I am a great fan of the National Health Service.  My eldest brother was born ill and survived for 42 years with enormous support from UK national health system.  If he had been born in a country without free health care my parents would be broke and he would probably have not seen his 20th birthday.  Having also worked in many teaching hospitals I am convinced that if you are critically ill the best place to be is on an NHS ward in a big teaching hospital.  There you are most likely to get the most up to date treatment with a specialist who is really at the forefront of their field.  I have, however spent the past week searching the internet for different private health packages for my employees and me and have invited my employees to take up this company health insurance (when I find the best package) for them and their family. 

 

Why? 

 

Three reasons

 

  1. I think it’s important, as a company to have staff incentives and to look after the people who are working for you.  Everyone in my company works very hard towards the company goal and I think private health insurance is a nice perk (although the company wont be able to cover all the insurance, but it will subsidies anyone premium if they want to join the scheme)
  1. My father (the fittest person I have ever known) was diagnosed with very late stage cancer.  However the symptoms were overlooked by the medical profession (he had approached his GP several times with the symptoms) until he took himself to A&E.  Now I am not saying that he would still be alive today if the GP had recognised the symptoms and I am not in any way blaming the GP who just didn’t see what was happening.  However at the same time my father was diagnosed with cancer a close relative was being treated for cancer.  Now this person exhibited no symptoms whatsoever and was having a general check up by his private health insurance company when the cancer was diagnosed.  It was subsequently cut out and the chemotherapy seems to have kept it at bay.  My belief is not that you get treated better if you have private health insurance or that the doctors are any cleverer, but there are systems in place to keep you healthy or for an early diagnosis, which simply don’t exist in the NHS.  This is quite understandable, not only due to financial constraints, but the sheer volumes of people who use the NHS. Therefore, for  my staff,  I am happy to pay for the peace of mind and early diagnosis
  1. For a minor ailment, it is just annoying to have to wait to go through the  system to get an appointment.  Now I know you could say that private health insurance just enables me to jump the queue for my company I would like to try to justify this queue jumping as follows (and I am sure that I will not convince many people here)
    1. As a small business owner I would rather have any aliment of a member of my company treated as soon as possible from both a compassionate and commercial point of view  to reduce

                                                             i.      the ailment getting worse, reducing work time and quality of life

                                                             ii.      prolonged symptoms causing negative emotion which would effect both work and private life

 

    1. in some cases what is perceive as a minor ailment could turn out to be something major (as in the case of my father)  and I don’t think this chance is worth taking
    2. I believe that it takes some  burden off the NHS

I am open to discussion regarding the provision of private health care as many people have said that it is unfair (well isn’t life!) and cherry picking.  Feel free to comment here, however all Euroscicon members now have the option – and I will leave it to them to read my thoughts and any comments to make up their mind whether to proceed with the cover