And, of course, it's not all one way:
A PENSIONER was told he couldn’t have a vital operation to remove skin cancer from his eye – because he was from North Wales.
The 94-year-old, from Llandudno, travelled 80 miles to the Manchester Royal Eye Hospital for an assessment, after being referred by staff at Ysbyty Gwynedd.
But while there staff spotted his LL30 post code and turned him away,
The case follows a recent critical report by Welsh MPs into access to cross border health services since devolution, which warned patients could face a ban on travelling to specialist centres in England for treatment if strict rules were not drawn up.
MPs on the Welsh Affairs Select Committee said the “good will” of English hospitals could run out if funding issues were left unresolved.
The Department of Health and the Welsh Assembly were also blasted for failing to iron out these problems.
6 comments:
Except your example doesn't explain why he was turned away - it's because of the persistent refusal of the Welsh NHS to pay its bills.
They seem to think they can send their patients to English Hospitals, lengthening English waiting lists and filling English NHS beds to the detriment of the English NHS patients who actually do pay, and including insisting that "Welsh" patients get treatment that is denied to English patients on the grounds of "cost" - but then they won't pay the costs of the treatments they've demanded.
My main point is how the devolution experiment has impacted negatively on real people in the health sphere. I think especially in the case of N wales, ordinary people have been affected badly and its not their fault that they've been limbered with such a diabolical system
Oh absolutely, I am not going to disagree with that. I don't see what possible advantage there was in splitting the NHS into 4 parts, 3 governed by devolved assemblies with different rules and one part (the biggest) being abused by a British Parliament run by members from outside its area.
It was an absolute disgrace to put a Scottish MP like John Reid in charge of the English NHS when he wasn't answerable at the ballot box to a single English NHS patient.
It is a disgrace that Gordon Brown, an MP elected in Scotland, could slash the Capital Budget of the English NHS only as one of his last acts as Chancellor of the Exchequer.
And it is a disgrace that Alistair Darling, yet another Scottish MP not answerable to a single English constituent, should be pursuing a policy of selling off English Hospitals only via dodgy lease-back schemes in order to raise short-term cash for more spending profligacy.
These people have power without responsibility, they are not answerable to the people affected by their decisions. And they were the ones that created this system of devolution which they are now abusing.
Gordon Brown and the Labour Party have destroyed the unity of the UK and the idea of "All for one and one for all".
And if you think it's bad now, just wait until the economy nosedives further and the Tories get in faced with the job of trying to sort out the mess.
Couple that with their unworkable proposals on "English Votes for English Matters" and just watch the system break down even further.
And none of the big parties are prepared to risk their cosy Westminster gravy train and enact the only workable solution, namely and English Paliament and a reforged federal United Kingdom.
I am confident that I will see an English Parliament created. The only question is whether it will be within the Union or without the Union.
Strangely enough (and despite how I replied earlier in the week to another comment) I think this week has brought you closer to your aim than any other event than the set-up of devolution.
I think you're right. It's now obvious why Westminster MPs don't want to upset their cosy and lucrative little gravy train - blatant self-interest rather than any concern for the citizens they are supposed to be representing.
Being a computer tester, this instantly reads to me as an "edge case". Important that a system can handle it, and probably needs some special logic in there to deal with it, but by no means representative of the general experience.
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