Quote:
Originally Posted by Damien
Not all apparently, charity groups have been going on about these "12%" who for one reason or another are not covered. The Times had a mention that just over 50% of people with cancer at ages 18 to 35 have to pay some sort of fee.
The other thing, which was not mentioned in his speech, is allowing people to buy the expensive, newer, drugs.
---------- Post added at 13:51 ---------- Previous post was at 13:45 ----------
People are not experts in self-diagnoses, it's a very bad idea. A lot of these sites are actually poor and they don't come with the required information to judge if something is a condition or just has similar symptoms, it would led to a nation of hypochondriacs who are convinced they have a serious illness.
For example MS is a disease which encompasses a wide range of symptoms which most of the time are simply normal, and only rarely are indications of something more serious. Having 1000's of people lining up to take tests for it would increase pressure on the NHS.
The internet is a poor substitute for a medically trained professional. A lot of people make this mistake of presuming they know better than the experts hence all the health advice in the Daily Mail and others.
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I think greencreeper is pretty much spot on, with regret I say as I think the GP service was better in the past but unfortunately it's now very outdated and poor value for money for the general population. It pretty much seems to cater for small children or elderly and even then they often don't get the support they need.
Your joke about thousands of people having tests I don't find particularly amusing as I believe that a lack of diagnosis processes is one of the fundamental problems.
The idea that we'd end up with millions of hypochondriacs is a ridiculous one too. Plenty of people don't like visiting the GPs, you have a quota system where you have to redial for half an hour and are informed by a sometimes snooty and rude receptionist to try again tomorrow. If you're lucky enough to get an appointment the doctor will tell you that it is unlikely you have condition x, you're fine go away unless it gets worse and subsequent times repeated message. I'm rarely ill, I don't bother medics for ordinary things such as sore throats that I used to get quite often (others get colds or bugs often). When something is seriously wrong I have reasonable grounds to go and seek an opinion I think. I think millions of people are the same and it is not much to ask.
To those who think I'm paranoid there's an ever growing list of friends and relatives that have gone to GPs after suffering symptoms for a while with a theory about what they have to ask for an opinion and the GP has told them to hop it. These are diabetes (x2), kidney stones (x2), reflux, fits, angina, stroke (x2). In each case after even more serious symptoms appear (too late in some cases) it was later agreed grudgingly that the patients weren't delusional.