Paul Brownjohn @Paulos_the_fog@social.cleverlibre.org

@inklings @ThomHartmann
Nixon pulled a stunt as well; he betrayed the American people over the Vietnam war and got away with it - one way and another, the USA has had some complete arseholes as republican POTUSes

@jamesmb

I don't understand the point you are trying to make - this is not new, it has always been the case. There has never been a charge for A+E treatment no matter who you are or where you come from nor indeed for emergency visits to GPs.

@jamesmb

I'm actually quite surprised - I knew A+E services were FOC, but I didn't know about all the rest. OK, treatment for infectious diseases obviously makes sense - you certainly don't want people with say, TB going untreated, that's for sure!

Family Planning services - now that does surprise me!

@BremainInSpain@toot.community

"A lying piece of filthy scum" is how I would characterize our ex-PM, Blojob!

Holy shit, when pretty right wing Max Hastings ex-editor of the Torygraph is comprehensively slagging off the tory government, you know the tories are in REAL trouble
https://twitter.com/Ian_Fraser/status/1627442638084362242...

@jamesmb

This is an extract from the NHS.co.uk website - the horse's mouth, you might say!

A+E is free so long as you don't require admission!

"Services that are free to everyone:
Some services or treatments carried out in an NHS hospital are exempt from charges, so they're free to all.

These include:

A&E services – not including emergency treatment if admitted to hospital

family planning services – this does not include abortions or infertility treatment

treatment for most infectious diseases, including sexually transmitted infections (STIs)

treatment required for a physical or mental condition caused by torture, female genital mutilation (FGM), domestic violence or sexual violence – this does not apply if you have come to England to seek this treatment"

@jamesmb
NO!! Treatment at A+E is and always has been free of charge whoever you are!

Likewise an emergency visit to a GP (however I imagine many more wiley GPs are treating such patients privately rather than on the NHS).

@doot

Same as that!

Most especially if it's a video of some American droning on interminably as if bored me to death is going to miraculously furnish them with the keys to my bank account - bad news guys, it isn't. I'm European and therefore I was born with a built-in American-bullshit filter!

@jamesmb

A friend of mine who was in reality living off grid in Spain and had been for years, was able to access NHS treatment free of charge by claiming to be a traveller (thus explaining why he had no fixed abode and no GP). As he was dying of cancer at the time, I guess the NHS just took his word for and didn't press the point!

However, it's always worth remembering that treatment by a GP and by A+E is free of charge whoever you are UK resident or not! Although I imagine trying to get an appt with a GP if you aren't registered with the practice you choose is pretty much impossible now!

@jamesmb

I don't know what the situation is in France but in Luxembourg, the cover provided by the CNS (the govt body that finances healthcare here) extends to the whole world. I fell down a spiral staircase and broke my arm really badly whilst in Thailand. The break required urgent surgery that cost 3600 Euros that I had to pay for out of my own pocket.

On my return to Luxembourg, I sent the bill for the surgery to the CNS and they refunded 3300 Euros of it, although it did take about 5 months for the refund to come through! (don't ask me why they deducted 300 Euros; I have no idea!).

So in principle, if I go back to the UK my potential medical costs are covered by the CNS although for some reason, the NHS charge 150% of the normal charge if one happens to be a filthy foreigner (or filthy foreign resident). Presumably that's just tory scumbag profiteering!

@anamckellar

Well, I have lived in France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg and would a million times rather live in any one of those countries than have to live in the absolute shithole that the benighted UK has become!

The NHS has been kept underfunded ever since I can remember. A member of my family contributed to a book on care in the NHS way back in the 1970s (now out of print) but he was bemoaning the lack of sophisticated life-saving equipment back then that meant him having to decide every day who lived and who died!

Again back in the 70s, I had to go private to see a urologist for a persistent UTI - on the NHS, I was given an appointment with a urologist 12 months thence! It was commonplace back then too.

