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UK’s NHS: Bad for patients. Bad for staff. Just … bad
A government-loving lefty Facebook friend posted the following and I could hear the sputters of #OrangeManBad outrage that must have accompanied hitting the “Post” button.
This is the article in question. Note that it’s published in metro.co.UK and concerns a hospital in Harrow, a London suburb.
By posting this, my “friend” made a point, but I don’t think it was the point she intended to make. It’s indeed a pity that the 26th-wealthiest nation in the world has the NHS, a government-operated single-payer health care system that cannot afford proper PPE for its staff.
NHS: Bad for patients. Bad for staff. Just … bad.
Our “private” health care system is failing in epic fashion to provide adequate PPE , also.
My neighbors are a nursing couple, very fine people. They tell me that their shortage of masks and gowns is quite real. That they are being denied permission to wear gloves and masks because of shortages.
But let’s be honest, there’s only one reason why the UK is only the 26th wealthiest nation in the world: Socialism. They won the war and instead of going back to their capitalist roots, they chose to stick with the socialism the adopted in the Depression and continued through WWII. They should be much wealthier than they are.
There’s a story there – or maybe many. I keep asking my healthcare friends: where are the masks? And none of them have an answer.
My daughter had to provide masks for a nurse friend that works at a cancer hospital. They had zero COVID patients, and every patient they have is immunocompromised. Nothing at her hospital has changed, yet she was using a mask that was days’ old.
My theories:
I lived in England for multiple years, and I can say there are some good things about the NHS, but it is nothing like the fantasized vision of healthcare that many people in the US seem to think it is. I agree that I don’t understand the massive PPE shortage unless you’re in Queens. And then I don’t totally understand either because there should be an easy redistribution of resources. I’m not trying to be dense, but I think Annefy is correct. I don’t know what the rest of the story is, but there is a “rest of the story.”
I lived in Scotland many years ago for a couple of years and also have a realistic view of NHS. I wish the citizens of the UK did. I’ve never quite understood their affection for it; my conclusion is that it’s an imperfect system that replaced a horrible system.
The fact that it’s the largest employer also lends towards its mystique.
When my UK relatives aren’t bashing the US, they’ve shared many frustrations with delayed appointments for specialists and joint replacements. Based upon my very limited study, the NHS is probably great if you’re healthy. But once you’re sick, all bets are off. I’m 61 and I know no one in the US who has died of breast cancer. Over the past 10 years I know of five relatives in my age bracket that have died horrible deaths from it in Scotland. There’s probably more, but those are the relatives I personally know.
I have a friend who is a nurse in Sweden. She was talking about the need to make due with one set of gloves and a mask through a long shift. No replacements available. It doesn’t seem like any health service in the world is fully up to this challenge. So if we’re looking for villains, again look to China’s government.
Agreed. I don’t think we’ll ever get to the truth, but I think China has been a bad player throughout, including PPE. Ridiculous that we have become so dependent upon an unreliable supplier. Hopefully that will change.
I am really grateful for our system. I discovered a breast lump last June and I was terrified. I called my PCP and I was in for an ultrasound and biopsy within a week. My Medicare supplement allowed me to go anywhere I wanted without a referral and I went directly to a cancer center in my small retirement town. In the next six weeks I was MRI’d, ultrasounded and acquired three new doctors (medical oncologist, radiation oncologist and surgeon). My tumor was evaluated for the proper treatment and I started chemo less than two months from the beginning. I had surgery to remove the tumor (the cancer was deader than a doornail) one month after chemo then four weeks of daily radiation. So nine months from the beginning I am cured. Although the process seemed to take forever it now seems like lightning speed. At no time was I treated as less valuable a person because of my age – 73.
The UK made a very specific and clear choice immediately after WWII ended in Europe:
They choose to go the more socialistic route as during the war, all classes had contributed. There was a tremendous amount of housing and businesses destroyed.
So the Tory led government was turned out, Churchill with it. It was not a vote agaist Churchill, he was still loved by virtually everyone (his approval rating in May 1945 was 83%, he kept his seat), but the election was also a referendum on the Conservative government (Churchill was a member of the party but not the government) led by Chamberlain that was largely responsible of causing or allowing the war.
But the specific of the election included the Labour/Liberal goals of better affordable housing and the NHS. It was a conscience choice by the people. The Conservative party suffered one of the largest blowouts in history.
Better here than there.
It’s an interesting topic – I’m sure smarter people than me have delved into it.
But it’s hard to exaggerate the effect of WWI on the demographics of the UK. My grandfather didn’t die in WWI (came home after four years) but he did die young in 1927. Leaving a young widow with four children. I don’t know how many widows there were in the 30s, but my grandmother was hardly extraordinary. Combine that with all the women who never married because so many young men didn’t come home. The depression and WWII were the last nails in the coffin in the drift towards government dependence.
As for my Scottish relatives, some of whom I know very very well; they’ve all done very well financially this past generation. Mainly due to the policies of Margaret Thatcher, which still linger and accounts for the fact they had inheritances (the first relatives of mine to ever inherit a dime). They all voted Remain (I figure they still hate England so much that they were willing to trade the boot on their neck for a Belgium one) and love love love the NHS.
All that money they’re not spending on health insurance is instead spent on their many holidays per year. And probably a shortened lifespan …
I had a fun conversation with a 70+ year old cousin over the weekend. She claims the government came up with the NHS when she and her peers were born because they knew they weren’t made of the same tough stuff as preceding generations.
