[MERGED]Moving for the NHS; Opinions and Advise(Sicko Movie)

Never heard of this film before, but it would explain the sudden influx of new members we are getting on UKY who seem to be only interested in one thing:  the NHS!   

I didn't find the NHS to be cheap!  My husband worked for the NHS and had almost £400 a month deducted from his pay that paid for our  "healthcare" in England for 2 of us.  So healthcare is NOT free as so many think.  I guess we were paying for those that couldn't afford or did not work and so therefore were given "free" healthcare.  During our 2 years of paying that amount every month, we needed to use the services of the NHS a couple of times.  And guess what - the things we needed were NOT covered and we had to pay out of pocket for those things.  One was shots for Africa - at a cost of £45 each for each of us.  Then there was the anti-malarial drugs that also weren't covered for a cost of £240 for our 2 week trip.  And then there is the almost £7 co-pay per prescription for anything else we needed during our time there.  And then the waiting lists......for just simple things.  Including the time my husband had a bout of kidney stones and had to wait over 2 months to just be seen by a specialist to then decide a method of treatment all the while taking pain pills to relieve the pain he was in while waiting for this appointment.  Since not much can be taken care of by the GP's and waiting times for the Consultants can be forever!  We are happy to be back in the US of A and getting our medical care here.  The NHS system could be a good system if it wasn't so full of high-paid non medical people making the decisions.  We found it to be a good system as long as we were healthy or didn't need anything!!!

I saw Michael Moore on Jay Leno last week and he was really beefing up the NHS like it's perfect. I think it's important for people to understand it isn't. Yes it is great to have a universal healthcare system but I don't think people who have not been here and used it realise that every treatment you want or need is not available on demand. There are long waiting lists for a lot of things and some treatments are only available to certain age groups (eg mammograms, I think you have to be 50+) and some things are just not available at all (eg some vaccinations you might want) so if you want those things you will need to go private anyway, and private healthcare here is not cheap.

Sorry, I misread the article I was reading about the recent changes to maternity pay. You do get 90% of your salary for the first 6 weeks and then for the remaining 20 weeks you get either £100 per week or 90% of your salary - whichever is the lesser amount.

I believe that you now get Statuatory Maternity Pay for 9 months instead of just the 6 that we had before. I think those changes have been made recently.

I haven't seen the Michael Moore movie, but I've heard about it (obviously).     In regards to maternity Racheeee's right - Statutory Maternity Pay is now for up to 9 months!  The first 6 weeks are at 90% of your pay or satutory minimum (whichever's greater).  Then the remaining time is at statutory minimum (roughly £100/week) or 90% of your pay, whichever's lower.  However, I think you can still take maternity leave for up to 1 year, however only the first 9 months are paid, but don't quote me on that.

I didn't find the NHS to be cheap!  My husband worked for the NHS and had almost £400 a month deducted from his pay that paid for our  "healthcare" in England for 2 of us.  So healthcare is NOT free as so many think.  I guess we were paying for those that couldn't afford or did not work and so therefore were given "free" healthcare. 

I've always thought the same thing about the NHS; it ain't free and the treatment you need either isn't covered or is slow to come! But what I want to know is: Where on your paycheck does it show how much is taken out for the NHS (you said your husband had £400 a month taken from his check). I'd be really interested to know how much is taken from my husband's check so I can compare that to what we paid in the U.S. all told -- deductions, co-pays, etc.

I've always thought the same thing about the NHS; it ain't free and the treatment you need either isn't covered or is slow to come! But what I want to know is: Where on your paycheck does it show how much is taken out for the NHS (you said your husband had £400 a month taken from his check). I'd be really interested to know how much is taken from my husband's check so I can compare that to what we paid in the U.S. all told -- deductions, co-pays, etc.

There is nothing that shows how much is taken specifically for NHS. NHS is funded out of a portion of your income taxes not National Insurance contributions. National Insurance funds benefits like unemployment, sickness or other incapacity, maternity, and retirement.

