Patients should pay for health 'extras' themselves, say doctors

[super jumbe]

Senior doctors will today call for the NHS to impose top-up fees so that patients would pay for some services themselves.

Consultants, surgeons and GPs nationwide will argue that the health service can no longer provide everything the public wants, and will demand that a list of ?core? services is compiled so patients know what they can and cannot expect from the NHS.

At the British Medical Association?s annual meeting in Edinburgh today, senior doctors will say that top-up charges for treatments and medication outside of this list can no longer be ruled out.

Gordon Matthews, of the BMA consultants' committee, will tell the conference:

"There has never before been a more important time for the Government, the opposition, doctors and other health professionals to engage with the public, to explain the issues and seek consensus as to what priorities are for health and social care, and making explicit what can be funded from central taxation and what cannot.

"A publicly funded and free-at-the-point-of-delivery NHS cannot afford all available diagnostics and treatments.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/10138291/Patients-should-pay-for-health-extras-themselves-say-doctors.html

[Meat-Head]

Like what. You have abroken leg. And you have to pay for a labotomy at the same time?

[darwins]

Some services... That sounds interesting

[gopher7]

Privatisation of the Health Service is on it's way. Next "idea" the Government will have is that everyone must have Health Insurance, the way you have to do in USA.

[Kalipo]

Privatisation of the Health Service is on it's way. Next "idea" the Government will have is that everyone must have Health Insurance, the way you have to do in USA.

I dont mind, as long as they dont carry on taking money for the NHS from my wages..

Same way as road tax doesnt go on fixing roads!

[nara]

Privatisation of the Health Service is on it's way. Next "idea" the Government will have is that everyone must have Health Insurance, the way you have to do in USA.

It's the BMA's idea, not the Government's.

[ajax2061]

shoot me now

[Ashraf6119]

In that case they should also drop the Income Tax and VAT to 50% so that people can afford they life.......................

[super jumbe]

shoot me now

Then talk later

[GastonJ]

Senior doctors will today call for the NHS to impose top-up fees so that patients would pay for some services themselves

So now that doctors are holding the budgets for healthcare they want patients to pay as well? Seems the conservatives made that decision so that doctors could help them along. As for paying for service wtf do they think people have paid tax and NI for for all these year? so doctors could be paid more than ?100k a year to work 9am to noon 5 days a week, or so that they'd get treat if ever they had the audacity to take up doctors time with being ill? ucking Tories must be rubbing their hands with glee at that one. I'll read it in the tomorrow

[nara]

In that case they should also drop the Income Tax and VAT to 50% so that people can afford they life.......................

Drop to 50% ! How much tax are you paying?

[GastonJ]

Tax + NI is about 51-52% last time I looked, but I don't look too often it makes me sad. NI is a tax by any other name.

I'm unsure why it's a shock anyway, it was already planned as part of the NHS reform bill


Allyson Pollock, professor of public health at Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry, said the Health and Social Care Bill had "a hidden purpose" which amounted to privatising health services in Britain.

Writing in The Lancet, she argued that ministers were intent on creating "a system that permits alternative funding sources for services currently provided free as part of the NHS".

She said the "heart" of the Bill, currently being debated in the Lords, was "to introduce a mixed financing system and to abolish the model of tax-financed universal health care on which the NHS is based".

Prof Pollock has consistently argued that the Bill will abolish the duty of the Health Secretary to provide a universal healthcare system free at the point of use.

It will potentially enable groups of GPs, who will be allowed to make profits from their practices, to exclude costly patients with numerous illnesses, she maintains.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/he...alth-bill.html

And the half truths as usual:

Their analysis - shared by many other opponents of the Bill - is fiercely disputed by ministers and supporters of the Bill who dismiss it as scaremongering.The Prime Minister and Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, have both repeatedly insisted that the NHS will remain free to patients at the point of the delivery.
A Department of Health spokesman dismissed Prof Pollock's arguments as "simply nonsense".

So doctors had already decided to make a profit with the help of the government. Good old GP's eh, where would we be without them......

[Snowy79]

The NHS privatisation through the back door started under New Labour. New Labour converted NHS trusts into independent businesses (foundation trusts), introduced ISTCs (private treatment centres paid by public funds irrespective of the number of patients treated), gave NHS work to private hospitals and clinics and encouraged NHS patients to choose them, and developed HMO-style commissioning as in the US. The NHS budget is up shi@ creek, mainly due to miss management at the top and trying to treat everything.

[GastonJ]

The NHS privatisation through the back door started under New Labour. New Labour converted NHS trusts into independent businesses (foundation trusts), introduced ISTCs (private treatment centres paid by public funds irrespective of the number of patients treated), gave NHS work to private hospitals and clinics and encouraged NHS patients to choose them, and developed HMO-style commissioning as in the US. The NHS budget is up shi@ creek, mainly due to miss management at the top and trying to treat everything.

Oh you mean the formation of Trusts from Health Authorities in the early 1990's wasn't a move to privatisation by the Tory government at the time? The formation of PCG's and GP fundholders wasn't an earlier attempt at what the government of today have done with giving the funds to GPs, creating larger Trusts, allowing Trusts to borrow money and earn a significant part of their income from private work? Not forgetting allowing a Trust to takeover another smaller Trust. f'k me I must have imagined Maggie doing all that and creating an internal market and competition during her time. Which is the basis for the changes the government of today have built upon....

What short memories the British public have.

[Snowy79]

The long and the short of it is all Political parties are as bad as each other. They all bring in things that the opposition go against until they are in power then just add to it instead of reversing the policies.