Charge £10 for A&E (ER) visits, say a third of GPs: Doctors want to impose basic fee…(UK)

Daily Mail (UK) ^ | 20:11 EST, 2 January 2014 | Sophie Borland

[Olog-hai]

A third of GPs say patients should be charged for going to A&E, according to a poll.

They want to impose a basic fee of up to £10 a time to deter the public from turning up with “trivial” complaints.

A survey of 800 family doctors found that many believe patients are going to A&E at the “drop of the hat” because they can’t be bothered to wait for an appointment.

But the findings will prompt anger among members of the public who feel they have no choice but to go to casualty because they can’t see their GP—especially at evenings and weekends. …

[Olog-hai]

Full Daily Mail title:

Charge £10 for A&E visits, say a third of GPs: Doctors want to impose basic fee to deter patients turning up with ‘trivial’ complaints

I wonder if doctors over here (especially “primary care physicians”, the US PC equivalent term for the “general practitioner”) will get the same idea once the Medicaid deluge hits our emergency rooms? (£10 = $16.46 ATTOW.)

[rawhide]

Actually, this fee is cheaper than a visit to a physician’s office, so this fee may actually increase ER visits.

In fact, I may want go there instead.

ER’s are open 24x7 whereas doctor’s offices are not.
And it is sometimes difficult to get in to see a family doctor whereas an ER doctor is always there or at least on call.

[KarlInOhio]

On the other hand, seeing what doesn't get treated as an emergency under NHS I wouldn't dream of going to a British emergency room for a cold, cough or minor amputation.

[Former Proud Canadian]

In Canada, after you show your health card you never see a bill for ER treatment. As you can imagine, this leads to tremendous abuses.

Many people, especially new immigrants from third world countries do not have a primary care physician. They go to the ER for everything another person might go to their GP for. Someone close to me who works at a local hospital ER told me that people were showing up on Christmas day to get stitches removed and for upset stomachs. This contributes greatly to ER wait times, which ran up to 7 hours.

Some kind of token user fee has to accompany services rendered under government health care.

[freeangel]

Oh my—this would be like charging obamaphone users $5/month. We can’t have all 10 family members paying that, now can we?

[Olog-hai]

The NY Times (if you can believe it) cited a study that said the same kind of ER abuse is bound to happen under Medicaid expansion by Obamacare.

[Former Proud Canadian]

There was a study? Like you need a study to find out if people will abuse something if you GIVE IT AWAY????

[Buckeye McFrog]

Charge £10 for A&E

the Brits must really love their Duck Dynasty, eh?

[Olog-hai]

Well, you have to go through several studies before you find the one based in reality that tells you what you don’t want to hear, after all. That’s how academics work under liberalism.

[the scotsman]

Have you used the NHS?.