jen_andreson

[QUOTE=Yorkieabroad] Yep. Hubby had it as a taxable (but free) benefit from work and never considered taken out our own plan on top...as we had the NHS and didn't even consider needing something else on top. We viewed his work insurance as a 'nice to have' but not essential. But, now we know to be more careful.

Same situation for a friend of ours now. Been waiting 18mths for an ovarian cyst removal, after a 6mth wait to see the consultant. So, 2 years off work and in the queue. They added private insurance, but the private group won't pick up the bill for this (not sure why). In their case, they've paid NI and private and still wait (op just rescheduled from June to Sept).

On the positive, when she does have the op she won't see a bill or pay a dime. The downside is that she's been waiting 2 years--that's a lot of lost time and lost wages from a system we expected to help us (same as we experienced).

Like I said, for me, personally, and I know I'm in the minority, I feel that at least I know where I stand with the US system, and we made sure that our overall expenses decreased (easy enough when leaving London) to allow us to better protect ourselves.

Yorkieabroad

[QUOTE=jen_andreson] I would guess that their private medical insurer will be excluding it as a pre-existing condition ( i read your message as saying they took the insurance out after they found out about the cyst). They must have been made aware of that before they took the insurance surely? I have problems with my knees form an old sporting injury, and before we took out private care (in the UK)a few years back I waited until I had cleared the "lookback period" to make sure that my knees wouldn't be excluded. at that time, PPP went back 3 years - I think that may now have increased to 5

jen_andreson

[QUOTE=Yorkieabroad] It was something like that. The poor dear, went in for a gall bladder removal and the consultant noticed the cyst at that time. Excellent detection as she and the doc thought all her symptoms related to the gall bladder, but at least he caught this. But, that meant going to a different consultant, etc., and starting all over again. I think they got the private somewhere in between and there was a debate over who would cover what, and in the end the private guys said no. it's one of those drama's we follow from a supporting friend point of view (so I'm not sure of all the specifics).

Reminded us all to read all that fine print...on both sides of the pond!

Partystar

That's the thing with the NHS, the urgent patient's go in at the top of the list. It's really hard to have a separate list for urgent patients because then if you don't get any that day/week, then you've got a doctor/surgeon/nurses/beds/scrubs techs/operating theatres etc all going to waste when they could be getting used. So to prevent this waste from happening, specialties/doctors have one list & all the 'routines' get shunted a bit, which is not very nice for them, but with limited resources, there's not a lot they can do.

I remember a complaint we received, where the patient had read in the paper about the maximum wait times put in place by the government. They wrote to us to say their wait had been xx months over that, we of course looked into it to find that the patient had cancelled twice & we had cancelled once after that (to make room for a cancer patient).

Obviously their operation was not their top priority, otherwise they wouldn't have cancelled twice. He didn't mention that he had cancelled twice in his letter , but instead went off on one about how he had paid into the system for years & expected to be seen within a decent amount of time, etc etc.

We replied that he was still within the government wait times, because when a patient cancels their appointment/operation, their wait time gets re-set to that day. Another way to think of it - If you are waiting in line at the shop, but left the queue to go & get something else, the queue would move up & you'd have to rejoin at the end.

snowbunny

A huge one.

I'd prefer monitoring at the federal level as some states have been known to line their pockets with federal money rather than giving it to the programmes the money was meant for. The Medicare infrastructure is already in place and seems better than the state-run Medicaid programmes.

A federal-level single payer system (like Canada's, only they administer at the provincial level) rather than having doctors and nurses be actual employees of the government as is the case in the UK, is in my opinion, a better option.

If the drug companies know there's one buyer, take it or leave it then they might lower prices -- but of course, it's exactly this fear that has them, along with for-profit insurance companies, lobbying heavily to keep universal coverage from becoming reality nationwide.