Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

American using Britain’s NHS (2015)

businessinsider.in

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 116 posts

Re: American using Britain’s NHS (2015)

#61

Post by pjc50 »

chrisseaton wrote: post #54
blibble wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The whole “4 hour” thing is mad - you should be seen in a reasonable time frame for the ailment you have. Severed hand? Go right ahead. it's already like this, A&E is run on triage, "4 hours" is a target not an instruction and if you go to A&E with something like a cold you'll be given a stern talking to and sent home

> you'll be given a stern talking to and sent home Yes and then sometimes that person dies as the recent case in the news about the girl with asthma who was told off for being late and sent home to die. The NHS’s matronly they-know-better is a real problem of an effective state monopoly on healthcare. You can’t complain or take your business elsewhere. If they tell you to go home that’s it and there’s no other option…

It's not true that there's no other option, there's a decent number of private hospitals and most major cities will have a private GP practice in too.

Just like the American system, this is only useful for people who can pay for it.

Re: American using Britain’s NHS (2015)

#62

Post by dazc »

chrisseaton wrote: post #54
blibble wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The whole “4 hour” thing is mad - you should be seen in a reasonable time frame for the ailment you have. Severed hand? Go right ahead. it's already like this, A&E is run on triage, "4 hours" is a target not an instruction and if you go to A&E with something like a cold you'll be given a stern talking to and sent home

> you'll be given a stern talking to and sent home Yes and then sometimes that person dies as the recent case in the news about the girl with asthma who was told off for being late and sent home to die. The NHS’s matronly they-know-better is a real problem of an effective state monopoly on healthcare. You can’t complain or take your business elsewhere. If they tell you to go home that’s it and there’s no other option…

That was a at a local GP, not a hospital though, IIRC. It was also the doctor who'd made the decision not to see the girl.

https://news.sky.com/story/girl-5-died-after-doctor-turned-h...

Re: American using Britain’s NHS (2015)

#63

Post by jjoonathan »

chrisseaton wrote: post #54
blibble wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The whole “4 hour” thing is mad - you should be seen in a reasonable time frame for the ailment you have. Severed hand? Go right ahead. it's already like this, A&E is run on triage, "4 hours" is a target not an instruction and if you go to A&E with something like a cold you'll be given a stern talking to and sent home

> you'll be given a stern talking to and sent home Yes and then sometimes that person dies as the recent case in the news about the girl with asthma who was told off for being late and sent home to die. The NHS’s matronly they-know-better is a real problem of an effective state monopoly on healthcare. You can’t complain or take your business elsewhere. If they tell you to go home that’s it and there’s no other option…

The ER is appointment only and you get turned away for being late? If true, that would be horrible, but I suspect it isn't.

Re: American using Britain’s NHS (2015)

#64

Post by [deleted] »

chrisseaton wrote: post #54
blibble wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The whole “4 hour” thing is mad - you should be seen in a reasonable time frame for the ailment you have. Severed hand? Go right ahead. it's already like this, A&E is run on triage, "4 hours" is a target not an instruction and if you go to A&E with something like a cold you'll be given a stern talking to and sent home

> you'll be given a stern talking to and sent home Yes and then sometimes that person dies as the recent case in the news about the girl with asthma who was told off for being late and sent home to die. The NHS’s matronly they-know-better is a real problem of an effective state monopoly on healthcare. You can’t complain or take your business elsewhere. If they tell you to go home that’s it and there’s no other option…

[deleted]

Re: American using Britain’s NHS (2015)

#65

Post by chrisseaton »

cjrp wrote: post #60
chrisseaton wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you'll be given a stern talking to and sent home Yes and then sometimes that person dies as the recent case in the news about the girl with asthma who was told off for being late and sent home to die. The NHS’s matronly they-know-better is a real problem of an effective state monopoly on healthcare. You can’t complain or take your business elsewhere. If they tell you to go home that’s it and there’s no other option…

> If they tell you to go home that’s it and there’s no other option. Not even remotely true, if you don't mind paying. You can see a GP privately, there are already lots of apps which let you book appointments. A colleague had an ear problem, couldn't get an appointment with his local GP and so used one of these app-based services and got a same-day appointment with a doctor near the office.

I think there’s only one private A&E in the UK. Most people wouldn’t be able to get to it.

If you go private and something happens during treatment they have to put you in an ambulance and take you to an NHS A&E.

For most ordinary people if the NHS tells you to go home that’s it you have to accept it. And people die because of this!

