General Chat

The NHS costs around £1,800 per year per person, £7,200 for a family of 4. This is an awful lot of money and far more than many families pay in tax.

Taking inflation into account the cost per person when the NHS was introduced in 1948 was around £750 per year per person in today's prices.

So why have costs gone up so much? are we ten times less well than we were then?

I won't be signing the petition but also agree that an arbitrary cap is not the best solution, however something does need to be done reduce unnecessary visits.

Part of the problem with GP's lies with the last government, who for some unexplicable reason, virtually doubled GP's income and at the same time drastically reduced their workload by making them no longer responsible for out of hours cover. We are now seeing the effects of this mad decision.

France hasn't got a National Health Service - we do.

We pay in to it.

Do you really think the government will happily give us back tax if they manage to privatise it?

Why not? In France for instance a visit to the doctor costs £ 10-20 up front which you may be able to get back in whole or part from medical insurance. The French are not dying like flies, there are no waiting lists.

I didn't sign though an arbitrary cap is a p[retty dumb approach.

I signed :-)

At it's best, it smacks of a 2 tier health service, at it's worst, it's reminiscent of a form of culling. 'Well, if you're THAT ill..'
Think 1935 onwards....

I have signed. Doctors within a practice should sort out a rota between themselves, so they can open 7 days a week. Maybe that would ease the workload for A&E. A simple solution, and its not hard to put into practice. It about time WE were asked what we want... Not being told how many times a year we can see a doctor. Whatever next...half term, summer term holidays for them.

Signed and a sarky response it was too, what ever next....this could be one of the cruelest things they have done. Despicable !!!! :-P :-P :-P :-P :-P :-P

jude

Signed :-D

I signed the petition earlier today

Certainly not!

Sure, there are some people who will visit the doctor when ever they have a sniffle. On the other hand there are many others who won't need or want to see one from one year to the next.

If you are denied access when you have a persistant problem, the underlying cause could be untreatable by the time you are allowed your next 12 month quota of visits.

There has been a recent debate that hospital A&E departments are visited by people with problems their GP could treat. A GP access quota would only worsen the problem.

Do we really want access to our GP to be capped?

https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/page/s/dont-cap-GP-visits?source=facebook-link#petition