Unpopular opinion - NHS is useless

The reality is that we have a shortage of trained medical staff and that is a combination of the availability of training, the careers failing to attract new recruits into the NHS, and the pay and working conditions being inadequate to retain existing staff.

In no other industry would anyone immediately conclude "too much money being wasted". The obvious conclusion is "salaries too low to attract and retain staff, leading to a downward spiral where short-staffing makes the jobs even less attractive."

Unsurprisingly a huge chunk of the NHS budget goes to pay its staff, so if you want to put up the salaries to deal with the staff shortages, you're going to have to increase funding materially.

Also the "GPs are hiding" idea is properly silly. Yes, you mighty want a face to face consultation, but if it is possible to deal with you over the phone or by talking to a nurse, then that's a far better outcome overall. Doctors and nurses are the scarce resources in the system. There's no shortage of patients. The objectives is to make the very best use of clinicians' time, not that of the patients. If that means patients having to queue up or accept a phone call rather than an in-person appointment, tough.

Good luck with trying to get a second crutch, you’ll be making phone calls into the ether like OP and eventually be told come in. When you go in you’ll be theran hour

Good luck with trying to get a second crutch, you’ll probably be making phone calls into the ether like OP and eventually be told come in. When you go in you’ll be there an hour while they have no record of you calling so they start from scratch while someone hunts around for where the non existent crutch store might be.

When you’ve finished with them there will be no system for returning them and when you do the staff aren’t happy as they don’t know where to put them.

(Albeit experience from my GP surgery)

The amount of the funding for the NHS that gets spent well before it’s arrives at the coal face where the general see it is what needs to be changed.

If you talk to any of the nurses and doctors who work on the front line they are usually in agreement that the problems stem from poor management and their lack of accountability,rather than a lack of funding.
There's a big problem with bed blocking, patients who are well enough to be discharged but nowhere for them to go ie they need further care but the places they used to go to no longer exist

And here is the problem with the NHS no one has a clue how it works, how it's supposed to work, if it recieves enough money or how efficiently that money is spent!

NHS has been amazing for my family, I am not talking walking sticks and hearing aids sorry but get some perspective, big life changing incidents and diagnosis dealt with on the whole very well. They seem to excel at cancer treatment especially in out local trust.

A brand new pair of crutches is £10.

What's bonkers is people moaning incessantly about the NHS with zero understanding of what's involved.

Very much like the realisation that rich people are still greedy.

Once you appreciate the NHS raison d'etre is:

1 Are you dying
2 Are you not going to die through something we can do
3 Has whatever we've done prevented you dying right now
4 Will moving you on cause you to start dying again

The NHS suddenly makes more sense.

Using our family experience only - I can declare that private medicine is sh!te - here's why..

A few years back wife used her work's private medical insurance to have some tests done on her digestive system - she had a colonoscopy in a private hospital.
Went in as a day patient, discharged that afternoon - a Friday - still very uncomfortable and in pain overnight, next morning I called hospital back - they weren't really interested - said wait until Tuesday, is still bad go and see her GP.
Phoned a few times Saturday and Sunday - her consultant phoned after we complained to hospital - he was dis-interested and repeated hospital advice.

By Sunday afternoon she was in again - phoned emergency GP- he came out within an hour - spotted right away that she had a suspected perforated bowel, blue-lighted to hospital in ambulance. NHS Hospital called out their main consultant to operate on her and sort it out - ironically turned out he was the arrogant tt who carried out the colonoscopy.
We met up with him a few weeks later for a catchup consultation - he was still an arrogant tt and more or less blamed the wife - I pointed out that he was a bawbag

We later heard from a friend he was at a function and seated near this guy when he got called away urgently to the hospital - said he was panic stricken

The NHS saved her life, especially the emergency GP and his quick thinking - anyone involved in private medicine or promoting it can go fk themselves - our family has many reasons to thank the NHS and fk all to thank private medicine for

Utter rubbish. If there's one area that should be socialist, it's healthcare, as it's perfectly reasonable to share the cost of medical treatment.

The biggest problem we have is the fact that State pension age hasn't kept in line with life expectancy. Too many people have been able to retire too young, then sit around developing expensive chronic health conditions. If people were working to 75 before getting the State pension, they'd stay healthier for longer plus there'd be more money to pay for the NHS in the first place.