Healthcare in the UK

Can a britbong explain the basics of healthcare in your country to an American. I've heard conflicted information. Some have said that its totally free, others have said that only somethings are covered.

Emergency treatment and seeing a doctor is free.

If you need it it's free, prescriptions are like £7 if you don't have a reason you can't pay like being on tax credits/the dole/child support

Nothing is free, we pay higher taxes than you.

Dentistry is partly subsidised, free for kids, OAPs, disabled, poorfags and students.
All other treatment is free, prescriptions are 7 pounds unless you fit in criteria above.

Free emergency care is good shit. I had to get that once.

Do you need to go through the insurance or default hassle afterward or is it just written off from the start?

Health insurance exists only for private treatment at private medical institutions.

>Dentistry is partly subsidised
No it isn't, what?

Private health insurance exists so you don't have to wait 2-3 weeks to see a GP.

You just leave the hospital, that's it. No bullshit

Our governments are private corporations, so I'm not sure I understand the difference.

Let's say you need an emergency process. Do you just go home and you're done with it no questions asked, or are there ex post facto processes?

>Private health insurance exists so you don't have to wait 2-3 weeks to see a GP.
Whether or not I have insurance, I can see a GP any time I want, no questions asked. It's just a matter afterward of settling the payment question.

>Do you just go home and you're done with it no questions asked, or are there ex post facto processes?

Sometimes you've gotta fill out some paperwork and give them your national insurance number.

Questions do start getting asked if you turn up with two broken legs and half your teeth missing.

I work in the NHS, it's great to have free healthcare for the people but tax is really high. I usually don't have a problem but it seems more and more I'm having to deal with people who are not from the UK or don't speak English. Out of the 25 to 40 patients I see a day about 40% fall into that category.

>Questions do start getting asked if
heh, that's not so bad.

Here they (try to) make you answer every question in the world first, right down to if there's a gun in your house.

I imagine they'd only ask about guns if you rolled in with a gunwound

No, it's a standard question. It all goes into the database.

I could understand it if I showed up having been shot or having shot somebody, but other than that you just say I've never touched a gun in my life and I lost it in a boating accident.

>emergency treatment is free
So what stops people from just using the emergency department as their primary care?

In america, there's a huge problem with dindus and beaners who pull this shit.

Nothing, that's the problem, people are doing that and It's pushing the system towards breaking point.

>No, it's a standard question. It all goes into the database

What the fuck are you on about? They don't ask people if they own guns when you go into a hospital. If you own a gun the police will already know anyway, as we have to apply to get a license to own a firearm

We don't have gun tracking here, although most are in some kind of database due to the FBI's NICS system.

That's not the only outrageous kind of question they want you to fill out on the standardized form before seeing the doc, assuming you're awake enough to do so. They want to correlate everything with computers to reduce costs is the legitimate cover story.

You have to pay to see a GP?

We have a 1% medicare levy on income tax, but in the past 10 years I've been to emergency 3 times. Spent a total of 9 days in various wards, visited my gp prob 10 times a year (sick days from work usually require medical certificate), the wife spent a week in hospital after giving birth, my daughter spent 10 weeks in neo-natal.
Besides paying a bit for prescriptions. (Max. Is $34 aud for meds on the pharmaceutical benefits scheme) I haven't had a cent out of pocket.

Oh wait sorry dude I totally misread the post I originally replied to

when i lived over there i had to wait 2 fucking hours to get my broken leg looked at by some indian fuck who couldn't pronounce "thomas". he briefly looked at the x ray and told me my leg was fine. even I could tell there was a crack in the bone by looking at it

Depends on how much insurance you buy. Think of it as alternative to just having it all taxed away. I'm not advocating for either system as being better. You usually wind up paying some extra part of the total cost if and when you use it.

And drugs here are total outrage. Fucking drug pushing companies ripping everybody off.

>when i lived over there i had to wait 2 fucking hours to get my broken leg looked

Another 2 hours to get it fixed and plastered, right?

Dentistry is only part subsidised and prescription drugs are £7 a time, but otherwise it's free.
Obviously cosmetic shit isn't covered too.

