I am just writing this as me. It isn’t going to be the most perfect piece of prose, partly because the information has come from my husband/carer and because I still feel the fear whenever I think about it. My brush with co-payments was traumatising for me, my husband and could have had very serious consequences – including death.
I live with a rare, and potentially fatal condition. It has been what they call “brittle” from the beginning. Nevertheless, I am well insured and of course carry all necessary documents for health treatment in an EU country. What could possibly go wrong??
Early one morning while on holiday in an EU country I started to feel nauseous. This is a warning sign of a crisis. The nausea progressed to projectile vomiting, then voiding, as my temperature plummeted and I began to lose consciousness. My husband phoned the local health centre. They spoke English and he fully explained the danger – left too long my organs will shut down, and the end game is potentially death.
The first words spoken were – “that will cost you 180 euros. “OK” said husband, but he was not at all confident in any system that could put the money first.
“Bring her down to the centre” were the next words down the phone.
“But she is unconscious and covered in sick” said hubby, “I can’t just put her in a taxi”.
“We don’t do home visits” was the response.
“I don’t know the system”, said my husband, “I can’t bring her anywhere, what do I do?”
Well it might seem obvious, but my husband was panicking
“Phone an ambulance”.
Hubby did, and the ambulance came, but the co-payment fiasco didn’t end there.
The ambulance people were caring and somehow got me downstairs and into the ambulance.
We then proceeded to go past at least one gleaming private hospital, slowly down some narrow country roads, and well out of town to the nearest public hospital.
I was off loaded.
Alone with me in a room, hubby was then asked for another co-payment. “just go to the desk”. Imagine if it was your loved one, and you were asked to leave them in a crisis, and alone.
The doctor came and told him to hurry, go to the front of the queue as an emergency, as she wanted to start treatment urgently. Hubby ran.
Once back he could talk about my medical history, allergies and so on. The doctor was knowledgeable, efficient and kind. It doesn’t take long to bring me round from a dangerous situation, and I can usually get home in the NHS in around 6 to 8 hours, but even so, I was told to get a taxi probably a bit earlier than I would have needed/wanted in the UK.
Going home the taxi driver treated us to a very informed chat on how this was a trojan horse and the end of their public healthcare system. A few days before we had a taxi driver talk on TTIP and chlorinated chicken.
If anyone is tempted to think we would do it differently under the current model of defunding the NHS, just think of the brilliant success of the co-payment systems we have already.
The Care System has always been co-payments for the less poor. I will not say the rich, as demands for some contribution are made to many we would not consider that well off. The situation is dire: abuses of human rights, starvation diets, neglect; the list goes on. There are repeats of the TV programme “Waiting for God”. Not even the wealthy can ensure they are not being herded and milked for the benefit of the shareholders. It is the law.
Then there is dentistry. I was warned years ago that dentistry was the pilot for the NHS direction of travel by a totally distraught dentist, who felt his patients no longer came first, and the less well-off would be excluded. Hubby has paid £600.00 for dentures (just a couple) under the NHS system. They are not fit for purpose. Treatment is basic now, and in my town people are often seen with big gaps and rotten teeth. The old pull it out by using the door trick has even re-appeared. It is tempting to go private if you have the money, and friends have paid thousands to private dentists, though they are against the concept.
Co-payments will have the most terrible impact on the sick, disabled and poor. They will be excluded, frankly, so the worried well can have blue fitted carpets and no queuing. It will fix the NHS in the same way as taking those truly needy cohorts out and shooting them would also fix it – just it’s more acceptable/less obvious.
I have not heard a single person as a patient under the co-payment scheme who isn’t well off express that they liked it. Quite the opposite, and I work with healthcare staff and academics in the US and Australia. They know it puts their lives on the line.
Like dentistry a “reasonable” co-payment will soon start to look like quite a chunk of your money – loads more than we all first thought. And for what? This was posted on our SHA Website and I’ll repeat it here:
NHS Dental Care Faces a Severe Collapse
One of the health concerns neglected by the NHS is dentistry regardless of the fact that teeth matters as much as any other part of our body. As revealed by the British Dental Association in September 2016, the NHS had to bear a cost of £26m when around 600,000 people in a year made nugatory appointments with GPs over dental issues. Though this statistic has resulted in ridicule, yet in all honesty, it is the government, not its citizens, who should be embarrassed.
It is the NHS bills that are drawing patients away from the official government system and driving them toward GPs for their dental problems. As indicated by the BDA’s new analysis, this practice might soon outclass government financing as the main revenue source for NHS dentistry.
The NHS charges for dental services were first instituted in 1951 to bring down the demand. The BDA has named these charges as “health tax”, which veil actual trims in the service and debilitate the patients most needing care. Due to the incurred charges, about 1 of every 5 patients has deferred treatment as per the official findings.
The government funding for the NHS has been cut down by £170m since the Tories first made it to No 10, and it is hoping that patients should constitute the shortage. In 2016, dental charges were climbed by 5%, and they are anticipated to take the same hike even this year too. Considering the 16 years of time, it is assumed that majority of the NHS budget for dentistry will be financed by patients instead of the central government. But what is the use of the NHS if it is not a free service at the required time, and treatment isn’t according to one’s need but ability to pay?
Children are entitled to avail free NHS dentistry – but even they are being pulled down by the government as it is unable to meet the demand and offer enough dentists. Earlier in 2016, a letter was signed by more than 400 dentists exhorting that dental care in Britain is falling to the levels of “third world”. According to them, the NHS dental system in England is ill-equipped for the purpose. These crises are of grave nature; about 62,000 people mostly including children turn out to be at the hospital each year due to tooth decay; half of the adults haven’t been to a dentist for the past two years; and one of every seven kids hasn’t gone to a dentist since the age of eight.
People in Britain are already paying higher bills for fundamental care, and add a bigger sum of a dental budget by submitting these charges than their correlates in the devolved countries – systems of which have become less dependent on charge income throughout the recent decade. To deal with this gap, the BDA is sending information posters to more than 8,000 NHS dentists all through England to help picture patients’ feedback on the eventual fate of the charge.
When dental charges were made a part of the NHS in 1951, Nye Bevan who was the formulator of the NHS resigned from the service in protest. Today, after sixty-five years, the service is damaged by inadequate investment, exaggerated charges, and a shortage of dentists. There is a genuine need to form a government-funded NHS dentistry which wouldn’t rip off the patients. However, as of yet, we are going in the other direction of which the consequences will be borne by lower-income Britons.
Co-payments in health to me sound very much like the position refugees are suffering under this government according to the latest briefing by Asylum Matters. I have approached them to ask to reproduce the paper and recommendations, and been given the go ahead. This will follow shortly.
Finally: Imagine:
You have a heart attack in a local park. You and your partner set off in the ambulance only to discover that you must pay, and your wallets and cards are locked up at home. Precious time is lost chasing the money. Your partner is scared you will die when they are away getting the plastic.
You just gave every bit of spare funding you had for the youngest child/grandchild to access university for 3 years, and then you get cancer (or another serious and maybe longer-term condition). It is might be difficult to fund all these co-payments to your GP and specialists. It is not worth a blue carpeted half empty waiting room. Under the current defunding you won’t get that anyway. I have loads of co funding horror stories from the USA.