Private Education and Healthcare
 

Do you agree with them?

I don't at all. If I had my why I'd abolish both of them because I abhor the idea that just because someone has a few more noughts on their bank balance than I, they get access to a far better system. It's ridiculously unequal. Ugh!

I don't with school's in paticular,but I can understand it more with Healthcare as the NHS stink badly,my Grandad died because they delibrately held off saving him.

health and education is a social right for all and a measure of a developed society

paid for schooling is for posh t wats who think that money makes them better

No I don't think so, it just reinforces social immobility and especially in the case of education it basically guarantees a life of privilege for those who can afford them over those who can't. If you look at those at the top end of highly paid professions like lawyers and politicians, they are dominated by people who went to private schools, and they're also a lot more likely to get better grades and get into better universities. There's also the fact that private schools are detrimental to the quality of state schools, everyone should have access to the same standard of education I think, and while there some quite big discrepancies between state schools the focus should more be on improving that imo

I think the NHS does a pretty decent job on the whole but that's terrible what happened to your Granddad. I'm so sorry. :(

It's just I think that the money that goes into the private health system would be better spent in the NHS. The more money it has, the better and if all the money that privatised healthcare companies get via their customers were put into the NHS through taxes, I reckon the extra money would make a good difference even though it is a niche market..

That's exactly how I think about private schooling. The one I hate the most is Eton. It disgusts me in the way the graduates from there often go straight into government jobs and roles along with other high earning careers.

No-one should just get a free pass like that. It just keeps us in that rigid class system we're in that has almost no leeway. I hate it.

It's alright thanks Niall.:)

I would have respected the NHS more if they actually couldn't have saved him but they actually could of and they decided not to,they even lied on what he died of,the only reason I know this is because one of there workers grassed them up and wanted my Nan to sue them which she never did.

I don't know where I stand with this, I fluctuate between both sides of the argument.

But I dream and hope that one day we'll be able to live in a free, fair society (which I know will never, ever happen), so really, I suppose I oppose it more than support it.

Well, while you're at it I would also abolish anyone having exotic holidays if all some people can afford is Butlins, and nobody should be allowed to own a property when so many can't afford to get on the property ladder. Once you've done all that, I suggest that all citizens are issued with a dictat as to what they may or may not purchase with the wages THEY have legitimately earned. After all if Joe Bloggs, who is too arsed to work and lives on benefits, can't afford the same lifestyle, why should a hardworking citizen who pays huge taxes be allowed to reap the benefits of their labour?

I didn't mean it in that sense.

I was getting at the problems private school causes within our society, as MTVN has already stated, privately educated children are more likely to get the best Jobs in society and earn far far far more than state educated children, all because their parents paid for them. How is it fair that parents can buy their kids access into the top of society? It just reinforces that old class system we have in this country where the less well-off stay at the bottom, and the rich remain at the top.

A holiday is nothing in comparison to this. Is a holiday going to get you/your kids a top job? Is it going to get you privileges that you didn't have before because it was expensive? No. But in my opinion, that's what private education does and it's quite awful.

I disagree with private schooling. Even if I was extremely wealthy, I would never send my children to a private school.

I have always been against private healthcare too but recently I have seen and experienced some pretty awful nhs experiences, so I think I could be tempted to cover my family privately.

NHS is awful,I would do it Lee,not to sound blunt or being miserable here but if you or any of your family get cancer you definitely need to stay away from NHS.

I think some people have very good experiences with the NHS and some have very bad, I've always found it pretty good and Stephen Hawking credits it wit having kept him alive all these years

It is the same thing though. People should have the choice as to how they spend THEIR own money. For example, why do people place such store on going to University? IMO, it's because they know that a degree will give them better career prospects and higher earning capacity to enable them to have a better lifestyle than those who either cannot afford to go to Uni, or don't have the academic ability to do so. Are you suggesting that those who invest 3-4 years of their lives in their future career prospects should be told what they can and can't spend their money on?

There will always be a hierarchy in society and to suggest it could ever be otherwise is naive. Those that contribute more will expect more out of life.
I brought up two sons on my own, I was always struggling financially, but I ensured they both won scholarships to private schools based on their academic ability because I certainly had no money to pay school fees. The reason i did so was to give them the best education I could (smaller classroom sizes, enhanced discipline and rigorous expectations and lots of extra curricular activities to stimulate and inspire them) because no matter what else happened in their lives, their education was something that could never be taken away from them.

People who pay school fees to send their kids to private schools and pay for private health care are actually doing the rest of society a massive favour by freeing up scarce resources for others, and remember that those same people have already paid for their right to state education and healthcare through their taxes and therefore have a perfect right to take full advantage. Thank goodness they don't otherwise the entire system would collapse under the burden of all those extra people.

