Posted on 11/03/2009 7:40:36 AM PST by george76
Patients who do not get the treatment that they need from the NHS within 18 weeks are to be given the legal right to free private care.
The Cabinet agreed this week that the legislation, placing maximum waiting times on the statute book for the first time, should be rushed through Parliament before the next election.
Cancer patients, in particular, will receive funding for private treatment if they have not seen an NHS specialist within two weeks of GP referral.
Downing Street says that the two legal rights, which will be unveiled in next month’s Queen’s Speech, are designed to entrench the dramatic reduction of NHS waiting lists over recent years — as well as allowing Gordon Brown to “throw down the gauntlet” to the Conservative Party in the election campaign.
With NHS budget growth likely to be sharply curtailed whichever party is in power, No 10 believes that the legislation will prevent waiting lists drifting back up.
The Tories have promised to phase out all NHS targets, including those for waiting times, saying that patients should make “informed choices” about their care without hospitals being forced into a straitjacket of government regulation. “Labour always focuses on the process while we think what really matters is whether you are better after your treatment,” a Conservative spokesman said.
According to the latest figures from August, about 37,000 patients had not received treatment from an NHS specialist within 18 weeks of their GP referral. There are legitimate clinical explanations for some ...but officials believe that about half have been “failed by the system”.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
To be paid for by ... who?
Now we have a King and his Court in the USA who will share the same “rights”.
Perhaps the French Court put it appropriately....Let Them Eat Cake!
Pro-bone doctors? Where are those?
So, after denying that there are epic waiting lists, the NHS finally admits that they do exist and something needs to be done about it. Interesting. Call us names for pointing out the length of wait times, then do something about it. Typical.
“Doc, I’m having a heart attack!” “Sorry, can’t see you now, come back in 18 weeks and we’ll fix you right up.”
So, 2 to 18 weeks is OK if you’ve only got cancer or are bleeding.
This will work just fine. I wonder if the Islamofascists in the UK wait 18 weeks for medical treatment?
Well, la de da....after 18 weeks it may not be a problem anymore...the patient will be dead.
..damned cynical, arrogant, bastard politicians..
...we must find a way to hold these people physically liable for damage done...."voting them out" is not enough retribution anymore.
What? I thought the NHS was workers' paradise of attentive care where nobody is ever denied treatment or dies on a waiting list.
I'm pretty sure that if a person goes outside of the NHS system and gets caught they are kicked out of the system. Don't know if it applies if they go out of the country.
Also, these places that have socialized medicine DELIBERATELY destroy the private sector and make it difficult if not impossible to provide care privately. They even write it in the legislation, Doctors are limited or prohibited from opening care centers on their own. Verbiage like that was in our very own prospective socialized medicine legislation.
In Canada, only recently they have been loosening the restrictions, because they just couldn’t provide good enough care fast enough.
Not so. Private health care has always been available as an alternative to the NHS for those who want it and can afford it. It's not unusual for people to use the NHS for some things, and private health insurance for others. You can ask your NHS doctor to refer you to a specialist consultant in private practice. I've done this myself many times.
Not so in Britain, where private health insurance and practice has always been available to any who want it and can pay for it. See post 12
I’ll take your word for that if you are there. May have mixed it up with Hillary care.
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