>>Dentistry is partly subsidised
>No it isn't, what?
It is, you pay less than the real cost of dentistry because you're getting NHS subsidies for it.
Private stuff is even more extortionate.

Were you able to take home a personal copy of your medical records?

Everyone who works and earns over a certain wage pays 'national insurance'. It's something like 8% of your salary. If you're employed by a company the company pays it for you, you don't even see the money. You just see how much was deducted from your pay in the statement. If you're self employed you file a tax return and pay it yourself (it's slightly lower if you're self employed). All this money goes towards funding the NHS which covers accident and emergency, hospitals, and GP visits. If you ever make a trip to the GP or hospital they will ask for your name and address to see if you're a citizen and you have the insurance. Obviously there are exemptions for kids, people who earn under a certain wage etc

Question for britbongs. A lot of the time you hear about wait times with these NHS type programs. I figured it can't be too bad though, considering that wait times are really long in America too.

Say I went into the hospital with a broken leg. How long do you think I'd wait before getting help?

everything is free more or less and is there whenever you need it.

Depends on how severe the injury is. The main reason wait times can be long is because A&E is full of people that don't need immediate medical attention. If it's more serious you'll get seen fairly quickly. If it's less serious 'I sprained my ankle' it'll be a 3 or 4 hour wait

What's A&E?

The worst was when I showed up to a small, understaffed place with an unlikely but possible brain condition and had to wait about 30min, but nobody seriously suspected I was about to die.

Accident and Emergency

Oh. I guess we call it ER, "Emergency Room."

Accident and Emergency. It's basically a hospital, if you need an ambulance the ambulance will take you to A&E. You go there for stuff that needs fairly quick medical attention. As I said, the more serious it is, the quicker you'll get seen. I once went there to get rid of a glass splinter in my hand that I couldn't get out myself. I went there about midday and there were a lot of people there, most of them probably hypochondriacs. I think that's the main reason why there are higher waiting times for less serious stuff. There were people there sneezing, a few people coughing, it was kinda stupid.

I make an appointment.
I go to the doctor.
They give me a prescription.
I pay £10 for any medicine.

I get ill.
I go to the hospital.
I get better.
I leave.

especially the dental practice

Dude a glass splinter in your hand? That must have been a hell of a splinter. If the blood didn't push it out, just wait for osmotic pressure to help you use the tweezers.

And I went there another time because I fell down the stairs and was in a lot of pain. I got seen in 15 minutes. They thought I had maybe broken my ribs did a quick x ray turns out they were just bruised and I was sent on my way

Free at the point of use, but it's not literally free, it's paid in taxes

it's under massive strain because of immigrants.

It was a tiny tiny shard of glass in my thumb. I only knew it was there because whenever I pushed down on the area it was a really sharp pain.

You also don't want a chest xray unless you really have a good reason. Just blasted your internal organs with ionizing radiation.

Maybe it was the right thing to do. Just thinking about lowering costs and maintaining common sense.

Nah I fell backwards and kinda slid down the stairs. The corner of the stairs went straight into my ribs though and I was struggling to breath (now I think about it maybe it was in my head). But yeah I guess it's nice to be able to just go there and not have to worry about bills or being charged for anything. Problem I think with privatised healthcare is that the doctor has an incentive to spend more money on each patient

A family member of mine fell off a ladder and eventually thought "something is really wrong" and it turned out he had massive internal bleeding.

I got one and it was because I had a massive infection.

Bruised or broken ribs should be "maybe have a bandage, go home, and lay off it." But it's all about how to diagnose it.

I wouldn't want to exchange the NHS for anything else. I'd hate to be under the stress you see when US anons get massive bills for emergency care,

However, the NHS won't survive unlimited immigration. Also, most of the healthcare professionals can barely speak English.

Swings & roundabouts, my friends.

heres an explanation how the NHS works:

case 1
you suffer a stroke get referred to rehabilitation

window for optimal rehab outcomes is first month, goes way down after

waiting list is 6 months long

case 2
you get diagnosed with major depression after attempted suicide and get referred to clinical psychology and get anti depressants

pills dont work as it happens for up to 50% of cases

waiting list is 11 months

our psycological care is completely fucked. the dedicated psyc hospitals basically operate a 1 in 1 out policy.

