BBC News Headines - Online

StevieJ

You can make health insurance tax deductable while you are at it

markharding557

In our area there is a cooperative out of hours doctors surgery which is vastly superior to the nhs direct which i thought was like a chocolate fireguard

1984ReturnsForReal_2

Every call to NHS Direct costs £25

Every phone call to the Government's health helpline costs the taxpayer £25, new figures show, which is as much as a visit from a patient to a GP.

Every pointless drop in to an A&E unit or Doctor Call Out costs a hell of a lot more than £25........

StevieJ

dopester wrote: »

However the rest of this Telegraph article from October 2008 is shocking.

Every call to NHS Direct costs the service the equivalent of £25 ?!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/3253245/Every-call-to-NHS-Direct-costs-25.html

It obviously needs to be managed better. Needs the scalpel taking to it - run by private enterprise who get the Camelot/lottery style go ahead.. if they meet tough capping rules so remains very affordable with a good standard of service provided.

Ironically if twice the numbers were aware of what was available there might be twice the number of callers and then only say £13 a call and so on

Generali

StevieJ wrote: »

You can make health insurance tax deductible while you are at it

Over here you pay less tax if you have private health insurance. Also, if you have uninsured medical bills (including top-up payments on treatment) of $1500 or more then you can claim them back against tax too.

AIUI, the left's argument against making health insurance and private school fees tax deductible is that if too many middle class people stop using state provided services then they will want to stop paying for them too. Force them to use the service and you force them to want it to continue to be supported by taxes.

chris_m

Generali wrote: »

Over here you pay less tax if you have private health insurance.

Are there links between the tax office and the insurance companies? Otherwise I can envisage people taking out insurance just before the tax return/assessment is due - then cancelling the insurance, like does (apparently) happen over here with car insurance and road tax.

LydiaJ

NHS direct rock. :T

About half an hour ago (ie not long after 1am) I went downstairs for something, happened to go into the living room, and found packaging that was evidence that somebody had taken 16 times the daily dose of kids' multivitamins. :eek: I looked it up online and found that the vitamin A content of that is well above the "don't do this without medical supervision" dose. I woke my kids, and dd (aged 7) admitted taking them all. (They look and taste like sweets. She knew they weren't supposed to be sweets, and that she was only supposed to have one a day, but she hadn't understood that they could be dangerous.) She had no signs or symptoms of anything being wrong.

I phoned NHS direct and gave them details. A nurse phoned me back within a few minutes. She was understanding, patient, intelligent, and had access to Guy's Hospital toxicity database. After a long conversation (involving converting from milligrams to micrograms to international tox units) we worked out that she had had less than a sixth of the dose taken by the child reported on toxbase as having suffered from acute toxicity. We also agreed that there was no point taking her to A&E to be fed charcoal because the stuff would have been absorbed by now. The only likely effects are a bit of temporary nausea, vomiting or dizziness, which should have worn off by breakfast time anyway. (And in fact she seems fine.)

I'm very relieved. I've let her go back to bed. If they get rid of NHS direct, I hope they provide some kind of service where I can get that kind of advice over the phone in the middle of the night without having to drag both kids out of bed and drive them down to A&E.

vivatifosi

LydiaJ wrote: »

The only likely effects are a bit of temporary nausea, vomiting or dizziness, which should have worn off by breakfast time anyway. (And in fact she seems fine.)

Good news that NHS Direct worked for you LydiaJ. I hope your daughter feels fine when she wakes this morning.

1984ReturnsForReal_2

LydiaJ wrote: »

NHS direct rock. :T

Thats the point isn't it.

Its far cheaper than the alternatives so scrapping it to save money is quite idiotic.

The only thing justification I can see anyone having is that the labour is more expensive than it should be in which case you negotiate non medical contracts at the right time OR the contract has been awarded to the wrong business for the Condems & they have some mates that want to get their hands on it.

wherediditallgothen

LydiaJ wrote: »

NHS direct rock. :T

QUOTE]

Indeed, they are quite helpful when you are stuck in a caravan in cornwall at midnight and your mrs has had over an hours worth of heart palpitations caused by her thyroid problem.