcare isn't a market with simplistic inputs outputs and processes where one supplier undercuts another. If I sell you cheap tainted blood, cut corners not fixing you up after an operation, or insert a dodgy but cheaper replacement joint, you may simply die. Hence the realisation 70+ years ago that profit and traditional market 'competition' have no place in healthcare or in improving the provision of those services.

Of course you have competition in healthcare, if you have two private specialist ADHD practices, you already got competition. Not even worth my time debating with you, I get no return on investment with that. Keep winning the internet boy�� Good use of your time

 

[Trajal]

I'll tell you what is funnier than anything, is attacking someone entirely on an ad hominem basis simply because they are more active in an online community than you have been and then attempting to leverage some kind of moral or even educational superiority from your position of inexperience. Now that is funny indeed.

the comment you made 'I'm no economist' most definitely stands. You aren't, nor am I actually, but I have worked at a high level within the financial services industry and part of that included the basics of understanding that something that is means tested must be, by definition, within the means of any individual. Now "within the means" does not mean going without food or housing for a month to pay for it.

Please understand, I don't know you or hate you or even care who you are, I just like things to at least be correct if you're going to rant. In this instance, you are not correct.

 

[BecomingJulie]

If you haven't got the means to afford private healthcare, then you have to go without it. That sounds rather a lot like means testing to me.

For your next trick, no doubt you are going to buy a house for ?100 000, sell it to me for ?200 000, and also lend me the ?200 000 which I will pay back interest-free over 25 years. The ?100 000 you earn out of this deal is absolutely not interest on the loan; rather, it is a fee for the service you are providing, in buying the house in order to sell it to me. You are lending me ?200 000 with which to buy the house, and I am paying you back exactly ?200 000, of which not a single penny is interest.

Anyway, I find the very idea of competition in healthcare abhorrent. A competitive market implies that some providers will not provide as good a service as other providers, and some buyers will end up disappointed. And while that might be fine for luxury goods, status symbols and other non-necessities, there is absolutely no place in necessary services such as healthcare for differing standards of service, let alone the idea of anybody being left without.

Illness is not an indulgence for which people have to pay, nor an offence for which they should be penalised; but a misfortune, the cost of which should be borne by the community.

Just thought you might need a reminder.

 

[Trajal]

Aneurin Bevan was born in the next village over from me in Tredegar but whilst he had some good ideas, he was too much of a perfect ideologue for reality to fully manifest.

as a post modern neo-Marxist would say, capitalism is the mother of modern invention and a necessary phase for humanity to fully explore to achieve the next levels of technological advancement that will finally fully free humanity to explore their desires.

 

[Tranced]

I'm becoming used to holding unpopular views; at the end of the day I am a right wing ethnic minority that works for the NHS so its automatically assumed that I am left wing or a labour luvvie. But Julie, I am sick and tired of paying large amounts of tax so that immigrants that hate the west can come and get free treatment and then bomb us. My parents were immigrants too came over int he 70s with a skill and intergrated, and never attached the country.

You do realise that this statement is built on some fundamental illogical inconsistencies? Even if you had treated a single one, or ten, the amount of people who have performed bomb attacks here is an incredibly small percentage vs. those who haven't, so presumably these patients you are referring to are not what you seem to be implying, statistically. It also seems to be based on the idea that said bombers are noncontributing/not citizens. I'm not sure on figures, but iirc the majority are actually citizens of the UK.

 

[Wilson Wilson]

While I agree with Julie that in a perfect world the NHS would already be as good as the private sector healthcare system, and therefore a private system would not be needed in the first place, the fact is we do not live in a perfect world.

It would be ideal and excellent if everyone just got the top level of care that is humanly possible from the NHS and there'd be no point in a private system because it could do nothing better.

However there is no point living in fantasy idealism land. Here in the real world the NHS is awful at a lot of things, particularly when it comes to mental health. Even The Guardian, which is as leftie as you can get, has published multiple articles on how two thirds of people with depression get absolutely no treatment from the NHS.

Here is a direct quote:

"People are still routinely waiting for – well, we don't really know, but certainly more than 18 weeks, possibly up to two years, for their treatment and that is routine in some parts of the country. Some children aren't getting any treatment at all – literally none. That's what's happening. So although we have the aspiration, the gap is now so big and yet there is no more money," he said.

Wessely said there would be a public outcry if those who went without treatment were cancer patients rather than people with mental health problems. Imagine, he told the Guardian, the reaction if he gave a talk that began: "'So, we have a problem in cancer service at the moment. Only 30% of people with cancer are getting treatment, so 70% of them don't get any treatment for their cancer at all and it's not even recognised."


If he were truly talking about cancer, he said, "you'd be absolutely appalled and you would be screaming from the rooftops."Wessely said he had asked Simon Stevens, the NHS England chief executive, how the gap would be bridged but was told that resolving the issue would involve a "much longer conversation with the public".


"I think what he means is basically, if people really want true parity in the sense of actual 90% of mental health patients treated within 18 weeks, just like they are for other disorders, that is going to have to mean money will have to move from acute to mental health. Genuine money.