The problem with the NHS is the way it is structured. In every other country that I know of, doctors (and dentists and other medical personnel) are paid on a fixed scale, per consultation and per treatment delivered. In Britain, GPs and I believe now dentists too are paid on the basis of 1000s of patients registered with them which is a 'joke' way of organising healthcare! Hospital doctors are salaried giving them zero incentive to increase their workload!

Will the British ever stop referring to the NHS as “the envy of the world”!
The NHS is not and probably never has been “the envy of the world”. No one in France, Luxembourg, Belgium, Germany, Spain, Italy, or any other civilised European country envies Britain the NHS. Why, because their own healthcare systems are substantially better and more efficient than the benighted NHS.

Nobody in Luxembourg, where I live, would be prepared to wait weeks for an appointment to see a GP! If that was the case there would be outrage; there would be rioting in the streets! If I need to see a GP, I expect to be seen the same day that I phone for an appointment or the next day. If my complaint is urgent then I most certainly will be seen on the day I phone for an appointment.

No one waits for months or years for necessary surgery in any of the countries I have listed, even if the surgery is classed as routine and non-urgent.
I was reading today about a patient suffering from stage four cancer in the UK who has been waiting since late November for the results of a CT scan. I have been unfortunate enough to need a number of CT scans and an MRI, recently. When I go for a scan, I wait for 30 to 40 minutes after the procedure is completed and I am presented with a DVD containing the scan, a software utility enabling me to visualise the scan and the radiologist’s report. The idea that any patient would have to wait for days, weeks or months for the results of any investigative procedure, is totally alien to most cultures in Europe!

This is pretty typical of the way things pan out here:
During a routine colonoscopy, the gastroenterologist found a mass obstructing part of my intestines. He took a sample of the mass to be biopsied and gave me a prescription for a CT scan with contrast medium and a comprehensive set of blood and urine tests. This was on a Thursday; on the Friday morning the blood and urine samples were taken and I received the results during the afternoon of the same day! The CT scan would also have been done on the Friday except that I had to stop taking certain medications that “clashed” with the contrast medium they had to use, so the scan could not be done until the Monday. The results of the biopsy didn't come back until the Wednesday morning however late Wednesday afternoon, I was sitting with the surgeon discussing the surgery that would be needed to remove what, by then, we knew what is a benign tumour.
The surgeon apologised profusely as he was unable to operate for around 5 weeks because the COVID pandemic had caused an enormous backlog in non-urgent surgery. He explained that had there been any doubt that the tumour was non-malignant, I would have been scheduled for surgery that week or the following week, but as it was quite clear the surgery was non-urgent, I would have to wait.
When I was admitted to hospital for the surgery, I was in a ward with just two beds in it and with its own private bathroom. In fact, the second bed was unoccupied for my stay.
Private rooms or two bed wards are the norm in Luxembourg as indeed they are in most other countries in Europe.

Following the surgery, I was asked to get back on my feet as soon as possible and so I did a fair bit of wandering around the hospital. Wards/rooms that were empty, had their doors left wide open so it was easy to see what the occupation rate was like. On the floor that I was on which was a surgical area, only around 30% of the wards were occupied; this is in pretty stark contrast to the near 100% occupancy rates in the NHS!
Most of the nursing staff were not locals but commuted in from Germany, France or Belgium. I asked one or two of them why they came to Luxembourg to work rather than working in their own countries to which the answer was “because we are paid so much more in Luxembourg than in our own countries and because in Luxembourg, we're given so much more responsibility than in our own countries”.

How does that compare with your experience of the NHS?

@IndyRichard

Yes, Reagan is remembered with great affection by the majority of Americans whereas in reality he was an extreme right-wing dickheaded bigot who, by his second term, had completely lost his marbles to Dementia. Carter on the other hand was a wonderful POTUS but he is spoken of contemptuously by most Americans because the US military completely screwed up the US embassy hostage rescue in Iran which was, in fact, fükced up by internal rivalries within the US military! There was nothing wrong with the plan itself nor indeed with the executive decision making by the POTUS!