Insurance companies use risk when calculating premiums. If you’re classed as a high risk to them either through existing health issues, age or lifestyle choices then they will charge more for their cover. When it comes to smoking the effects on an individual’s health are well-known and varied. According to the Health and Social Care Centre report (2016) there were 78,000 deaths attributed to smoking in 2014. In the period 2014/15 the NHS had 4,700 smoking-related admissions per day. This accounts for approximately 28% of all admissions. Effects of smoking You inhale a cocktail of 40 carcinogenic chemicals each time […]
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Tag Archives: health insurance
The NHS is something that everyone alive in the UK right now has had the benefit of for their whole lives. While there is no evidence that the NHS is to be abolished any time soon, many people are concerned about NHS reforms and privatisation, and some are even worried that the NHS as we know it may soon be a thing of the past. Again, this doesn’t seem to be an immediate threat, however with so many things changing as a result of Brexit, it is well worth considering what a future in Britain without free universal healthcare might […]
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The NHS is going through one of the toughest periods of its life.6 Every day we hear of general practices closing,7hospitals at full capacity,8 patients waiting in pain in emergency department corridors, ambulances queuing up with patients outside hospitals, and a social care system cut to the bone. Politicians, commentators, and think tanks often say that we need a serious conversation about NHS funding.9 This usually means, “Let’s start making patients pay.” And because of the huge pressures the NHS is under some of them think that soon this will happen10: private companies will offer “fee-for-service” appointments or care, and […]
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Port Talbot is a town in the county borough of Neath Port Talbot, Wales. Meanwhile, the Manic Street Preachers were a rock band formed in 1986 in Blackwood, Wales. I remember vividly the song “If you tolerate this, your children will be next.” I associate it with the Thatcher legacy, but this was some time before the even worse administration of David Cameron. The song’s theme is taken from the Spanish Civil War, and the idealism of Welsh volunteers who joined the left-wing International Brigades fighting for the Spanish Republic against Francisco Franco’s military rebels. The song apparently takes its […]
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Three months ago my wife contracted lobar pneumonia – out of the blue. One minute she was completely fit and healthy and the next she was in hospital with ITU outreach buzzing around. It was all very, very frightening. She received brilliant, timely treatment – intravenous antibiotics within an hour of arrival in ED, compassionate and skilled care from excellent doctors and nurses – and was home in three days. She made a good recovery and there was no paperwork to do or bills to pay. The NHS did what it does best. It was no more or less than […]
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Reprinted from The Medical Officer, 11 September, 1948. by SOMERVILLE HASTINGS, M.S., F.R.G.S., M.P. Two lectures on a National Service for Health given at an International Vacation Course at Munster University, Germany, July, 1948. I The Health Of Each Is The Concern Of All Positive health is much more than the absence of active disease. On it depends both our ability to work and our capacity to enjoy life. Illness results not only in pain and suffering but also in frustration, the result of inability to carry out our plans and intentions. Many estimates have been made of the cost of illness to […]
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