LETTER OF THE DAY: NHS? Be grateful you don't live in New Zealand

I think we should be thankful we have the NHS at all.

Friends of mine live in Dunedin, New Zealand and they would love to have a health service like ours.

They have a part-government, part-insurance based health service but if you wait for treatment under the government scheme you wait a very long time.

They said 45 people went blind last year waiting for treatment.

Below is a sample of the prices (in New Zealand dollars) they have to pay for health treatment:

o Ambulance – unless you pay a yearly fee, is $85 per call out.

o GP visit – only one complaint allowed – $44 for 15 mins. Full medical – $105.

o Minor surgery at the GPs – $210-$250.

o Repeat prescriptions – $16 per item plus a chemist charge.

o For an urgent GP appointment – $85 if you are a Dunedin resident plus $30 if you are not a Dunedin resident.

o If you are an overseas visitor it is $180 up front.

o Coronary Arteriogram – $2,400 (private).

o Other types of X-rays – $600-$900 (private).

o Hip replacement - $24,000 (private).

o Knee replacement – $23,000 (private).

If you can’t afford to ‘go private’ it could be a four-year wait.

o For a ‘Helicopter Retrieval’ – $10,000.

For an X-ray at the hospital it’s a one-week wait at best, for MRI or CT scans it’s up to a 40-week wait.

A lot of the prices mentioned of course may vary depending on where you live and if you have private insurance, but it is a sample of prices people without a NHS have to pay on a daily basis.

We should think ourselves very lucky we have an NHS and we should not abuse it.

We could put billions more in to the NHS but because new technologies, new drugs etc are coming on the market every day costing millions of pounds and we are doing things In the NHS that it was never meant to do it is always going to be short of money – and it will not matter which political party is in power.

Ted Saunders

Ex-NHS employee

Frobisher Grove, Portchester