Feed: Why I Would Go Private Rather Than The NHS - AggScore: 14.0

Why I Would Go Private Rather Than The NHS

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Don't get me wrong, I am a big fan of the NHS in principle. All my children were born in an NHS hospital and they provided reasonable care once they'd diagnosed my wife's breast cancer even though she finally moved into a hospice for the last few weeks. That's my one and only beef though. It took ages to get tested first of all and weeks to wait for the test results. My nagging doubt has always been that perhaps if the tests had been done quicker she might still be alive today.Maybe if I'd used private health care [1] had I been able to afford it or had the foresight to get medical insurance in place, it wouldn't have taken so long getting the results back. Those were weeks in which she could have been having radio and chemotherapy much earlier, which may have made a difference. Another example is a friend's daughter who has suffered from mis-diagnosed back problems since she was a child. She's been to countless NHS appointments and promises of surgery. She got tired of the pain and finally decided to go private rather than wait the proposed seven months for the operation. She got a date fixed within two weeks, although she'll be in the hands of exactly the same surgeon who would have done it on the NHS.Paying for speedy consultation and action is a definite advantage of going private, especially for non-critical procedures like breast surgery [2] which may not seem as "important" as stuff like heart transplants, but are still nonetheless psychologically significant to the person who wants it. I know we're all living longer and advances in medical technology, especially in fields such as orthopaedic surgery [3], mean that the demands on the NHS keep growing. I am resigned to using private health care for those situations where speed could be vital. The other (maybe conscience-salving) case for using private medicine is that it frees up NHS time to deal with the "crtitical" procedures, allowing care to be given to those who genuinely need it. [1] http://www.abbeyhospitals.com/ [2] http://www.abbeyhospitals.com/cosmetic-surgery.htm [3] http://www.abbeyhospitals.com/orthopaedic-surgery.htm