I didn't find the NHS to be cheap!  My husband worked for the NHS and had almost £400 a month deducted from his pay that paid for our  "healthcare" in England for 2 of us.  So healthcare is NOT free as so many think.  I guess we were paying for those that couldn't afford or did not work and so therefore were given "free" healthcare.  During our 2 years of paying that amount every month, we needed to use the services of the NHS a couple of times.  And guess what - the things we needed were NOT covered and we had to pay out of pocket for those things.  One was shots for Africa - at a cost of £45 each for each of us.  Then there was the anti-malarial drugs that also weren't covered for a cost of £240 for our 2 week trip.  And then there is the almost £7 co-pay per prescription for anything else we needed during our time there.  And then the waiting lists......for just simple things.  Including the time my husband had a bout of kidney stones and had to wait over 2 months to just be seen by a specialist to then decide a method of treatment all the while taking pain pills to relieve the pain he was in while waiting for this appointment.  Since not much can be taken care of by the GP's and waiting times for the Consultants can be forever!  We are happy to be back in the US of A and getting our medical care here.  The NHS system could be a good system if it wasn't so full of high-paid non medical people making the decisions.  We found it to be a good system as long as we were healthy or didn't need anything!!!

I'm very sorry that you feel aggrieved that the NHS didn't supply for "free" shots for a 2 week trip to Africa.  Personally, I'm not sure they qualify under a NEED - they are necessary because of a trip you wish to/can afford to take.  It's just another expense you need to figure in, like hotels and transport and food.

I'm very sorry that you feel aggrieved that the NHS didn't supply for "free" shots for a 2 week trip to Africa.  Personally, I'm not sure they qualify under a NEED - they are necessary because of a trip you wish to/can afford to take.  It's just another expense you need to figure in, like hotels and transport and food.

See, this is part of the whole myth that universal health care NHS style means anything health related is FREE.  It isn't and I agree with you, there's no reason why the taxpayer should pay for someone's Africa holiday vaccinations, especially when most taxpayers can't even afford a trip like that.

See, this is part of the whole myth that universal health care NHS style means anything health related is FREE.  It isn't and I agree with you, there's no reason why the taxpayer should pay for someone's Africa holiday vaccinations, especially when most taxpayers can't even afford a trip like that.

I agree. Surely, when planning and budgeting for a trip to somewhere like Africa, you should be including these kinds of costs in your budget? The shots and anti-malarial medications needed in Africa are not needed in the UK, so the majority of UK citizens will never need to make use of them. Therefore, why should the government provide them free?

They are expensive because the demand for them is relatively low compared to the demand for, say antibiotics, flu jabs or necessary operations. If you aren't willing to pay for the medication that will prevent you becoming seriously ill during or after your trip, then why are you going there? Why not go somewhere where there is no risk of malaria, or where you don't have to get such expensive treatments for it and therefore don't have to pay out for jabs and tablets?

I would be happy and willing to pay these costs out of pocket if they were going to prevent me from catching a serious, possibly fatal disease, and allow me to visit a part of the world that is not easy to get to. I visited Central America earlier this year and in preparation, I needed 8 injections and had to take anti-malaria tablets for 8 weeks. I had heard that they were expensive and was fully prepared to pay up to £150 for them all. As it turned out, the jabs were all free and the tablets cost £4 for a 10-week supply, but had I gone to a different part of the world, I might have needed to pay a lot more for them.

See, this is part of the whole myth that universal health care NHS style means anything health related is FREE.  It isn't and I agree with you, there's no reason why the taxpayer should pay for someone's Africa holiday vaccinations, especially when most taxpayers can't even afford a trip like that.

