Healthcare

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i went into one of those chinese herbal medicine places as my daughter has severe food allergies which means that we constantly have to carry epi-pens around, she can't eat from take-aways, most restaurants struggle to cater for her, holidays have to be self-catering affairs etc etc etc
the chinese say it's all about redressing enzimes etc in your system, so we went inro dr.herb or somethin', if you think our medicine is expensive then you should see that stuff, it wouldn't cure her it was just stop her from having a reaction as long as she was taking it.....(they say) tbh if she was havin' that stuff then we wouldnt be able to afford holidays or go into eateries etc and at the end of the day she wouldnt be cured.
the nhs wont use chinese remedies though and for her condition won't even consider accupuncture, i said i will take her and pay for acc. then you can re-do the allergy test, they said no, we dont advocate accu. so wont re-test her.
when we go to see so called allergy specialists it is plainly obvious from the notes they make and the questions they ask that they dont know [Poor language removed] about the subject and we are like guinny pigs that they are learning from, we come away feeling as though we have waisted an avvo in the hospital every time as they have never come up with any solutions whatsoever. it imposes on her life so much that it should be classed as a disability in some respects, especially as those with loud/naughty kids can get diagnosed as adhd when most of the time its the parents who cant be arsed with the kids and want extra money for their ciggies.
i believe that there is a cure for every ailment and advocate p.o.p.

Pasties on Prescription(y)
 
I think the NHS is something that needs a fundamental shake-up and more money to it spent properly. I think everyone knows that suggesting that the NHS be privatised would be electoral suicide. Generally people are happier to have it than not to have it. As far as I'm concerned, if the state requires us to pay taxes and to work for it most of our lives, it's only reasonable that the state ensure we are physically able and healthy enough to work, because private healthcare really is pretty expensive.
 
Reidy's Bottle Of Grecian said:
i went into one of those chinese herbal medicine places as my daughter has severe food allergies which means that we constantly have to carry epi-pens around, she can't eat from take-aways, most restaurants struggle to cater for her, holidays have to be self-catering affairs etc etc etc
the chinese say it's all about redressing enzimes etc in your system, so we went inro dr.herb or somethin', if you think our medicine is expensive then you should see that stuff, it wouldn't cure her it was just stop her from having a reaction as long as she was taking it.....(they say) tbh if she was havin' that stuff then we wouldnt be able to afford holidays or go into eateries etc and at the end of the day she wouldnt be cured.
the nhs wont use chinese remedies though and for her condition won't even consider accupuncture, i said i will take her and pay for acc. then you can re-do the allergy test, they said no, we dont advocate accu. so wont re-test her.
when we go to see so called allergy specialists it is plainly obvious from the notes they make and the questions they ask that they dont know [Poor language removed] about the subject and we are like guinny pigs that they are learning from, we come away feeling as though we have waisted an avvo in the hospital every time as they have never come up with any solutions whatsoever. it imposes on her life so much that it should be classed as a disability in some respects, especially as those with loud/naughty kids can get diagnosed as adhd when most of the time its the parents who cant be arsed with the kids and want extra money for their ciggies.
i believe that there is a cure for every ailment and advocate p.o.p.

Pasties on Prescription(y)
Click to expand...

enzymes
acupuncture
guinea pigs
wasted

avvo? you are not mcbain, and you are not a so called actor in 'neighbours'.

ADD - Attention Deficit Disorder (i believe is what you were aiming for)

I have been allergy tested, it was interesting, but wasn't the 'be all and end all' - it only aided in helping create a general picture in terms of irritants and allergies.
I wasn't tested in light of a food ailments issue though.

as for chinese ''remedies'' they are dodgy, let me dig up the scandal.
 
adhd suits, hyperactivity is in there i'm sure.
as for the allergy testing then if it says you are allergic to a food to the level that she is then you dont take any chances, she had the skin prick test & they told us to sit outside for 15 mins i think, we didnt get through the door and it had reacted, they couldnt give her anything as it would null the rest of the things tested for, they measure the size of the boil/weald whatever it is (hive maybe) and hers was way off the scale, it's egg that produces this reaction and will give her an anaphylactic shock that will kill her by asphyxiation if not treated immediately, thats why food establishments are mostly no-go areas, cos if they use a hot plate and an egg has been near it or on it then she cant eat any food off it, this means that in a hotel she cant eat in the evening if an egg was cooked on there in the morning, she cannot even hold one in it's shell as the shell is porous.

peruvian rodents... i typed it and retyped it, and knew it didnt look right.

avvo, it's what i say, i have lived in the antipodese and where i live avvi means avenue.

i know i correct peoples spelling, but it's mostly cos they are typing like they dont speak english, some are so laaaaaaaaar-cccccccccccccch!! that others struggle to read them.
 
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First off I guess I should declare that I'm no fan of the NHS as its bloated and inefficient, not to mention politically riddled by each government.

As to what to do about it. Without doubt the simplest option would be to provide some form of voucher system. Provide state funding for healthcare and let anyone and everyone do the providing. It's one thing for governments to distribute funding but to actually provide the service as well is not required. As Suits has mentioned we have the situation at the moment whereby NICE are refusing access to certain treatments on the NHS and people can't buy them privately as they then are stripped of NHS access. A logical voucher system would provide state funding as per usual, up to NICE approved levels, but let those that wish to top up that with their own money. Of course another looming development that would fit in nicely with a voucher system is health tourism - http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11919622 - whereby people go abroad for their healthcare. It's nearly always cheaper than at home and often better too. If the government were less wedded to providing a one stop shop system and merely provided the funds for you to use as you pleased this industry would flourish.

