My Socialised/Rationed Healthcare Disasters

[aviet]

I 'live' in the UK, where there is a national health service (NHS), which is free for any of the 508 million EU citizens to use; and increasingly anyone in the world who wants to show up at Heathrow Airport. Particularly in the last few years there has been a lot of talk in regards to people not being able to see a general practitioner (basic doctor), long waiting lists, inability to get a diagnosis, etc.

You won't have to go far to find serious complaints about the rationing of healthcare, for example, a friend of my aunt and uncle died of cancer that the NHS failed to diagnose. My own personal experience of the NHS was that the general practitioners act as gatekeepers, or pinball machine flippers, ejecting people who have problems from getting any care because there simply aren't the resources to deal with them. People are now forced to go private to get a diagnosis and then take that diagnosis to the NHS to get free treatment.

Several years ago my mother began having various issues: problems with balance, dizziness etc. She went to the government health system (NHS) and was batted away. As the symptoms got worse, she continued to go to the general practitioners who eventually allowed her access to 'specialists'. These specialists operated in the same way, batting her away without any real investigation. As months passed the symptoms got worse to the point she would fall over and had to leave work. She continued to have to fight with the NHS to be seen by various specialists who found nothing wrong because they did not look. Due to her deteriorating health, she became increasingly upset and as a result the specialist she seeing said she was a hypochondriac who was mentally unstable and needed to go on anti-depressants. They made no difference. Eventually she paid to see a 'private' consultant, who was actually an NHS employee who increased his income by seeing private clients and ... within fifteen minutes he had come up with a prognosis that she was suffering from a neurological disorder called multiple system atrophy. This turned out to be the case. It is an illness which causes parts of the brain die, leading to the inability to speak and move; and eventually death. Rather than allowing that to happen, she decided to travel to Switzerland for assisted suicide.

At the same time my grandmother was in a partly-government funded care home which was largely staffed by immigrants from undeveloped countries. They had been giving her unsanitary water from a bathroom tap to drink and this led to her getting a bladder infection. She was hospitalised to an NHS hospital where my grandmother's three daughters were pulled aside and convinced to refuse treatment and let her die because she was old. She puffed up with inflammation and died a few days later. The whole situation was investigated by the government, but they found no wrong doing.

A few years earlier she was found to have colon cancer. The NHS only removed the cancer because they said she was otherwise healthy.

My own negative experience with the NHS started when I was about 17 when I had a knee injury. It took three visits to general practitioners to eventually be sent to a specialist, which took so long (6 months) that the issue had largely gone. The specialist seemed to view me as some sort of sub-human to be shuffled out as quickly as possible. I saw him again a few years later and was treated in the same manner. The second time I was told I had problems with muscles skewing my kneecap, but he did not seem to think the physiotherapist he dumped me with needed to know that.

Over the ensuing years I had several other problems with my lower body the NHS essentially refused to inspect; culminating at around age 25 when I had considerable pain down my right leg and groin. It was to the extent that I could no longer work or engage in my favourite hobby of cycling. The result was me being at home all day in a state of hopelessness. I again saw three general practitioners before I was sent to a specialist. The second could barely find her way down from her ivory tower as she gave me a three second (literally) inspection. She also suggested I was mentally ill and should be put on anti-depresants. Mistaking my anger that I could get nothing done about taking two hours to get to sleep at night due to server pain and sitting at home all day, watching life pass me by.

When I was allowed to see a specialist I was diagnosed with a serious illness that I would rather not say as the horror of being diagnosed with it was so crippling that I never told anyone.

As a result my life had been consigned to constant and increasing pain, topped with sitting at home all day. After some thought I decided I would get a plane to America and go and live in the wilderness of the Rocky Mountains. Doing myself in crossed my mind several times and not in the attention-seeking way. I saw nothing much left worth living for.

A few months later I was called back by the general practitioner and I was told they had mistakenly diagnosed me. I was instead told I had the relativity insignificant tendonitis. I asked how they came to this diagnosis and there was no answer. It sounded like they were making it up.

To recap:

My grandmother was deemed not worthy of living by what was essentially a death panel
My mother was essentially refused a diagnosis while fatally ill, driving her into despair
I was refused a diagnosis and wrongly diagnosed, driving me into despair

 

[Thus_Spake_the_Nightspirit]

I've heard similar stories from my friends in the UK. I fortunately only had to see NHS GPs a couple times when I lived there and it wasn't for anything serious. I saved my bigger health concerns for when I was back in America and could see doctors there. The Australian public system is not much better, but there are more options to go private here. I ended up in a public hospital once and would never do it again.

[Cuffy_Meigs]

Your experiences don't surprise me. I live in North London with some of the worst hospitals imaginable.

 

I have kept remarkably healthy so far but the experiences I have had with relations were all characterised by incompetence on a massive scale and an appalling lack of concern (to put it kindly).

 

My advice, for what it is worth, is to take control and if you are infirm then you must get someone you trust to watch out for you. When my father-in-law went into hospital I lost count of how many times they'd have killed him. We ended up sleeping on the floor of his ward, refusing to leave and daring them to call the police. In adjacent beds patients were lying in their own faeces, ringing their help buzzers with nobody responding. If you can just wait for the end of your shift then it becomes somebody else's problem.

 

Despite this any criticism of our glorious health service is met with much the same response you'd get by suggesting we behead the Queen. It has become an article of religious (and particularly socialist) faith that the NHS is the "envy of the world".

[aviet]

Despite this any criticism of our glorious health service is met with much the same response you'd get by suggesting we behead the Queen. It has become an article of religious (and particularly socialist) faith that the NHS is the "envy of the world".

I'd not heard anything quite so bad as what you have seen in terms of general conditions. The lack of concern is one of my main observations. I'm not sure what the largest factor behind that is, either stress of the system or that simply showing concern makes no real difference to them?

[Guest Gee]

You have my deepest sympathies aviet. My father died after being misdiagnosed. Looking back I wish I talked to someone.