That’s a heartening story, though scary. Thanks for sharing and stay well. xo
My primary views of the British NHS (other than what’s seen in media) is a former co-worker (American) who spent four years working in Britain as an ex-pat. Although as an ex-pat he had supplemental insurance, he thought the NHS was a good system, and wanted to see it adopted in the United States. (He does hold generally to somewhat socialist views, so his views on the UK NHS didn’t surprise me.)
He said that the NHS was pretty reliable on routine matters (well child checks, common illnesses and injuries, routine chronic illnesses (i.e., diabetes), etc.), as bureaucracies often are. Most people have contact for most of their lives with the medical profession for only routine matters. From talking to my former co-worker I got an impression that many people rate the NHS highly because they deal only with the relatively well-functioning routine care parts of the system.
My former co-worker did acknowledge though that the system did not cope at all well with out of the ordinary events (traumatic injuries, potential cancer or other unusual disease diagnoses, etc.). Bureaucratic systems rarely do.
(I often wanted the Doc Martin television show to have some episodes in which the bureaucracy pushed back on one of his offbeat diagnoses and refused to authorize the treatment he wanted to prescribe. The show’s plot always assumed his patient got the unusual treatment or diagnostic tests he prescribed. But I’m sure in real life some NHS official would have at least questioned Martin’s request.
My speculation (and it is speculation) is that since most people have contact only or at least mostly with the relatively smooth-running routine care parts of the NHS, and relatively fewer people have major unusual medical events, the statistics on the popularity of the NHS reflects mostly the people who have only routine care contact with the NHS, the parts that seem to work fairly well. The experiences of the people with unusual events that highlight the limitations of a bureaucratic NHS might be sparse enough as to not affect statistically the public’s view of the NHS.
A pandemic (or even an epidemic) counts in my mind as an unusual event that’s going to be a problem for a bureaucracy.
And our fault as well. How on earth we allowed ourselves to become to dependent on China for essential supplies I will never understand.
Unbelievable, especially given the number of viruses that have emanated from China these last two decades.
Having experienced the system as well, I think that’s right. I found good things about it. A nice thing was that you had a sense of security as well. If your kid broke an arm, it was not going to be a mortgage payment.
That’s great. Thank God.
All I can say is, they eat bats??? Who the heck in their right minds eats bats?
Living in the UK as a Tier 4 Student Visa holder, and thus having to pay into and be covered by the NHS, is terrifying. I’m so scared that something will go wrong and I’ll end up in their system (the health secretary, Matt Hancock, has visited my uni Conservative Union a bunch of times and never seemed to fully grasp, even when med students were talking to him, how badly the NHS needs something more than mild reform).
I’m honestly rather floored that my post received this much attention and feedback, not to mention making Main Feed. Thanks, all. Special thanks to @LoisLane, @annefy, and @kirkianwanderer for the personal perspective on the NHS.
And @justmeinaz, I’m thrilled that your cancer was removed and your prognosis is good; my mom is a 24-year breast cancer survivor and living proof that “the big C” need not be regarded as a death sentence.
[Edit: Also thanks to the R> editor who substituted my final sentence for the title I’d originally picked. Good move. :) ]
I was never terrified. I had lots of good interactions with the NHS as I was there for multiple years, and my son played rugby. I also had some downright awful experiences in the NHS including an undiagnosed staph infection that lived in my skin for six months until I was able to get home to a dermatologist. (Even when I finally saw an NHS specialist, no one ever tested my skin.)
My recollection is that Churchill was fairly socialist himself.
I don’t know how you know that. What I know is my daughter is working in a Covid-19 filled hospital and still wearing the ONE N95 mask she was issued a MONTH ago. She covers it with cloth masks her aunt sewed and her mother express mailed to her. It doesn’t fit right any more. She also has to supply her own scrub caps and doesn’t get face shields for handling trauma which may include blood and vomit. She is underprotected from all the many germs found in a hospital, not just Covid-19.
Her state had an email to report the need for PPE so I took a flyer and sent a report. They responded that it is bad at every hospital and they are trying to help but can’t do much.
The original story in my daughter’s hospital was theft, and then no way to restock. But it’s been a month now.
There probably are many factors, as you say, but I suspect it’s like the toilet paper. Fear of shortage leads to hoarding, leads to actual shortage. But it’s a gigantic inexcusable systemic failure.
The Anglo-Italian comedian Nicholas de Santo says every Englishman must have a sense of humor, in that they’ve beaten Germany in TWO world wars, and are still poorer.
Very anti-socialist most of the time. When he was a member of the Liberal party, he was more open to certain things. For instance, even when Chancellor of the Exchequer (1924-1929) as a conservative, he was very involved in increasing support for widows and orphans (many jobs were still quite dangerous). But many times, when he disagreed with his party, he still toed the party line because that is what had to be done to keep a party in power.
Churchill supported the idea of a safety net, and the idea that the bottom of the safety net should be raised when possible.
Sounds socialist to me.
I’d rather reserve the label socialist for socialism. There was strong support for socialism, though.
Well, it IS socialism. Probably of a mild sort, but as they (and we) demonstrate, if you start with a little, you always swerve into a lot.
Even if you start with none, you swerve into a lot.