Re: American using Britain’s NHS (2015)

#66

Post by dominotw »

Havoc wrote: post #49

>In the US, having sat in many an ER waiting room for hours at a stretch, the idea of a hospital seeing nearly 9 out of 10 patients in four hours would be regarded as a miracle. That is so bizarre. I'd be concerned if it takes and hour. Seriously it's called emergency room because it's an emergency, not a "it can totally wait" room.

My friend had a seizure while we were on a business trip in a suburb of London. We were taken to the hospital in ambulance, I remember we had to go through a series of 6 rooms each getting progressively smaller( first one had like 200-300 ppl) and less people. Took us about 5 hrs to get to the doctor. Doctor was patient and polite.

Re: American using Britain’s NHS (2015)

#67

Post by cjrp »

cjrp wrote: post #60
chrisseaton wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you'll be given a stern talking to and sent home Yes and then sometimes that person dies as the recent case in the news about the girl with asthma who was told off for being late and sent home to die. The NHS’s matronly they-know-better is a real problem of an effective state monopoly on healthcare. You can’t complain or take your business elsewhere. If they tell you to go home that’s it and there’s no other option…

> If they tell you to go home that’s it and there’s no other option. Not even remotely true, if you don't mind paying. You can see a GP privately, there are already lots of apps which let you book appointments. A colleague had an ear problem, couldn't get an appointment with his local GP and so used one of these app-based services and got a same-day appointment with a doctor near the office.

Sorry, I was replying in relation to your example of the girl with asthma. She was turned away from her GP, not from an A&E.

Re: American using Britain’s NHS (2015)

#68

Post by laumars »

jjoonathan wrote: post #63
chrisseaton wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you'll be given a stern talking to and sent home Yes and then sometimes that person dies as the recent case in the news about the girl with asthma who was told off for being late and sent home to die. The NHS’s matronly they-know-better is a real problem of an effective state monopoly on healthcare. You can’t complain or take your business elsewhere. If they tell you to go home that’s it and there’s no other option…

The ER is appointment only and you get turned away for being late? If true, that would be horrible, but I suspect it isn't.

I don't know the story but A&E (I guess our equivalent of ER) is not appointment only. "Surgery" in the UK often refers to the office where the GP (general practitioner - ie a non-specialist doctor you'd visit first and foremost for non-emergency cases) presides.

So perhaps the story was about a patient visiting a GP but the context got lost in translation.

Re: American using Britain’s NHS (2015)

#69

Post by PoachedSausage »

jdietrich wrote: post #45
simonbarker87 wrote: post #38

By comparative metrics to the rest of the world the NHS comes out either top or pretty damn good. By comparison to whatever the metrics of whatever government is in power at the time the NHS always looks terrible. Budgets can be set arbitrarily by the government so it’s easy to make the NHS look like it is over budget (in fact all you need to do is increase the budget by less than inflation and talk about absolute nu…

>By comparative metrics to the rest of the world the NHS comes out either top or pretty damn good. Ish. The NHS is remarkably cost-effective, but has relatively poor survival rates for cancer, stroke and myocardial infarction. International comparisons seem to damn the NHS with faint praise - it's cheap and the patients are happy, but it's not very good at keeping people alive. http://www.qualitywatch.org.uk/sites/fi…

Having only quickly skimmed that document, I couldn't see anything about taking into account the effects of patient age. The NHS is facing massive demand by elderly patients who presumably have lower survival rates for various ailments. They should be going into nursing care, but that has not kept up with demand.

Re: American using Britain’s NHS (2015)

#70

Post by Mvandenbergh »

Scoundreller wrote: post #48
Mvandenbergh wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>one of the meta challenges with socialized medicine is that there is virtually no innovation due to price controls (please no anecdotes). Thanks for parenthetically instructing us not to share anecdotes at the end of a statement which isn't even that. https://www.statista.com/statistics/266141/pharmaceutical-sp... That's per capital spending on pharmaceuticals. Two things to note from that: 1) The highest by far is…

> That's $450k/yr, treatment required for life. I suspect that many American insurance companies wouldn't fund that. The question is, how did NICE arrive at the decision to fund it when it doesn't meet their CBA threshold? Isn't the whole point of a CBA threshold to say: "We should defund really expensive treatments so we can pay for more cheaper treatments and improve aggregate outcomes per GBP"?

This is true, over the last decade they've made the process more complicated. Partially imo to obfuscate the fact that they are now required to fund things for political reasons that don't plausibly pass their CBA threshold.
Post reply on HN