Stupidity of the National Health Service

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Geordie1

New member
I will paraphrase the above link, the National Health Service (NHS) which is funded by the British tax payers is in place to allow free medical treatments, they have also adapted over the years to offer some cosmetic procedures to allow patients to have more confidence.

What the link is saying is that patients who are above 40 stone (560lbs) will be allowed free weight loss surgery as opposed to paying £5,000 ($8,000) to have it done privatley. It is saying in the link that patients who are just short of the weight limit, are advised to EAT MORE, so they are over the weight limit so can get the treatment for free.

2 points:

A) It is not a bottomless pit of funding for this, money will run out and then decisions of funding for cancer drugs etc will be affected.

B) the limit is there for a reason, if the are less than it surely other forms of weight loss should be looked at.
 
One would think that the number of people around that weight range are few and far in between. Or is this a way of saying that people would rather treat cancer vs severe obesity? A good number of cancers are fatal and treatment only adds a few extra years to a person's life. Combating obesity can add much longer to a person in need's lifespan, and lower their overall medical care bills.

In the short run, it might cost extra, overall, it might actually free up some extra cash for cancer.

edit:

looked over the article again, and it didn't see mention of a weight limit, i saw BMI @ 40 or more. They also note in the article that obesity related illnesses alone are draining the NHS funds at a rate of £7.2billion annually
 
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The article says that last year 4300 got the surgery out of 240000 who wanted it. Rationing by common sense. I find it hard to believe that sensible dieting and some self-restraint has failed 1/4 million people.
 
I'm a healthcare student, I haven't posted on here yet but this thread shocked me into making a comment.

Do you really think that increased obesity surgery is going to directly take money from cancer treatments? Where have you got this information? I feel you're just making assumptions based on a sensationalised tabloid representation of the NHS.

The NHS is far from perfect and it is inescapable that it IS essentially run as a business and that money is not limitless: there has to be some rationing, which is usually based upon cost per life years gained. It should not be based upon your opinion or mine that a cancer patient may or may not be more deserving than an obesity patient.

Evidenced based practise is the key here, judgements are based on evidence and OVERALL (key word) cost effectiveness (as a previous poster mentioned, obesity is costing the NHS a lot right now). It is rare that a judgement must based upon opinions and not evidence and when these times do come about - well that's what an ethics board is for (ie in transplants).

Personally, I'm just grateful we have free healthcare at all in the UK.
 
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I am a medic and I completely second Holly's opinion. Surgery is not ideal and a holistic rehabilitation program would be better (psychological help to deal with issues, nutrition to teach about eating, cooking and portion size and exercise coaching), but that would be more expensive than the surgery. And surgery is effective in an elevated % of morbidly obese patients.

Also the idea is that a fit person costs the NHS very little while a chronically sick obese person who suffers from cardiovascular issues, diabetes, joint problems, and is more prone to get cancer, is a huge huge cost to the NHS. So the surgery is actually cancelling out huge costs that would go on for years and years.

And I am pretty sure the "Daily Mail", not exactly the world's most renowned paper who likes to put things the way they like it and have been sued many times over this, exaggerated the claim that you should eat more to reach a BMI of 40 (or 40 stone). Or made it up completely... but I don't know that so I will just suggest this.

Camy
 
I appreciate the last 2 comments, I see your viewpoint in that a treatment now will stop future on going problems.

Cancer as an example was just that based on personal experience, a good schoolfriend of mine had a bowel cancer and although he was given radio therapy, he was refused drugs which would help further cure due to the cost.

Again I agree the DM is harly an impartial bastion of virtue, I was looking for the figures again as I had read 2 almost identical articles, 1 in the DM and I think the other in the Independent.

Thank you very much for adding to this topic and as I said initially it may be better to cure it now than deal with a lifetime of problems, however, I personally feel a program aimed to deal with long term diet issues would be better than a short term fix.
 
I'm sorry to hear about your friend, it is painful when someone we care for dies and it feels as if something more than could have been done.

Obesity treatment is still such a fledgling in the medical world as we've never experienced the levels of obesity we have today. Hopefully in future people can recieve effective and whollistic treatment, maybe even preventative treatment that will save people from the literal and figurative burden of their weight.
 
I once saw a reality show MTV ( here in the US ) It's called Real Life or True Life or something.

And in that segment they were following two overweight teenagers. Well, one of the teenagers who was overweight ( I think around 260+ I think ), actually wanted to get a gastric bypass and had read up everything about it.

In the show he said that as per the requirement ( I don't remember if it was an insurance requirement or a surgery requirement ) he would have to be 300 lbs or more to get the surgery so he was actually thinking of eating more to get their so he could be eligible for the surgery!

So this article ( however shady the source may be ), is not too far from the truth!

Harsh
 
I just wanted to third holly and camys notions.

The important part is that we study the data we have, analyze it and figure out how we can save the most lives, and make the largest improvements to quality of life, with the resources we have.

As an analogy where I work and study there was a recent study done that showed that if we were to treat everyone deemed in need of the psychiatric system, each doctor would have more than 100 patients, it simply isn't possible to give functional psychiatric treatment to 100 patients at a time so choices are made all the time, eating disorder and ibuprofen OD teen girls are delayed in their move from the general ward or childrens ward to the psychiatric ward while we deal with the bipolars with manic episodes and the acutely suicide threatened ones, the depressed ones that might actually be helped immensely by one or two nights in psychiatric care, we simply ignore.. it is basic triage, the same needs to be done everywhere since resources aren't infinite.

I am not intimately familiar with the UK healthcare system but from what I hear the problems are basically the same and using gastric bypass on really fat people makes sense ina lot of ways. First of all for the patient it might be the only chance to change his or her life in time to survive, economically 5000 quid is a LOT less than you spend on all the normal following diseases from obesity (high blood pressure medicine, ambulant diabetes treatment, joint surgery and down the road probably a couple of heart attacks and such) so.. it actually sounds as if it makes perfect sense.

The only thing that might worry me is actually the opposite, that the bar was set too low and you gave too many gastric bypass operations since it is surgery that has a HEAVY influence on the remaining life of the patient.
 
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