Why I love the NHS

[perennialanna]

Admittedly, not all pregnancies are this complicated.  However, in the last seven and a half months I have benefited from the expert attentions of the following:

• Two different obstetric consultants and their registrars
• A diabetic consultant
• A community midwife
• A diabetic specialist midwife
• A mental health specialist midwife
• A supervisor of midwives
• A counsellor
• A physiotherapist
• A health visitor
• A specialist mental health health visitor
• Two fabulous ambulance drivers, who took me into A&E when I started throwing up blood on Tuesday
• Quite the campest male nurse I've ever met, in A&E
• Two other nurses in A&E
• An A&E registrar
• And a lovely GP

I'm also really looking forward to the chat with the doctor at the Family Planning Clinic about permanent methods of contraception...

All of this with no worries about the cost to me.  It's what I pay my taxes for - and not just for me, but for everyone, however old/young/poor/ill/downright idiotic they may be, whether they work or not, whether they look after themselves or not.  Healthcare is for everyone, not just the 'deserving'.

If there's anyone left who hasn't signed this petition (UK ciizens and British residents) please do so.  Almost all the medical professional bodies are calling for the Health Bill to be dropped - the people who are actually doing the job know it will not work.  The NHS is an amazing thing, and the government are trying to wreck it.

Comments

[antisoppist]

What stopped me taking the NHS for granted was sara's comment when my husband lost his job the month before I gave birth to our third child that if that had happened in the US, we would have been so much in debt over the medical fees that we'd have lost the house.

I don't want to head anywhere near that.

[perennialanna]

I very nearly caused a diplomatic incident on Ravelry recently when one of the US women in my due month group responded to grumbles from her fellow-citizens about the amount their insurance didn't cover and how much they were having to pay in advance for childbirth with "oh, mine covers all that", and then followed it up with how terrifying she found the thought of the NHS, where people other than her and her insurance company could decide what treatment she could have...

[mme_hardy]

Throwing up blood? Damn. That has to have been scary as hell, and I hope things go better from here.

Good luck on saving the NHS. The Tory plan is evil.

[perennialanna]

It is apparently relatively common and not all that serious to throw up a small amount of blood, as there are a lot of minor blood vessels in the throat that can be damaged by the horribleness, but it's definitely an occasion for 999 so the highly trained medics can decide how serious it is (and not a time to be thinking about where the 100 euros for an A&E visit is going to come from, as I gathered this week is the case in Ireland).