Of course this is unlikely to ever happen as the government (whomever they are) love to take credit for doing this and that with the NHS. Simply writing cheques doesn't really let them take credit for anything.

Now another option of course is to privatise it. When the NHS was founded it was based on a healthcare system for Welsh miners whereby a percentage of wages went in to covering health costs. Importantly the scheme was voluntary. Quite how it got from there to a mandatory tax based on earnings rather than any medical history I don't know (well I do, governments have historically made great hay out of small taxes snowballing into bloody great ones - remember income tax was initially a temporary tax of just 0.83% to pay for the Napoleonic wars!).

We have a situation where populations are ageing. Just this week it was revealed that there are now more OAP's in Britain than minors for the first time ever. All these old buggers will be needing a lot of healthcare, hence why the government has been so keen on immigration because they're desperate for workers to help pay for OAP's in retirement. With such a demographic situation it seems increasingly unlikely that state healthcare can possibly cope and with OAP's increasingly wealthy it seems only sensible for individuals to look after themselves. If the government wanted to it would seem quite reasonable to cater for the poorer sections of society in much the same way as the state system in America does, leaving those that can to look after themselves. This of course would also encourage people to take better care of their health because it would directly hit their wallet rather than being taken care of by the electorate en masse.
 
we cant abandon the elderly though on the basis that they need a lot of care, theres a matter of a war and still in some cases 2 wars that we have to thank them for.
we also cant ignore the needs of children either as they are defenceless. the fact we have an nhs is something that makes this country great its just the way that its run or has been run that is the problem, we should never go to the system that the u.s. has, there is a private healthcare system that if you want to join/pay into then you can, i'm not into this theory that you should be able to opt out to go private, because anyone who did this would still be able to go nhs if they wished. the machine that is the nhs is ageing and not running on all it's cylinders, it needs repairing and the gov. make enough from all the taxes to put it right, there is enough in the nations coffers to fix it whatever the politicians say, and if the welshand scots get free precriptions then so should the english, they dont have their own nhs budget do they ? and the postcode lottery shouldn't exist, same for all.
 
I'm not saying that the elderly should be abondoned. What I'm saying is that demographically the way the elderly are paid for is going to have to change. This applies just as much to pensions as it does to healthcare. Traditionally when our welfare system was developed we had plenty of people of working age to support a relatively small retired population (as life expectancy wasn't that long post retirement).

Now however with improved diet etc. life expectancy has risen significantly but the retirement age hasn't shifted to reflect this, which is another personal bone of contention but the Unions will ensure that any politician that attempts to place retirement age more in line with our improving health will be hung out to dry. So where traditionally the tax payer only had to pay for retirees for a few years before they popped off, now people are living almost 15 years post retirement. With this retired population growing and the working age population shrinking due to a fall in the birth rate we have a shrinking working population:retired population ratio. Back in 1900 the ratio was 12:1. Now it's more like 3:1.

Assuming we maintain the current tax payer funded system one of three things would have to happen.

1) Increased population via fertility. As the economy now depends more than ever on female workers this option seems unlikely.

2) Increased immigration. If we can't make our own workers we import them. This is a real hot potato politically and none of the parties will advocate an increase in immigration. Even assuming it was politically viable there becomes an issue of how many people our island can support.

3) Increase the retirement age. The Unions have already sidelined attempts to raise the retirement age in the public sector. Company pension schemes are increasingly rare as companies appreciate the burden they provide as people live longer. It should increase as we're fitter for longer than ever before, but it seems unlikely to rise fast enough to provide any meaningful solution.

I suppose one other alternative would be to get greater efficiency from the current system, but as any monopoly has taught us in the past if they are famous for anything it is inefficiency. This won't change.
 
refferring to point 3.

i dont see why these so called 'key workers' should finish earlier than the rest of us, when housing is talked about, payrises etc these so called key workers are always talked about and its , well how can they afford this and that.
ffs sake if they cant afford [Poor language removed] then there's not much chance for the rest of us. i dont see how a primary school teacher is more important than say a milkman (prob a bad example as not many left but i will continue), if the teacher wants milk then the milkman becomes important, if he or she wants her shoes repaired then the cobbler is important, without engineers the world would grind to a halt, the list goes on and on.
i suppose this makes me a socialist i'm not sure, i think this is borne from working in engineering and the industry being shut down as if not needed, pay being diminished as if the job being done was unimportant. this kind of thing creates a breeding ground for resentment. a man in a machine shop could effectively work without the 15 people in the office but without that 1 man there is no need for those 15, yet he is treated as the least important in terms of pay and working conditions.
 
The problem with increasing the retirement age is that it tends to benefit some areas of the country than others. What's the retirement age now? 65? I seem to remember recently there was a bit of an outcry due to the disparity in life expectancy with it being something like 66 in Glasgow. I think Paul Merton equated it to "having a gap year between life and death."

I think that we should have a healthcare system, but I do think that it should be as efficient as possible and so there should be a general reform of the way that the NHS is run. I know that my family certainly couldn't have gotten by without it.
 
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