All service veterans to get right to jump NHS queues

From The Sunday Times
January 24, 2010
All service veterans to get right to jump NHS queues
Marie Woolf, Whitehall Editor

BRITAIN’S 5m service veterans, from survivors of the second world war to those who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, are to be promised priority healthcare on the NHS for the rest of their lives.

Under a Labour plan announced this weekend, all veterans, regardless of their rank or whether they saw active service, will be entitled to be put at the top of doctors’ and hospitals’ waiting lists.

They will be allowed to queue-jump for any treatment, ranging from a common ailment to a serious condition — regardless of whether it was caused by military service.

Veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts will be the first to have their NHS files flagged, before the scheme is extended to veterans of Northern Ireland, the Falklands and earlier conflicts.
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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6999967.ece

 

What a stupid idea, all this will do will de-value the priority treatment for soldiers with service related injuries.

Where does it end? what about Police or Ambulance workers, or civil servants.

What a pathetic attempt at buying votes.

 

Jump NHS queues? My legs aren't long enough.

 

I agree.

This is a good idea for those people that have left the forces with service related injuries but not as a blanket policy.

Why should any of us that have served in the forces, but are thankfully still fit and well when we leave, be given priority over any other person that has paid their tax and national insurance contributions?

What we could do is introduce a slow lane for the permantent unemployed that have never worked and have no intention of getting a job and contributing towards the funding of their Jeremy Kyle Show lifestyle.

IIRC there are already systems in place that give priority to ex servicemen with injuries related to their serivce but that some doctors have not been made aware of the correct procedures for fast tracking their treatment. (Other poeple have posted on here about this but it's too early in the morning and I'm too lazy to search for them at the moment).

I see this announcement as just another shallow attempt to win votes.

 

Let the morbidly obese, alcoholics, drug users and smokers die. Then there will be no need for waiting lists.

Make yourself ill, invalidate your own 'national health' insurance.

Don't MPs jump the queue already? I waited 5 months for an Op the grinning twat Tony Blair got in 2 weeks.

 

Could you take your own advice and die with them? It is those who pay no contributions who should get fuckall. Even better, bin the NHS.

BTW I smoke and I bet i'm fitter than you!

 

Hm. I'll test this; I'll be having an op later this year.
Just out of interest did ex forces have fast access to the old British Military Hospitals?
I was injured at work in 1990 (In my civvie job) I was waiting for an op and some serving mates got me a place at a BMH. The only reason I didn't use it was that the NHS op suddenly came up a fortnight earlier than the BMH one.

 

Don't worry whatever Liebour give with one hand they'll take back with the other hand.
You'll have to join the veterans queue, which is longer than the "civi" queue.

 

How about making the NHS available to tax payers, children and OAPs only?

 

Precisely!

 

You are no doubt fitter than me. But if you get lung cancer you're fcuked. There is no cure. Smoking massively increases the risk of heart disease too. Regardless of your overall fitness.

That's why my private medical health insurance would be less than yours. The statistics do not lie. Smokers die younger.

I have taken my own advice and have lost 3 stone in 9 months. I am continuing to lose weight, but at a slower rate.

 

As it should be. But if, despite all the warnings and education, people destroy their own health, giving treatment to those persons just allows them to defer the damascene revelation that their health is actually in their hands and no amount of professional medical intervention is going to make any difference until they realise this. Some of course will never realise this, and they will die. But I think many others would get the message sooner rather than later (or too late) and change their lifestyles.

 

Rationing treatment never works. It's a very short step from stopping smokers getting treatment to stopping rugby players and boxers getting help for injuries. Its also an absolute minefield to work out what is or isn't a smoking/obesity related condition.

 

Considering that I am taxed to Hell on my booze-n-baccy lifestyle as well as being taxed on my income, I find it bloody offensive to be considered a drain on the NHS. Especially as the last time I used it was over 5 years ago, and that was for an infection that I almost certainly picked up by visiting a hospital.

 

So they claim…


Grandmother smoked 60 woodbines a day, died of old age at 87

Great Grandmother smoked a pipe and died of old age at 102