BREXIT positives and negatives

[snowingagain 5,214]

14 minutes ago, fraufruit said:

While people in the UK wait for months or years for simple operations like gall bladder removal while living in pain.

My family have been very lucky with the NHS and had excellent cancer care at really good speciality hospitals.  The NHS is not all crap.  Too much of the good stuff is concentrated in London,and more money needs to be spent.  Austerity politics have been crap.   They are very good at research and coming up with new treatments.  But crap at admin.   I remember having a Nuchal fold test with my second pregnancy, when it was new and innovative (Nicholaides, London).  But, ha, or actually, not so ha, they lost the results.  

[keith2011 2,579]

3 hours ago, fraufruit said:

While people in the UK wait for months or years for simple operations like gall bladder removal while living in pain.

 

Yes "OUR" NHS has been slowly but steadily ruined by 12 years of Tory austerity and mismanagement and even that 350 million a day they talked about on the bus won't help, assuming it ever arrives. 😥

[snowingagain 5,214]

3 hours ago, fraufruit said:

I guess they were more comfortable sitting in first class and seeing her own specialist in the US where she got immediate and excellent treatment.  That's what I would have done.

 

Re my post before this one.  It could read that I thought your ex sister in law, rather than the hospital, that was fucking stupid.  Just in case you were wondering!

[kiplette 8,677]

4 hours ago, keith2011 said:

you can wait 2 weeks or more for an appointment with a GP

 

Kid#2 is in Bath.

 

He got flu in his first term (2019) and went to the surgery round the corner, registered, got an appointment to see the GP and a sick note, all in less than an hour. Yay for the NHS.

 

He had a resurgence of a serious eye complaint in 2021, GP practice had closed down, registered with a new one, waited for an appointment to be referred to the Eye Hospital (website says they take walk-ins - this is an actual lie) - calling constantly for several days whilst the eye got worse, discovered he wasn't in fact registered and told in no uncertain terms to bugger off. Not-so-yay.

Phoned 111 in a state, and was given an appointment at a specialist eye clinic later that same day. Attended, given everything he needed, situation saved. Yay again.

 

Stupid messy system, and impossible to believe what's said by the receptionist on the phone.

When it works, it's a beautiful thing. The rest of the time it's like climbing Everest in flip flops and a blindfold. Good luck with that if you are sick/weak/old/impaired at all. 

[keith2011 2,579]

6 hours ago, snowingagain said:

My family have been very lucky with the NHS and had excellent cancer care at really good speciality hospitals.  The NHS is not all crap.

Good to hear however compared to the rest of western Europe and Scandinavia the UK has the worst outcomes for cancer treatment, as I understand it only the USA is worse.

[optimista 5,847]

Access is apallingly bad where my parents are. Hard to say whether or not it is crap if you are simply unable to get any sort of treatment and are just left to suffer.

[murphaph 9,698]

9 hours ago, keith2011 said:

Good to hear however compared to the rest of western Europe and Scandinavia the UK has the worst outcomes for cancer treatment, as I understand it only the USA is worse.

Funnily enough UK and German life expectancy is almost identical. I am a bit surprised at that to be honest, thought it would be higher here. Ireland is much higher than both Germany and the UK and healthcare is generally considered to be worse than both, though cancer outcomes are significantly better in the Republic than in Northern Ireland. In the Republic you pay a hefty €50 or €60 to see a GP (unless you are unemployed or a pensioner or whatever, they get free GP treatment) but if you are referred to hospital for "big stuff" the procedures themselves are free. The high GP charge discourages time wasters but presumably also discourages the working poor who are genuinely ill from going to a GP. They are slowly trying to reform the system but to be honest I favour retaining a token charge for visiting the GP, say €5 or €10 to reduce the numbers of time wasters blocking up the waiting room. This fee could be waived for people diagnosed with any chronic illness than necessitates frequent GP visits. People going to the GP here with a cough or a cold are absolutely infuriating.

[keith2011 2,579]

1 hour ago, murphaph said:

I am a bit surprised at that to be honest, thought it would be higher here.

Not sure how life expectancy and cancer treatment outcomes compare but my info is quite old and predates covid but on the other hand I doubt it has improved since covid.

