This Is Going to Hurt by Adam Kay

Author:Adam Kay
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: None
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2019-03-11T16:00:00+00:00

6

Registrar—Post Two

In the UK we see the skyscraper-high bills in America as the Ghost of Christmas Future unless we fight to stop the NHS getting privatized. Politicians may act dumb, but they’re not, and we’ll be lured very stealthily into this particular gingerbread house. We’ll be promised it’s only little corners of the NHS that are changing, but there’ll be no trail of bread crumbs to help us find our way back through the forest. One day you’ll blink and the NHS will have completely evaporated—and if that blink turns out to be a stroke, you’re totally screwed.

That said, around 10 percent of the UK population have private health insurance, and they generally call on it only in nonemergency situations to get their operations a bit quicker, and the two systems exist together in relative harmony.

My opinion of private health care in the UK changed a bit during my time as a registrar. I used to be on board with it, seeing it as much like private schooling: a bunch of rich people who save the taxpayers a few quid by going off and doing their own thing, no harm done. I could always see myself doing the odd bit of private work as a consultant, one evening a week in clinic, maybe, the occasional hysteroscopy if I thought I deserved a Mercedes, perhaps a cesarean a month if I thought my Mercedes deserved a chauffeur. I knew consultants who had this life, and it didn’t hurt my motivation to imagine it for myself.

And then in my second year as a registrar I started doing regular moonlighting work. I’d rather overstretched myself on the mortgage and it felt like a sensible way of making my income do at least a reasonable impression of my outgoings. As free time was in short supply (and what I had of it didn’t just feel like mine to give away), I generally took night shifts sandwiched between normal days at work, and in order to guarantee an hour or two of sleep, I would do them in private hospitals or private wings of NHS hospitals, where the workload is a lot lighter.

These days I get asked fairly often by friends who’ve made much better life choices than me about whether they should have their baby privately. These are people who order from the bottom of the wine list to get a better wine or order from the bottom of the holiday-home-in-the-countryside list to get a better holiday home in the countryside, people who know that, while money might not buy you happiness, it certainly buys you nicer stuff.

This theory, it turns out, doesn’t really work with childbirth. It’s a shame, because if you choose to go private, you’ll be dropping around fifteen grand on it, and it won’t be covered by your health insurance. You’ll definitely get a nicer hospital room and nicer food.

You’ll certainly get an elective cesarean if you ask for it. In fact, your consultant might actively encourage you to have one.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.