It is just human nature to want to better oneself and climb the social ladder in terms of enhancing one's lifestyle -who in their right minds would advocate mediocrity?

Stephen Hawking hasn't got cancer and hopefully he never does as my Grandad was treated disgracefully by them.

Also one of my Sister's friends husband is dying of cancer and he only found out when he went on holiday to Australia because the NHS would keep holding him off.

If someone can afford it then it's up to them if they want to go down the private route. I've got no problem with them.

this

I don't see a problem with it

No but he was given 2 years to live at the age of 21. He's now 70.

It's about offering equality of opportunity though, with private schooling causing such immobility between class and income levels it essentially means that such things are often decided by birthright, and not by effort or by ability.

If David Cameron had not been born into privilege and been lucky enough to go to Eton which allowed him to then go on to Oxford, would he be in the position he is today? Possibly but it's unlikely. The current cabinet is full of people who either went to a public school or who went to Oxbridge, in fact out of all the Prime Ministers under the current Queen only three have not gone to Oxford. You might say anyone can go to Oxford if they work hard enough and it's true to an extent, and to their credit Oxford has been doing more to allow those from State schools to get a place there, but still it is the case that private school kids are four times more likely to get straight A's at A-level. To add to this here's an article from the Guardian that shows that "Fewer than 1% of the poorest university students in England go to Oxford and Cambridge"

I don't begrudge anyone for sending their kids to a private school, and I can understand why you did it and where you're coming from, I just think it's more fair that everyone should carry out their education from the same starting point, so that it really does reward hard work and effort, and not birthright. Perhaps I'm too idealistic in thinking that but that is my view anyway

I know exactly where you are coming from. I searched long and hard for a state school that I would be happy for my kids to attend, but in those days you had to live in certain catchment areas and I was offered the worst school in my area and it was my only offer. That is what prompted me to look at the private option and both my sons won scholarships based on academic ability. Most private schools today still offer scholarships to those who cannot afford to pay the fees.

You will know that virtually every Labour MP hypocritically sent their own children to private schools, whilst advocating state schools for the masses. I doubt there's a single one of them that doesn't have private health care. So much for a fair and equal society and THEIR faith in state education and the NHS. "Do what I say, not do what I do" was the motto of the Labour Party.

There are a lot of excellent state schools, but in my day I did not have the option of choosing which one my children attended, since I could not afford to move out of the catchment area I was in. Like any good parent, I wanted the best for my children and I make no apology for choosing the private option. If I had the money I would also invest in private medical care. I am currently in the middle of a medical negligence claim against the hospital that treated my brother who recently died of cancer. He was treated abysmally and I want someone to acknowledge that, accept blame and apologise. The NHS is an utter shambles and it's about time we adopted the American system of medical health insurance which would ensure a better quality of care than what we have now.

People who bang on about social equality are usually the first ones to take full advantage of private schooling and private healthcare when they can afford it. I would never presume to remove freedom of choice from people as to how they spend their disposable income.

I don't agree.

I always thought the NHS was good. Of course a problem is that you have to wait in line to have an operation usually. Maybe some units try and use cost cutting ways to save a person's life. This is not on if this happens. But from what I have seen from the NHS it mostly seems consistent, good healthcare.

With private healthcare is the only difference getting into an operation earlier than you would on the NHS?

I probably wouldn't mind paying medical health insurance? But how much? We pay so much already in terms of bills and tax. I expect in the future if I am unwell the tax I have paid into society can pay me to get well again if I ever need an operation.

I think America is meant to be adopting the NHS system by 2014?

In terms of private education it is dividing social classes. Money needs to be generated more into free state schools before private schools.

The trouble is that the NHS does not offer consistent good healthcare - it very much depends where in the UK you live. My brother unfortunately was the recipient of negligent, incompetent healthcare consisting of misdiagnosis and protracted delays for hospital appointments which resulted in his cancer being so far advanced that it was inoperable and terminal within two months of eventual diagnosis. Anyone in their right mind who could afford it would choose private healthcare over the shambles that is the NHS.

Okay well from what I have read it seems people who get cancer get the most mistreated in terms of the NHS. But when my mum has had like a hysterectomy with the NHS that was all fine for her.

Maybe I am being naive then. I am not on a lot of money. Probably about 12 grand a year after tax but from the tax that I pay I hope when I am older that I have a good healthcare in case anything goes wrong with me.

It does seem to be a bit of a lottery depending on where you live. Ideally, we should all be able to expect consistency in standards of care but sadly that isn't the case. I think it is down to how the individual health authorities allocate their budgets - I think the control should be handed back to central Government to ensure there are minimum standards of care across all health authorities and equality for all in terms of access to treatments and medication across the UK. Currently that is not the case.

