Posted by detroitpistons on February 28, 2009, at 12:47:21
In reply to Re: Doctors in England, posted by West on February 19, 2009, at 10:24:56
West,
What do you think about the NHS in general? Obviously, you are frustrated with it right now, but do you think that it's a good system in the grand scheme?
This is a subject of great interest to me because I am an American, and our healthcare system needs repair. As you probably know, we have 48 million citizens with no healthcare. Medical expenses are the #1 cause of bankrupcy.
I am not comfortable with healthcare being entirely profit driven. This basically means that the people who need it the most have the least chance of getting it. I lost my job, and therefore, I lost my health insurance. Now I'm walking a tightrope.
Hospitals here legally can't refuse you treatment, but they can send you a bill for $100,000.
I don't know what we should do. If you bring up nationalized healthcare here, the people on the right start screaming SOCIALISM. I don't know what we should do, but I do know that we can't go on like this.
> To anyone living in the UK and struggling with adequate health treatment on the NHS I can recommend the Capio Nightingale clinic. It's in London near Marylebone tube. I went there just to see a psych and have a consultation but they have a full inpatient programme and specialise in all sorts of things including substance abuse (amy winehouse had a stint there), eating disorders, psychosis/schizophrenia. Although quoted prices for care are pretty eye watering - something like 3k a week- you may be referred by a primary care doc if you're deemed a suitable case.
>
> Prescriptions from the psychs are usually more expensive but my one seemed perfectly happy to write to my GP recommending the drugs he prescibed and from there you can just do repeat prescriptions. It's obtaining the kind of drugs flagged for risk +/or cocktails of drugs together which nhs practitoners are uncomfortable with - this is a general case of one-size-fits-all protocol and general back-covering against the watchful gaze of those more senior.
>
> It's silly to think it has taken 3 years to get the drugs that will (crossed fingers) help me stay alive without inhabiting a belle and sebastien song: in an alternate existence (and in the wake of a highly contagious virus from which i had immunity) I could have simply walked past the counter at any chemist and picked out the meds and gone about my day. What's next i wonder?
>
> I heard d-amphetamine is only a reuptake inhibitor at low doses - and therefore presumably safe? It's the high doses that reverse the mechanism from inhibition to efflux (at which point the body-thrusting forward 'rush' is supposed to occur) and we all know about DA releasers and their rep within neurochemmistry.
poster:detroitpistons
thread:881041
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20090223/msgs/883066.html