Regarding GP visits in the UK as far as I am aware, at least in the London and South East it is by appointment only, no turning up and sitting in the waiting room allowed these days. My mother who is 97 and known by her GP to be frail with various conditions and not a time waster invariably has to wait at least a week for an appointment, basically if you are unwell these days people call 111 who will decide what treatment or response is needed! I don't believe introducing a charge to visit a GP in the UK would improve the situation which is the result of a lack of doctors.

[Krieg 14,941]

Several years ago Denmark had a much lower cancer surviving rate compared to the rest of Western Europe and that's the reason they introduced some tough laws/regulations to expedite the cancer treatment.   There is some rule that you have to start to receive treatment 48 hours after its detection or something like that.  And if your doctor suspects you have cancer you receive the related tests quite fast.

 

https://www.all-can.org/efficiency-hub/danish-cancer-patient-pathways-three-legged-strategy-for-faster-referral-and-diagnosis-of-cancer/

 

 

[Dembo 499]

1 hour ago, Krieg said:

Several years ago Denmark had a much lower cancer surviving rate compared to the rest of Western Europe and that's the reason they introduced some tough laws/regulations to expedite the cancer treatment.   There is some rule that you have to start to receive treatment 48 hours after its detection or something like that.  And if your doctor suspects you have cancer you receive the related tests quite fast.

 

This is (or at least was) true in the UK as well. When I was referred as a possible bowel cancer case they gave me an ultrasound the next morning and I saw the specialist the day after that and I remember the GP using the phrase "48 Hours cancer pathway" - or something like that.  So they can be fast when they want to be.

 

But then having found no tumours or anything nasty it went into super slow mode and just "come back in 3 months and we'll see how you're doing". I waited months for a colonoscopy, more months to be told the result and more months for a CT scan. I found out later from correspondence that a week after my CT scan my case was dicussed in the doctors' meeting and it was decided I had Crohns Disease and needed surgery urgently. But nobody thought to tell me this, and only when I went to the regular appointment almost 3 months later did the doctor say "Did no-one contact you? You need surgery urgently". ;-(

 

Maybe none of this affected my life expectancy, but I did spend the best part of a year being quite ill. Perhaps they're too focussed on cancer survival targets and not so good at everything else.

 

(But I don't think you can pin this on either Brexit or the Conservatives).

 

 

[RenegadeFurther 2,393]

This is a first.

 

https://news.sky.com/story/government-tables-no-confidence-vote-in-itself-after-blocking-labour-bid-12651261

 

Government tables no-confidence vote in itself after blocking Labour bid

[scook17 248]

4 hours ago, RenegadeFurther said:

This is a first.

 

https://news.sky.com/story/government-tables-no-confidence-vote-in-itself-after-blocking-labour-bid-12651261

 

Government tables no-confidence vote in itself after blocking Labour bid

Oh, that video in the article is so funny. 

[john_b 3,308]

Brexit after Boris 

 

https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/brexit-after-boris-johnson-conservatives-leadership

[murphaph 9,698]

Dover in a heap again. Critical incident declared by the port's authority. Nothing to see here though as the French are at fault it seems. 

[murphaph 9,698]

Dover in a heap again. Critical incident declared by the port's authority. Nothing to see here though as the French are at fault it seems. 

[murphaph 9,698]

Dover in a heap again. Critical incident declared by the port's authority. Nothing to see here though as the French are at fault it seems. 

[pappnase 2,580]

Gah, if Truss gets the PM's job it's going to be a shitshow.

 

 

 

Truss vows to scrap remaining EU laws by end of 2023 risking ‘bonfire of rights’

 

[Keleth 9,279]

Please will people stop blaming the chaos at Dover and airports etc on just Brexit.

Brexit is a part of it but is not the only reason.

[Keleth 9,279]

...

 

[Dembo 499]

6 hours ago, Keleth said:

Please will people stop blaming the chaos at Dover and airports etc on just Brexit.

Brexit is a part of it but is not the only reason.

Yes the government rejected a proposal to double the number of passport booths. But then that was only necessary because of Brexit.