Mallory

The concept of cycles is an interesting read.

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article8800.html

N1cky

Sorry you had such a bad experience. My mum died 3 years ago from lung cancer, in the main the health care was fantastic. There was the odd a'hole we encountered but they were definately in their minority, we just asked to speak to someone else.

Both my mum and dad have worked all their lives, my mum as a nurse in her early years before becoming a single mum with my too older brothers. For the last 25 years of her working life she worked in bingo halls and as a cleaner. My dad was a joiner.

My mum recieved chemo, radiotherapy, nurses to the house on a daily basis when she needed it, a hospital bed at home so she could sleep downstairs, a very kind doctor at the hospital, and hospice care for her last week (they were also wonderful to my dad, giving him a bed in the next room so he didn't have to leave).

If they had lived the same life in the US, no matter what part of the US, this level of care would not have been available as they simply would not have been able to afford it.

Most people take for granted the everyday normallity of having a child in the UK. As standard you get 2 scans, monthly/weekly monitoring by your midwife, classes, hospital care to deliver your baby, 1 week hospital care following a c-section or a couple of days after a natural delivery. Midwifes/doctors/health visitors come to see you daily for 10 days. How much do you think all that costs?

Its easy to slate the NHS, but in reality its a wonderful service, available to EVERYONE. Admitedly there are some bad eggs, and sometimes the system falls down, this happens in every country.

As a side note, I have a friend who's parents live in Portugal, when her mum was ill she came back to the UK as she said the treatment in Portugal was terrible.

Fleaflyfloflum

Yes..me!! I moved back with OH 5 weeks ago! And what do you mean by a balanced view? Everything i posted was the truth.

We came back because 1. I missed my grandchildren 2. I realised I was scared stiff at the thought of being stuck in Australia in my old age and 3. I also realised after two trips back in the last 2yrs that the UK has a damn site more to offer than what a lot of the UK doom and gloomers say!

As for NHS. My husband is a forensic psych nurse with 23yrs experience. He has worked all over the world during that time, and he states quite categorically that the UK welfare and NHS system is the best he has worked in for patient care, even taking into account its flaws and shortcomings, and theres not that many out there who can say that from experience.

I dont think theres anyone on here who objects to opposing views and different experiences, but as i said before, espousing loudly that people should not return to the uk because YOU have bad experiences is unfair and hardly balanced either!

I still smell troll too!

Supremegermalene

I don't have great faith in the PT health care system either for personal reasons, I was just giving an example of how the UK NHS failed us as a family.

It used to be great midwife service here but having just had my 3rd child I can tell you now that in my area it has changed, midwives are stretched to the limits. My daughter is nearly one and a half and she hasn't had a health check since she was 6 weeks old! You get no home visits any more by the Health Visitors, and in the majority of areas you are only offered one scan now at 20 weeks. Gone are the supposed regular development checks, yes they give you the books telling you when they are supposed to be done but I haven't had them.

There are parts of the NHS service that are great but you don't get what you pay for anymore.

Supremegermalene

I'm sorry I wasn't singleing anyone out though it seems to be taken that way. The majority of the responses were not informative.

I think you have valid reasons for coming back here, I couldn't ever move as far away as Australia either.

G

Fleaflyfloflum

No worries. I dont mind even if you were singling me out I like lively debate

jmh

I think the NHS is a compromise. We get a pretty good service on whole which is free at source. We would get a better service if we paid 50% taxes like they do in some European countries.

One thing strikes me about the Brits - they want top quality healthcare but they don't want to pay for it.

Nu-Shooz

Can you imagine if we took the OP's advice

So glad we didn't

Mallory

I live in the USA and I have known 3 people who died of cancer within the last 5 years. They ALL got great care. One of them had a stem cell transplant. Two of them had home hospice, and one died before she got to that point. They were just ordinary people, with ordinary health insurance.

elfman

same as the USA then (in our experience).

Supremegermalene

That's exactly the thing though, all opinions are based on people's experience and it totally depends on where you live in each country. Everyone has heard of the term 'postcode lottery' when it comes to what treatment you are able to get in the UK, such as for IVF and certain cancer drugs.

Hearing about the good stories is great, though upsetting that my Nan was so let down when she shouldn't have been and my Mum of course, she shouldn't have had to deal with it all being disabled herself.

Whether it's better to come back or not I think depends on where in the world you are, if I lived in the US or Australia I would miss my family too much, my Uncle & Aunt went to Oz when they were doing the £10 flights, I'd just been born, and I've seen them once in the past 35 years! Neither sides of the family have ever had enough money to visit. Moving to somewhere else in Europe though must be totally different, you can pop back whenever you like.

G

G

Giantaxe

Not really. The UK is relatively unique in having the medical services themselves provided largely by a government-run health service. A more common European model is for services to be provided privately (or mainly privately) with the government ensuring that everyone has access to healthcare regardless of their income (or lack thereof).

N1cky

I think the UK should go the German route. They have a NHS system, but if you earn over a certain amount (I think it was the equivalent of #24k a few years ago). You had to pay private health cover, but this all went to the NHS and you were treated by the NHS when you needed treatment.

I don't remember the specifics and may have got this wrong but it was something I heard a while ago and thought it was a very good idea.

N1cky

They had health insurance though. Doubtful my mum would have done.

I heard a case on the radio last week of a 30 year old woman who cleaned at the LAX, no health insurance offered for that kind of job. She said she was petrified, she had a lump in her breast which she has had for 18 months, both her mum and grandma had breast cancer. She cannot afford to go to the doctors. Please don't reply to me telling me all the routes she could take, Medicare... I know there are answers to these things. BUT in the UK, you wouldn't need to look for the answers, you could just go to your GP.

elfman

and that's why the OP's posts have got everyone's backs up - she has extrapolated some of her personal experiences and a couple of cherry-picked media stories, presented them as some kind of definitive, unarguable picture of the UK, and then declared that nobody's opinions or experiences except hers were accurate, valid, or even worth acknowledging.