Yes I agree with both, my stepdad cut back on a lot of luxuries and although retired is doing private work in order to afford to send my stepsister to private school as she is dyslexic and was struggling with her schoolwork. He moved her to private school and she is now flourishing as the teachers are able to spend more time with her and it has made a huge difference to her confidence.

With regards to the NHS they do thier best but I know so many people that have been misdiagnosed and/ or sent away saying that there is nothing wrong them until finally they despair and go private as a last resort and get a correct diagnosis and/or get better.

This!

For me it's a case of everyone having a level playing field. However naïve and idealistic I am for thinking that then so be it but it's something I'd like to see happen..

Okay fair play to you and what happened with your bother, I'm deeply sorry to hear that, but how you can sit there and claim that the American way of running things would be better baffles me absolutely.

I just don't understand. Have you not seen the obscene amount of money the average American is forced to fork out just for drugs? Operations are a whole other story. I read about a family once who had to sell their house just to get father treatment he needed. No-one should ever be forced to consider things like that. Healthcare should be something offered to everyone unconditionally..

And then there's the other matter of the health system being run as a business. The patients become customers and profit takes precedence over the quality of service provided to the patients. There are countless stories about American HMO's denying their customers service simply because the company is too stingy to fork over the money for an operation/medication/treatment which the person is actually covered for.

All in all the NHS, despite it's flaws is actually a healthcare system that is far superior to that in the US and to adopt their way of doing things would be to make a seriously large step backwards in how we run things.

I'm sorry about what happened to your Brother,infact your story sounds so similar to what happened to my Grandad.

The NHS stinks and it needs to be demolished.

The NHS is chock a block with bureaucratic management, earning megabucks salaries and running it as if it were a business. This is ALREADY happening in this country. Instead of a blanket national insurance contribution which disappears down the bottomless pit of the NHS, we should have the choice to make contributions to other forms of healthcare insurance. Bully for you if you think the NHS "works". In my experience it does not.

For it to work effectively the bureacracy at the top needs to be pruned right back, budgetting across all regions should be consistent, so that a patient can be confident they will receive the same level of care wherever they live, and there should be far more transparency when it comes to decisions made that are literally life and death. I had to fight tooth and nail to get my brother's GP and hospital records, and now I have them I understand why they were so reluctant to make them available. The mistakes made were shocking, and the lack of concern, and lack of urgency they showed was criminal. Needless to say a court case is on the cards. It won't bring my brother back, but those responsible for failing him will pay for it and hopefully they won't be allowed anywhere near other sick folk who, like, my poor brother, trusted the NHS to give him prompt and appropriate treatment.

The NHS is dying on its feet, it is a lumbering bureaucratic machine that has lost touch with its purpose. IMO just because it sometimes works for some folk, does not make it reliable or effective. I dread ever being diagnosed with anything life threatening, because it really is a lottery as to whether I would survive.

No frickin way

So you really think the introduction of an American system would remedy all of those problems? Maybe the bureaucracy of the NHS causes problems but that's something that can be fixed. I know the NHS has lots of issues that need to be sorted out - heck, my hospital is Queens in Romford. Have you heard the problems the maternity unit has been having?

It's just that an American system would just cause more chronic problems. You'd have people fighting with their insurance companies just to get treatments which they are rightly covered for which the company doesn't want to pay for. Then there would be the problem of actually paying for things, the cost of pills would skyrocket along with operations themselves. The companies over there also give people BONUSES for denying sick people healthcare!

You should watch Michael Moore's film 'Sicko'. It exposed all the disgusting failures the American HMO's had made and all the profits they were making. It was awful.

The answer to the NHS's problems isn't to wave a magic wand and be rid of it.. that in my opinion would just cause further problems elsewhere that are much much more widespread..

I agree with it completely. It gives a more beneficial consumption than if more affluent people just spent their money on flashy things to create more of an obvious divide.

People act as if the parents who send their children to private school haven't worked for it. They work bloody hard to send their children to a good school. How would it be fair for the child of a hard working family to be sent to the same school as someone with lazy unemployed parents because they can't be bothered to get a job.

People have the right to have it better. The role of price is to allocate resources to those who can afford it. Otherwise we would be half communist.

And it is not true that just because you are sent to a private school means you are guaranteed an affluent life. It is such a misconception.

What we also have to remember is parents who don't utilise the state school system still in technicality pay for those who do's education. So if schooling and healthcare could only be free more people would take the stance of there is no point to work and then funding would go down and the whole system just wouldn't work.

