Delay routine surgery for smokers and obese people

[Cyclone]

It's not right. If you have paid in you deserve your treatment, even if you smoke or are obese.

 

Angel1.

 

The NHS has limited resources though, it has to target them where they do the most good. And treating someone who will continue to make themselves more ill is ineffective.

[willman]

It's not right. If you have paid in you deserve your treatment, even if you smoke or are obese.

 

Angel1.

 

You get it back everyday - there is a hospital and a Dr's surgery available to you 24 hours every day. You don't pay tax to credit for when you need surgery.

[Hogg]

It's not right. If you have paid in you deserve your treatment, even if you smoke or are obese.

 

Angel1.

 

I absolutely agree. It is well documented that smoking and obesity are often, though not always, problems that affect the poorest in our society. If treatment is denied to smokers and the obese it is disproportionately affecting the poorest, many of whom have paid their National Insurance for many years, and who are obviously the least likely to be able to afford private health insurance. How cruel and ignorant is that of those in charge of our health care?

[the_bloke]

We had a thread about this before.

 

Obese people can already be refused surgery if it's considered too risky, and rightly so. It wasn't that long ago that the NHS would refuse IVF if you were a smoker or obese or too old, the changes to allow those people proved controversial as it meant spending more money on a patient with a lower success rate.

 

Anyone would think the NHS has a bottomless pit of cash and a penchant for spending time, money and beds on people who are more likely to either die on the operating table, have a greater chance of complications following surgery or may well continue to eat or smoke themselves back to the condition where they needed surgery in the first place.

[Guest sibon]

The NHS has limited resources though, it has to target them where they do the most good. And treating someone who will continue to make themselves more ill is ineffective.

 

So, should they refuse to treat cyclists who are involved in RTAs, on the basis that they would have been safer travelling by car? Or on the basis that they are likely to climb back onto a vulnerable machine as soon as they can?

 

The NHS does have limited resources, it also has a duty to treat the sick and injured. it shouldn't be too difficult to imagine a few ways that they could use those resources more effectively, whilst allowing people to make their own lifestyle choices.

[the_bloke]

So, should they refuse to treat cyclists who are involved in RTAs, on the basis that they would have been safer travelling by car? Or on the basis that they are likely to climb back onto a vulnerable machine as soon as they can?

 

'The CCG said only elective surgery for non-life threatening procedures, such as hip and knee operations, would be affected.'

[Guest sibon]

'The CCG said only elective surgery for non-life threatening procedures, such as hip and knee operations, would be affected.'

 

That matters not. If someone needs treatment, they should get it. Making lifestyle judgements about whether they deserve it is wrong. For the most part, these people will have paid in and are as deserving as other people with risky lifestyles.

 

My pop at cyclists was tongue in cheek, but you could extend it to rock climbers, pilots, promiscuous people, drug addicts, drivers of fast cars. Choose your risk group really. Who is to say which group deserves NHS resources and which doesn't?

[mikem8634]

I doubt there is anybody who leads a life entirely free of lifestyle choices that could contribute to one day needing elective surgery for non-life threatening conditions.

 

It is a slippery slope that we may all find ourselves on.

[the_bloke]

That matters not. If someone needs treatment, they should get it. Making lifestyle judgements about whether they deserve it is wrong. For the most part, these people will have paid in and are as deserving as other people with risky lifestyles.

 

My pop at cyclists was tongue in cheek, but you could extend it to rock climbers, pilots, promiscuous people, drug addicts, drivers of fast cars. Choose your risk group really. Who is to say which group deserves NHS resources and which doesn't?

 

I have a friend who genuinely weighs 40 stone. She needs all manner of surgical work which would be classed as routine; bad joints, spinal issues etc and has been refused them all because she'd likely die under general anesthetic. Refused on the NHS, by the NHS. Do you think they are wrong?

 

If there is an easily mitigated risk to the patient during surgery, do you not think that risk should be lessened or eliminated beforehand, or should the surgeons just 'go for it' anyway?

 

Edit: You can add alcoholics to the list as well; the NHS is known to refuse liver transplants to alcoholics who could not be certain they would stop drinking after receiving a new liver. They later died.

 

http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/eight-birmingham-patients-denied-liver-7769731

 

Should they have been given a new lease of life just to drink themselves to death anyway, when someone else could have had the organ?

Edited December 1, 2016 by the_bloke

[Funky_Gibbon]

Wrap it up in whatever justification you like, it's still discrimination for purely financial reasons. This policy has got nothing whatsoever to do with medical reasons for delaying surgery. As the Royal College of Surgeons have pointed out yesterday in their rejection of this policy, if you don't treat an illness or injury then it just get worse and require more treatment.

 

And while we're all arguing about who (other than ourselves of course) gets to have their suffering extended for non-medical reasons and gets to be treated like as 2nd class citizens, the Government are still underfunding the NHS by £22bn.