GP aka family doctor
>Have to call at 8/9am on the same morning you want an appointment
>If you call 10 minutes after then, all appointments will have gone
>Will not give a single shit about you and will push you off with the barest minimum they can allow

Dental
>Regular dentistry and orthodontics free for under 18s, but the latter only when it significantly affects hygiene or oral health
>Three fixed charge plans for courses of treatment, any follow up treatment on same course and emergency work not charged extra
>Charges are basic checkup, minor work, and major work, with each covering the lesser charges.
>Many dentistries will defraud you on this anyway and force you to pay everytime you visit

Pharmaceuticals
>Prescriptions free for under 18s, people on certain benefits, military retirees, over 65s
>Otherwise must pay certain charges

Emergency Room (Accidents & Emergency for us)
>Go to ER/A&E with significant injury or illness
>high likelihood of not getting seen for several hours while waiting room filled with retards
>Very lucky if that's not the case
>Follow up work is basically a lottery depending on where you live

Serious but not immediately dangerous illness or surgery required
>Almost all procedural work, e.g. x-rays etc takes months inbetween, often left out of work because of it
>Surgeries left months or more
>Broken bones which need fixing often left so long they need to be rebroken to set properly

Minor elective surgery
>Wait lists 3, 4, 5 years long

Cost
>Overcomplex system which taxes you depending on weekly, not annual, income
>Extreme resistance to putting this together with income tax.
>????????????

Best thing ever. Saved my life at birth and again at 15.

But it's being staffed by pajeets who don't give a shit now and I've even known a family member seen by a female Islamic doctor who made religious recommendation for mental health crisis. I shit you not.

I still wouldn't trade it for anything. Health/Education should be a basic right for everyone. Greases the wheels of capitalism, a boon for any political movement desu.

within the top tier best specialist hospitals in the country, the furniture is from the 80's, the computers run windows XP, and the hallways look old enough to have asbestos in them

desu the case 2 i can vouch for
waiting list for mental health is unbelievably long

>a female Islamic doctor who made religious recommendation for mental health crisis. I shit you not.

That's fucked, I hope she was reported. So sick of Islam's shit.

GP can be seen on the day but you usually don't get to choose when. Not sure why people talk about waiting 2 weeks to see one.

Break your wrist and you could be waiting a few hours, hopefully they give you some painkillers for the wait. Have a serious accident and they'll take you right in.

Seeing a specialist can take a long time though, anywhere from a week to a couple of months depending on severity and availability. This can be a big deal if you have a really specific and potentially severe problem.

Waiting lists for non-essential or particularly specific operations can be very long, it's not unlike the queue for organ transplants and can be up to 3 or 4 years in some cases. A lot of people try to go private, either nationally or abroad, if the situation is important enough for them.

Dentistry is semi-private with some employed by the NHS and others private but subsidized. Free for kids and old people. The prices are lower than private but you have to pay more for extra options (like enamel rather than amalgam). Non-essential operations are not provided to adults ie. no braces unless significantly needed, when allowed prepare to wait for years.

Yeah, they lodged a complaint but nothing came of it. Head of the practice is a pajeet himself but not Islamic.

So there are waiting lists for procedures? I don't like that. Is it possible to get higher quality care if you have private insurance? I'm curious about the quality of your healthcare.

It's alright but its overrated and criticising it is taboo amongst the vast majority of the population, which I'm not a fan of. The doctors also hold the country to ransom all the time for extra money and companies that supply services for the NHS grossly overcharge because they know they can get away with it.

>Adults and braces
Significantly needed usually means when your teeth are fucked up and they can't make the call to pull them out. Very rare.

Otherwise be prepared to pay thousands.

>private insurance
Doesn't work that way.

NHS care is between top quality and third world depending entirely on where you live and what random doctor you get on roulette.

For example i've had ultra quality specialists and pajeets who had trouble speaking english to me.

You can go private though.

