This Really Makes me Sick! (Health)

[Mick Harper]

Free home deliveries? Strewth, they must be making an arm and a leg if they're offering this.

[Boreades]

It's certainly an unusual business model.

Perhaps they should consider introducing an "NHS Prime" subscription model.

Where the public pays say £99 per year to get "enhanced" services.

Like a VIP lane at the GP, no waiting required.

Plus the "free" delivery of medications from the GP and/or pharmacy.

Maybe also include a "NHS Prime Video" service, where we could get to watch up-close videos of surgical procedures, all in the comfort of our own homes.

[Mick Harper]

I was quite shocked to discover that 'private' patients overwhelmingly go to their NHS GP's. But that was in the days when you could see your GP in this calendar year so it might have changed.

[Mick Harper]

* I was overjoyed to find a dentist taking on new NHS patients in my neighbourhood.
* I was overjoyed by the treatment I got.
* I was underjoyed when, trying to get an appointment, there is an answering machine.
* I am in a moderate anxiety state that this does not result in them 'getting back to me'.

[Mick Harper]

I did them a grave injustice. I had forgotten it was (a) the weekend and (b) Bank Holiday Monday. They rang me today and gave me an appointment tomorrow.

[Mick Harper]

Like most people in these stressful times I live on co-codamol. The last time I stocked up the chemist didn't say,"You won't be taking these for more than three days, will you, Mr Harper" as she has done for the last ten years, but "We're all out of your normal, but we do have the same formulation in effervescent form." Faute de mieux, I was forced to take them, more expensive though they were. It was either that or two weeks rehab at Primrose Lodge.

Now I had never heard of a demand for soluble co-codamol (and I belong to several help groups) so this is an obvious ramp. But that I don't mind. Big Pharma needs our support in these stressful times. What I object to is that the large pills break into bits taking them out of their foil wrappers, then don't dissolve properly with other smaller bits bobbing around on the surface indefinitely. And it's not even lemon flavoured. It's co-codamol flavoured. Ugh!

[Mick Harper]

Something new to report in the labyrinthine ways of the NHS. I have had a chest infection (or something) for quite a time and decided it was high time to stop ignoring it on the usually safe assumption it would go away of its own accord. So I rang my GP.