#WeLovetheNHS

There is a twitter meme going around via the hashtag #welovetheNHS asking for people to state why they love the British National Health service, or NHS. Here are my reasons.

1. I used to work for the NHS, and while that meant I got to see some of the things that were wrong with the NHS, and got to hear some of the less positive stories, but I also saw first hand the love, effort, stress and dedication that the NHS staff put into patient care each day.
2. My daughter’s life has been saved numerous times, too many to count, by NHS staff. In most of these cases every second counted (literally) and in some cases took leaps of faith and creativity on the part of surgeons and consultants. Nine times out of ten these decisions happened right in front of us. They never ONCE considered how much it would cost before taking an action, only the potential effectiveness.
   
3. We have private health insurance but when it came to the crunch it was the NHS that gave my daughter her heart operation and the private insurance did not even help reduce waiting time or give her better accomodation.
   
4. The NHS has never asked us if we have any prior medical condition apart from when necessary to diagnose a problem. They have never turned away any member of my family, young, old, employed or not, ever. Certainly not based on cost. I am not going to list the procedures here, but suffice to say they run the spectrum, and some have been singled out in foreign media as examples of stuff the NHS turns people away for. Lies.
   
5. At times my family would have cost millions in private health care (um, many times the “thirty grand limit” figure that is being bandied around), and you would have thought this would mean that the sheer cost would mean the NHS is behind in medical science, but in fact the NHS consultants we have dealt with have been at the forefront.

Is the UK health system perfect? Heck no. If it was perfect I would not have private health insurance for all of us. But I am grateful and glad that we have it, and our family is proof that the private alternative is sometimes useful and sometimes useless. My experience of insurance has not been good enough that I would trust anyone’s life to it.

When you hear people bashing the NHS, remember the hard working, caring professionals of our health service are actual human beings.

I love the NHS.

This is a fact, not a political opinion. Politics is not going to win over direct experience so no need to send me talking points, sound bites or headlines

I don’t do politics, I am not interested in anyone’s political opinion, for or against, so do not expect me to debate the issue but feel free to comment.

Posted via web from chrisgarrett.posterous