Well IMO it's about freedom of choice, and if those that can afford private healthcare want it, they shouldn't be castigated for it. I have lived and worked in America and can assure you the system works fine. No doubt they have their horror stories too, but they can probably be matched by the abundance of horror stories our NHS can offer. The system of health care insurance in the UK works brilliantly in the private sector, and I don't see why a national one could not be implemented which offers more choice and flexibility.

The NHS is not a "free" service, it is a compulsory component of the National Health Contributions and we all have to pay. I would prefer that there was some individual choice as to where that money went. There should always be health care available as a safety net for those who are completely unable to provide for themselves, but if people want to opt out they should be allowed to do so.

It seems to me that the worst care is reserved for terminally ill patients who are tacitly seen as a nuisance by the NHS and quickly referred onwards to hospices. This happened to my father years ago, and more recently to my brother. Hospices receive no government funding whatsoever and have to rely totally on fundraising and handouts, yet they are expected to do the job that the NHS should be doing, offering palliative and respite care, and dignified end of life care to people who have paid into the system for decades.

Such a subject is always bound to be emotive and I can only speak from my own personal experiences of the NHS, few of which have been satisfactory, never mind good, and my opinions on its lack of credibility as a reliable, adequate and consistent deliverer of good health care are based on those experiences.

Well it would seem that neither one of us is going to convince the other. :laugh:

If you've lived and used the american health system and have encountered no problems then I don't really have much to say, but for me the stories I've seen and heard just cause me to think how can a country with such massive power and resources be so heartless to those that need care the most?

About it being a very emotive issue, I have to agree with you. I haven't really had bad experiences with the NHS tbh. Everytime I've had a problem it's been sorted by them quick and easy so I can't really complain. I understand where you're coming from though.

I do think everyone should pay for the NHS though, regardless of whether they pay for privatised care or not. The NHS, from my personal experiences, is a perfectly good system. But thats just me I suppose.

But the divide it causes is something greater than any material possession. It gives children that do go to private school an advantage education-wise over others and thats something that just doesn't sit right with me. Everyone should have a level playing field at school and have an equal chance at a start in life. It just doesn't seem fair to my mind.

And it would be completely fair! Just because the parents have worked hard doesn't mean that their children are superior to that of a couple who are unemployed. D:

Also that doesn't always work. In fact it just solidifies inequality. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. If you left the role of price to allocate things to people I bet the corporations would overcharge obscenely for everything.

My OH had to have an endoscopy (tube down his throat). He was informed that the anesthetic would be the equivalent of drinking 10 pints of beer in 5 minutes, so he would not be able to drive home afterwards. We had not long moved to a new area, didn't know anyone and I had a toddler and a 3 week old baby, so couldn't accompany him to the hospital. It wasn't a problem, the hospital said, they would arrange an ambulance home. Well, they didn't arrange an ambulance home, they didn't allow him any 'recovery' time in the hospital after the procedure, they didn't ensure he got safely into a taxi. What they did do, was to ask him if he had any cash to get a taxi, and then gave him directions to where he could get one. Thankfully, he managed to get home safely on his own, as I doubt anyone would have helped him. He just appeared to anyone seeing him as drunk. He literally fell out of the taxi when he arrived home...but thankfully he was ok. That was NHS.

I had a brain tumour 9 years ago. At the time my OH had private medical insurance through his employer. After several visits to my GP, who diagnosed eyestrain, allergies and migraines, my OH asked for a specialist opinion, using his private medical insurance. My tumour was diagnosed and removed within 3 weeks. The biopsy (benign) was another 2 weeks later. My consultant explained how fortunate I was that it had been diagnosed when it was and not continued to grow and place more pressure on my brain. He explained everything from the first consultation, all throughout the procedure and the risks involved and the recovery and aftercare to minimise the scarring.
That is Private Medical Care.

It is terrifying to have any surgical procedure...to be unsure of the outcome, to arrange childcare, time off work, the emotional stress on your family. If you have private medical insurance through your employer or you are fortunate enough to be able to afford it, what more deserving 'purchase' than your health or your families health. It should be the same for everyone, yes. An ideal NHS would be the same, but in my experience it is not...not even close.

But the thing is that private school doesn't guarantee a better education. The education in state schools can be just as good it is just generally the kids in state schools do not try. They muck around because that is what their parents did.

Inequality is life and without it the world would be a much worse off place. If everyone was equal we would have nothing to aim towards.

Parents who can afford to send their children to private school also have to pay a bigger tax amount to pay for others schooling. That is far more unfair than the concept of private school.

It might not guarantee a better education but it certainly makes it far more likely

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/...ivilege-pupils