I think the discussion is a bit apples and oranges here. Some people are looking at it as though "why should the NHS pay for this or that medical thing when it's elective." I think that's not the comparison between the NHS and U.S. healthcare that debinator (or me) were making. The comparison, I think, is that in the U.S., for the money you paid in to private health insurance (which is being compared to money taken out of paychecks for taxes here), one *could* go in and get "elective" things covered in many instances. It's not a debate about whether taxpayers should pay for these things, it's a comment on how much we *are* paying for health care but not getting here as compared to what you'd get in the U.S. for similar cash contributions to insurance.  Those who don't work at all or earn little in the UK are getting a better return for their contribution (or lack of one) to the NHS, but if you're paying a lot in taxes, it's interesting to compare what you really get here for your money as compared to what you got in the U.S. It's just interesting to see the difference between the two systems, and people can't help saying, "Wow, that would've cost a fortune in the U.S. but here it didn't cost a dime!" or "Ouch, I had to pay out of pocket for what my U.S. insurance would've covered."
 

Maternity leave with some sort of pay is 9 months - but your job has to hold your position, or one comparable, for one year. If you don't return in one year they have no obligation to allow you back.

I will likely not endear myself to many people by saying this but I think Michael Moore is a crackpot hothead who only shows what he thinks will get him the publicity -and he does a good job of it. He doesn't mention waiting times at all, and in the UK they are atrocious in relation to the US. It is suggested that women get pap smears once every 3 years in the UK as opposed to once a year in the US. Preventative measures are not the same and, in my opinion, much better than in the US.

I would never, and I say this as a pregnant women in the UK having a baby on the NHS because I just can't stomach paying $22,000 for a private hospital birth, move here for the sole purpose of healthcare. I never had a problem in the US, ever, and always got the best treatments and best care.

And saying all that, I read an article that made a good point - if Moore had health problems with that big waistline of his, where do you think he would go for help? Cuba or the Mayo Clinic? I can bet it won't be Cuba.

Thank you groovy_yank for setting this conversation back to the real focus!  I wasn't whinning that I had to pay for my shots and medicine and yes I did and we had a great time in Africa and I wouldn't have even thought for a moment to not take those precautions and yes they were already budgeted in....my comments were in answer to your question just to show some of the "exceptions to the "free medical care".  And again you are hitting it right on the head - those of us who pay, are just paying for those who don't, can't or won't.  A lot of our british friends decided to quit waiting on the NHS to take care of their needs and went private.  So they were double paying to get the care they needed - not just "wanted" since they were now also paying the private fees to a provider.  Another strange thing with the NHS care - there was a 1 1/2 year waiting list to have infected toe nails removed - why?  Because they take these toenails off in theatre instead of it being a local office visit.  Our group of American PA's that were there wanted to just do a special evening clinic every so often in their office to just pull of toe nails and get the waiting list down and relief the patients pain - but no the NHS said they had to do it under anthesia in theatre!  So we saw that they created their own problems with waiting lists and expenses that could be done a lot better, but who were we to tell them how to operate their system! 
Anyway - good luck with your medical problems over there and getting the treatment you need - i wish you the best!

Hi. I just wanted to say thank you for all of your honest responses and opinions. I would just like to first say that the move would not be just for healthcare reasons it is also to allow our children to have a more cultured life. I was pretty sure that Mr. Moore was failing to give the CON side of the healthcare programs of those that he was displaying. Over here my husband's insurance premium has gone up another 130.00 a month for us so it's been rough. However, out of the 4 household members 3 of us have a PPO and one of us (my oldest son who needs special services) has Medicaid. Thank god for Medicaid because we could not cover all of his medical costs (physical therapy, speech therapy, neurology visits, occupational therapy, etc). It's ashame that over here in the US some parents have to choose between working to pay their bills or making sure your children have healthcare coverage OR working to put food on the table vs. health insurance.

I am hoping that whom ever is elected next will make an effort to REALLY change the healthcare of this nation. I don't think anyone would object to higher taxes for healthcare for everyone. We really could learn from our neighbors from the north and over the pond. We are portrayed as such a rich nation but, our children and elderly are dying due to lack of healthcare coverage. It's aweful and someone needs to really change it.

There is nothing that shows how much is taken specifically for NHS. NHS is funded out of a portion of your income taxes not National Insurance contributions. National Insurance funds benefits like unemployment, sickness or other incapacity, maternity, and retirement.

Since 2002 funding has been from both general tax AND national insurance, the proportion is set in legislation

http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2002/20019--a.htm#4