Wendy

$200 *gulp*

I go for the free ones don't care if I have to wait

Fleaflyfloflum

I have just had to return to Australia temporarily for a few months. I suffer from two medical conditions (one life threatening without medications) All in all i take 6 different tablets a day. I went to my UK GP and got 6mths supply to bring back with me. I know that one of my meds is not available here. All of them are free to me on the NHS. My husband and I worked out how much all this would have cost if i had not brought them back with me. I was astonished that it was nearly $1950 worth!!!
I was also re assessed by a specialist whilst in UK who advised me i had been on the wrong medication for 2yrs!!

BTW... imagine the fiasco i had at Sydney airport with two layers of pills spanning the entire surface of my suitcase when it went through the x ray machine Thankfully i had a repeat prescription sheet with me, but they still checked EVERY single box all 55 of them

Nu-Shooz

So basically, if you need pills to stay alive and your skint in OZ, then your a dead person....,i know where i choose to live!

Dorothy

No, if you need pills to survive and you are poor in Australia then you will qualify for a care card. Your prescriptions will be very heavily subsidised, to the point where they are either free or very low cost.

Fleaflyfloflum

I am not sure exactly, but i was told that i had to have paid out so much in prescription fees throughout the year before i got to the point where i was entitled to any subsidy( dont quote me but i think it is around $800-900). I am not sure if it was because i wasnt on benefits or if it applies to everyone. I will try to dig out the literature on it later. But in stark contrast, in UK it does not matter whether i have one pill or fifty a day. All my prescriptions are free of charge regardless of what they are for.

Eeyore

My wife gave birth via emergency caesarean here in Dubai, and due to an infection our newborn daughter had to spend five nights in the NICU.

The care was fantastic, but our medical insurance didn't cover it, so we ended up having to pay in the region of £10,000. Thank God we had a credit card with a high limit...

Obviously at the end of it you're just relieved that everyone's happy and healthy, but there's no getting away from the fact that £10,000 is a hell of a chunk of change to have to find at the drop of a hat. After that experience, I'm never going to badmouth the NHS again.

Nu-Shooz

What if you didn't have 10,000 pounds then what?

Eeyore

We'd have been transferred to a government hospital - it would still have cost money, but a lot less.

The reason we didn't use a government hospital from the get-go was that here in Dubai, they are geared towards the local Muslim people, which means that men and women are largely segregated. When it comes to births, husbands and wives are separated until the woman actually enters the delivery suite; it turned out to be a long labour before the emergency C-section, so my wife would have been going through labour with our first child *on her own* in a maternity ward for about 12 hours.

Dago

I must say that I have no sympathy with the GP's. They have given up home visits, night duty and have a new contract which pays them on average over 100 thousand punds pa. That was meant to enable or motivate a better standard of service which has just not materialised.

They are spoilt.

Eeyore

When you consider the pressure and expense of their training, coupled with the sheer number of patients they have to see once they're qualified, maybe they're not so spoiled after all?

Ozzidoc

I disagree with the fact that they are spoilt. There has been a terrible shortage of GPs in the UK, up until the last 2 or 3 years. The GP contract needed updating. It seems to have worked, with it now becoming difficult to get a GP job. So, the government's incentives have worked.

When I finish my studies and placements (starting at about £8.50/hr), I'll be lucky to get a GP job paying 52K a year. That's for 8/9 years training. Some of my colleagues have student debts of up to £80K.....the course is too long and intense to be able to maintain a part-time job.

Of course the people who chose to work in the City instead of going to med school with 8/9 years training are on over 150K....plus bonus.No weekends or nights. No lives at risk. No paying for regular, compulsory training out of their own pocket. No 3, 4 or more hours a week reading the literature. No continuous professional development. No regional meetings to attend in their own time.

How do I know this? Cos I worked in HR in the city before I started my med course.

I'm sorry that this poster feels that doctors are spoilt. Clearly I disagree.

Dorothy

I have to agree with you again, Ozziedoc. I worked for doctors for 20 years. It's not a 9-5 existence with evenings and weekends off for tonnes of $$ rolling in. For the most part after their day ends at the office they have hospital rounds to make, paperwork to complete, dictation to dictate, phone enquiries to respond to, etc. Most mornings they are at the hospital doing morning rounds. If they are part of a group they do on-call rotation - if not they are on-call for their patients and answer calls from their service day and night.

In my opinion it's the tradies who are spoilt. Leave school at age 16, learn how to put bricks together with mortar and rake in a shitload of money.

Nu-Shooz

Completely agree with you. Doctors should be respected for everything they do in our society...this respect is lacking, i appreciate everything they do and if that means they get loads of money, then so be it.