Essentially if you live in the UK, you can have both, whenever you feel like it, pay for private or drop into the NHS for your lower grade shit, but remember you'll be paying UK tier taxes all the meanwhile.

The NHS is propped up by immigrants you knuckle-dragging pleb.

Definitely possible to get better care with private insurance, only problem is that despite insurance not costing much, premiums skyrocket when you have to use it, and many private practices are run out of town by the NHS because they can't compete with free, and their staff usually run off into agency consulting, which pays them 5 times what they'd usually get paid.

You can't choose your GP?

You can/you can change/choose different practices too.

But knowing if what you're getting is quality is a different thing entirely.

How much ability do you have to get second opinions or otherwise change doctors if you think you're not getting fair treatment?

Obviously for emergency care there's not much you can do if you need to be seen right away, but one of the choices I made for my insurance is that I pay slightly more to be able to switch doctors if I'm unsatisfied.

I know, my parents let me make the shit decision to not getting them as a child and now I regret it.

Based on what I've read I should qualify, but in practice they didn't even consider doing it.

>GP can be seen on the day but you usually don't get to choose when. Not sure why people talk about waiting 2 weeks to see one.
Because in a lot of places it can take that long. At my surgery you only get same day appointments for emergencies, and only if you ring up before like 8:30.
My mum has COPD so she has to have a ton of appointments. She rang up on February 1st, got told it would be 1st March to see the GP she wanted, or 23rd if she'd settle for one of the other chucklefucks

every psyc hospital has a multi-faith prayer room, and all sorts of vicars and nuns volunteer.

lol no i have had like 30 different ones and i am 18, there is roughly 15 GP's in our town of 200,000 people , they are all leaving, last one i saw was a fucking 70 year old who couldn't speak English other than yes/no/antibiotics/rest/goodbye

Fpbp

>massive influx of pajeets and achmeds into city centers, in unpredictable quantities that don't allow for planning of health provision, has nothing to do with the overcrowding of our hospitals!

>so we have to import immigrant nurses and doctors at a worse ratio of new population to new doctor than the current patient:doctor ratio, and are incredibly dangerous instead!

Never mind that the latter occurs because out of all OECD nations, we pay our doctors the least.
No wonder a third of newly qualified doctors migrate to the US, Canada and Australia right away.

>How much ability do you have to get second opinions or otherwise change doctors if you think you're not getting fair treatment?
You can pretty much see new doctors every day of the week for free by remaking appointments if it's for basic shit.

If it's for advanced treatment or mental health, it's also possible, but you'll be on the waiting lists over and over. Some services offer dedicated second opinion services though, especially with regards to mental illness stuff that will be with you for the rest of your life.

For example I had a physical problem I wanted taken seriously.

So I just went and saw a doctor at my practice every 3 days until I got through all their pajeets and got a lithuanian doctor who had proper training and she picked up on it right away.

I saw my Indian GP the other week and she seemed really stressed out, said her work load was really high. Think its the government + all the immigrants. I had to wait an hour, nearly all the patients called were foreign.

>>Dentistry is partly subsidised
No it isn't, what?
Under 18s get free dentist appointments and free orthopaedic care (braces ect.) its all paid for by the NHS

No, this was a GP making the recommendation.

I would personally wager this was because in some religions the idea of suicide is so reprehensible that it isn't comprehendable by people who have denied it as a cause for sympathy all their lives due to culture and religion drilled into them as youngsters.

i know a friend who is from a family of doctors and they just never stop working, they are not pajeets and thus actually work hard, i have a sneaking suspicion that the pajeets are not pulling their weight and also putting more stress than is necessary on the top tier doctors

>NHS care is between top quality and third world depending entirely on where you live and what random doctor you get on roulette.

For example i've had ultra quality specialists and pajeets who had trouble speaking english to me.
The fact this is true is depressing
>break wrist, doctor in A+E tries to put the brace on upside down
>tear ligaments in my knee, get sent to one of the best knee specialists in the world

Okay. I asked because mainly in America there are a lot of private practices and families usually go to the same practice. Is there not enough GP's?