"As there is no more money, that would mean significant losses in other sectors. I think he was saying we would need a pretty good political imperative – we would need to know that people were actually on board for that – and I don't know the answer."

So there's the rub. The NHS simply cannot provide adequate mental health care because it lacks the resources to do so without taking away from other areas of care. In order to increase the budget for mental health we need politicians to believe it's useful to pander that way to win votes and we also need to either get more money somehow (probably by borrowing it) or simply take it from existing services.

Meanwhile you do not need an entire political revolution to get proper treatment from a private doctor.

As I said, we do not live in a perfect world.

If I had to rely on the NHS to treat my mental health I'd have killed myself while sitting on a waiting list for years. There are no two ways about it.

It is only because I was able to access private healthcare that I got proper treatment.

Time to see a psychiatrist for so much as an initial consultation on the NHS in my area? At least one year.

Time to see a psychiatrist for a consolation, diagnosis, and prescriptions privately? A couple days. I shit you not.

This psychiatrist was one of the best in the country with some ridiculously huge number of papers published in peer reviewed medical journals and all sorts, it wasn't some random quack.

I was also able to get CBT privately. Again on the NHS this would have taken at least one year. Additionally, if I didn't like the therapist I was assigned, too bad. Anyone who's done therapy will tell you that getting along with your therapist is very important. Finally, the NHS limits the number of sessions you can have and will kick you out as soon as they deem you not severe enough to require support anymore.

Getting therapy privately took about a week, I could choose my therapist, and I could have as many sessions as I bloody well wanted.

If you have to see a specialist, particularly with regards to mental health, private healthcare is simply better.

We can sit here all day and argue if we think it's morally right or ideologically fair but none of that matters when the simple reality is the NHS has a lot of problems and private healthcare fills those gaps.

Finally, I want to weigh in on the idea that private doctors are simply motivated to make as much money as possible by prescribing whatever the patient wants. I have not found this to be the case at all. Indeed, the private psychiatrist I saw was stricter than my NHS GP. What is true is that private doctors have more freedom to use their own judgement because they are not bound by the NICE guidelines. They very often still use them as just that - guidelines - but they're not obligated to follow them. This is not the case within the NHS. All doctors on the NHS are bound by the NICE guidelines.

This doesn't mean private healthcare is some kind of wild west though. For one thing all doctors in the UK must abide by GMC regulations or they can no longer practice medicine, doesn't matter if it's on the NHS or privately. Second, many of us may recall that the reason benzos are so hard to get scripted in the UK is because many NHS doctors were sued personally and lost for getting patients addicted to diazepam. As this precedent is now set, private doctors are very wary of prescribing benzos because they know they are liable for any addiction that may follow.

The same applies to any other addictive drug. A private doctor cannot just open a "pill mill" like what used to exist in the US and begin shovelling strong opiates at anyone who pays. That's simply not how it works, they'd get sued and/or have their license to practice medicine revoked by the GMC very quickly if they acted like drug dealers.

 

[Bioshockszz]

Hahahahaha wrong! Google “means tested”, it relates solely to government assistance by its very definition. YOU are wrong TRajal as is Julie.

you are just arguing with a definition. It’s like people who argue against facts, you cannot debate with them, it’s impossible!
PRIVATE HEALTHCARE IS NOT MEANS TESTED.

thats not my opinion. That’s not my spin. That’s FACT. Understood?

 

[Bioshockszz]

means test
verb
[COLOR=#878787 !important]past tense: means-tested; past participle: means-tested

• make (a state benefit) conditional on a means test.
  [COLOR=#878787 !important]"means-tested benefits"[/COLOR]
  
  
  
  

[/COLOR]

 

[spacejunk]

I'm becoming used to holding unpopular views; at the end of the day I am a right wing ethnic minority that works for the NHS so its automatically assumed that I am left wing or a labour luvvie.

It seems like no-one (aoaprt from my self) feels comfortable to deny treatment to someone who has never paid tax, or contributed in anyway.

that's not only an "unpopular view" - it's downright fucked-up.

But Julie, I am sick and tired of paying large amounts of tax so that immigrants that hate the west can come and get free treatment and then bomb us. My parents were immigrants too came over int he 70s with a skill and intergrated, and never attached the country.

i hate the west, and i'm not an immigrant. where do i sit in your hierarchy of righteousness?

 

[Trajal]

that's not only an "unpopular view" - it's downright fucked-up.



i hate the west, and i'm not an immigrant. where do i sit in your hierarchy of righteousness?

A descendant of convicts and lepers..?

 

[spacejunk]

can't win 'em all

 

[Bioshockszz]

that's not only an "unpopular view" - it's downright fucked-up.



i hate the west, and i'm not an immigrant. where do i sit in your hierarchy of righteousness?

”Peaceful” leftie? Right down at the bottom...

 

[spacejunk]

who said anything about peaceful? watch them stereotypes, mate.