What can you tell us Yanks about Healthcare in the UK

You make a lot of presumptions. Chiefly that I am anti-NHS. I'm not. I agree we need it. I don't agree that currently it is fit for purpose.

You also assume that I am some kind of "I'm alright jack" right-winger. Well I'm not. I have lived on far far less than the £12000 figure you seem to think constitutes poverty.

Were you one of those people who applauded Willie Walsh the other day when he suggested the entire staff of BA go without their salaries for a month? Fine for him, losing £60,000 of £743,000. Less fine for baggage cart driver who loses £1,000 of £12,000. If you think we don't have a working poor in this country, there is little point in continuing any kind of debate about anything really. Because pretty much all injustice in society can be put down to the gulf that exists between rich and poor.

Well as I have never had a holiday this century and was only able to afford my first plane trip a mere two years ago I have taken no interest in BA and have no idea who Willie Walsh is. But nobody should have to forgo money they have earned.

Unfortunately, and this is where your point is answered BlueQuinn, the disparity in practice income is directly related to the affluence of the area in which the GP is located.

The answer to this problem - the postcode lottery - is surely to stop allocating local budgets and just have one enormous central budget that pays for everything according to need.
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Again, you misunderstand the process somewhat here. If you are treated as an outpatient (i.e. you are not actually admitted to hospital but attend for a day procedure) I don't understand how or why you expect to be ferried around St. George's as though things like schedules and other patients don't exist. All those other people who are inpatients, lying in those wards you only walk past are sicker than you. They get treatment before you because the medical professionals with their many, many years of training believe they need it more.

I don't misunderstand the process. You make massive assupmtions about our case. Would you class major spinal surgery as serious, perhaps? My girlfriend was at her bloody pre-op medical before being admitted to Stanmore to have a disc removed, an existing spinal fusion broken and realigned, the vertebrae jacked up and her fusion (which goes from her shoulders to her hips) extended so that she would only have one lower vertebra that still moved. That serious enough for you? Or do you think she should have hardened the fuck up after waiting 18 months for the damn appointment, and fucked off home? Your patronising attitude is just what the NHS could do with less of. You have no idea what a relief it was to have finally got the appointment after years of crippling pain. Or the crushing dissapointment of being told that your blood pressure was too low and being referred back to your GP, who then had to refer you a clinic in Manchester, who then could not do the tests because their equipment had broken, and then to have your operation cancelled, and to face another 18 month wait in agonising pain. That simply would not have happened in the private sector. In fact it didn't. They called the anaesthetist. He took a look at her blood tests and said it would be fine to operate.

Example: Cancer. If a GP suspects you have any form of cancer, you get an appointment at with the specialist most qualified and experienced with the suspected type of cancer within two weeks.

No you don't. Your dad may have done, but when my girlfriend had suspected breast cancer the soonest they could do a biopsy (which thankfully was all clear) was over three months.

Your girlfriend's problems sound less than pleasant, but equally, it doesn't sound like you made it particularly easy for yourselves.

No, being born with a potentially fatal 120 degree spinal curve must be so fucking inconvenient for the NHS. We are contrite.

It sounds as though she maybe grew up in Shropshire, seeing this specialist, then moved to London some years later, which has hospitals, Primary Care Trusts and GPs that are entirely disconnected from Shropshire Country PCT. Presumably she changed GPs, had her notes moved down, and forth? Or did she decide she wanted to see the Shropshire based specialist as a result of research etc, and that was when difficulties began?

See I don't really understand this part.

Let me explain it to you then. She didn't grow up in Shropshire.
Well what actually happened was that Tower Hamlets would not pay for her painkillers. They would not pay for her specialist - the one she had had since she was a baby. So she ended up for some reason referred to a hospital in Oswestry where the scoliosis specialist was cheap (but useless). Her friend lives there so she stayed with him. She had to go to a GP. She explained everything and he told her to register with him and she could get the drugs she needed. So she did. She is no longer registered with tower hamlets. She basically moved up there and lives in her friends house. She never uses Tower Hamlets GPs. All her official residence stuff is there, she pays council tax there (and here) and she spends half her time up there.