NHS goes multinational

[pdq1]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-19328105

Good idea or not?

[Sqad]

pdq1

\\\\\They are my concerns also. Already in the UK some doctors put their private patients before those in the NHS so whats to stop them earning an easier faster buck by operating abroad.\\\\

Bit confused about that oft quoted statement.....could you please expand and give a few examples....well perhaps just one example would do.

[Old_Geezer]

"What is good for the goose is clearly not good for the gander."

Not so, we ought not have been feeding off countries that need their skilled citizens for themselves, previously. We should have been training our own unemployed.

[Sqad]

O_G..

\\ We should have been training our own unemployed.\\

I don't quite understand that......if you mean training the unemployed to become doctors and nurses......one would need a basic level of intelligence, not always found in the unemployed. Some unemployed just couldn't do that kind of work.

I feel that I have missed your point.

[Old_Geezer]

I feel we disagree on what the unemployed can be taught. Even if a doctorate was beyond most, basic nursing care should be an ability any able person can learn, indeed a much of it should be instinctively known and practiced within their own family / friends. I do not accept that an educated country can not supply its own needs at any intellectual level. It is a case of encouraging those who can fulfil a role to apply and accept it.

[Sqad]

O_G Agreed......we have differing ideas into how we can convert the unemployed into doctors, nurses and paramedical staff.

[Gromit]

I don't think the intention is to build and operate hospitals in a foreign land.

The hospitals will be the same ones me and you use. The hospitals will send sales men to foreign countries and send the patients here to be treated in Great Ormond Street etc as private patients. Money earned would supplement the Government funding to the hospitals. That assumes there is the capacity to treat them. If it means cutting days British patients can be treated or if the private money making work takes president over NHS treatments then I think most people would be against it.

[Sqad]

O_G.....that isn't the way that I see it, but you may well be right.

Patients can already come to the UK for private patient treatment at the present time. I assumed that patients would be treated in the established hospitals abroad and the money earned would be redirected into the NHS coffers.

[McMouse]

The NHS provided me with first class surgery and aftercare last year. The lead surgeon was born and trained in Iran. Many of the nurses were born and trained in the Filipines or West Indies. It makes good sense to export UK knowhow and excellence to other countries and plough back the profit into our own NHS.

[pdq1]

If we are so fond of helping these countries why don't we finance it out of the international aid budget. Then the returns could be ploughed back into the NHS. It tallies with the motto "I scrub your back, you return the favour"