That's the problem with the state trying to run healthcare, not immigration.

It all really depends on severity, if you have got a bone popping out your leg you will be seen instantly, but if its a small fracture between 30 mins to an hour at most.

It's a mix of lack of GPs but also imported doctors from third world countries/shitholes where the standard of education and graduation requirements are ridiculously low compared to the west/places where corruption is rife, such as India.

999 emergencies are free.
Everything else is paid unless you are unemployed, full time education, or very low pay. Then everything is also free.

I fucked up bad because I didn't get braces at 12-15 like other kids did, now I'm 18 and want braces but I leave full time education in a month and they say it'll cost me £2000

fml

She seems like a good doctor. Not lazy. There's been a lot of immigration in my area so I'm inclined to go with that.

From what I've heard, they're all being pushed pretty hard for efficiency. But I would have to say that natives generally rank among the best. Chinese are pretty good, too.

>Everything else is paid
No, if you go in with cancer you don't pay

That's just blatantly untrue. My doctor and the pharmacist next door are both indian immigrants, they work 6 days a week and earn £200,000 a year because they've been working the same job, same days, for 25 years.

Don't they have to like, get recertified in their new country? How can they be able to practice medicine without meeting requirements?

There tends not to be that many GPs because with the same qualifications you can be a doctor in a hospital which earns a substantially larger amount of money, so trainees tend not to be a GP

yeah that's true, worded my response wrong. Life threatening illnesses and also 999 emergencies are free then

>Get immune disorder.
>Sent to one of the five leading specialists in my disorder in the UK, makes me feel like a king for being damaged for a day.
>Sorted for life with meds and advice I use to this day.

>Heart problem playing up.
>Pajeet glances slackjawed at his computer, ignores the red box warning for beta blockers he tries to give me that pops up on the system that have a massive chance to stop my heart completely.
>Gives me them anyway.
>No time to protest, very busy, 8 minutes per patient thankyougoodbye.
>Bin them and keep coming back until I get someone from the top half of the world.
>Doctor can't believe what her colleague nearly did to me.

But I've had a medium sized cut in my foot that was clearly not life threatening and the nurse at the minor injuries unit put a few stitches in it and I was good to go.

...

>be diabetic (the not obese type)
>when I turned 18 (5 years ago) I apparently was supposed to apply for an exemption certificate to get my insulin and shit for free
>never did
>they didn't notice in all that time and I was technically getting illegal prescriptions for 5 years, about once every month and easily in the £thousands
>they finally realise and try to fine me £100 for not paying
>I tell them no, quoting the legislation that says I don't have to pay
>they say I have to pay
>send an email to Diabetes UK, who confirms I don't have to pay
>quote said email to the NHS and they drop the charge
It's shit like this that makes it obvious how inefficiently everything is run, I'm not really in a position to complain though.

fucking pedantic

People complain about the NHS a lot but it's a great social safety net to stop people getting into massive personal debt, not being able to pay for healthcare then being unable to work and ending up on the streets.

I lived in the states for a while and honestly I was happy to come back and pay national insurance.
My sister got a rare spinal cancer that spread to her brain and she received the best treatment that my family could never have paid for.
She was just a kid when she got it, it's a good service for ensuring poor families aren't forced to stay poor for the kinda medical issues that are total flukes.

I was in hospital last year when I got mugged. Broken arm and a stab wound in my side. Went right into theatre, all the doctors were nice and I healed great. No paki doctors thankfully (Scotland). Most if the people on the ward with me were just old people and one other guy who had been hit by a car.
I guess a lot of people abuse their GP but the emergency services are what makes the UK great.

Also the thing about Brits having bad teeth makes me laugh. So many Americans would comment on how nice my teeth were... The average Americans have shit teeth from what I've seen. But yeah we get free dental care as kids. So by the time I was 18 I had braces out and regular visits to the dentist had made sure I knew how to look after them. Brits have pretty healthy teeth on average and statistically some of the best in the world thanks to the NHS.

Also prescriptions are free in Scotland.... No matter wat the drug is we don't pay a penny for the prescription

Until immigrants come in and fuck it all up