Officials at the Department of Health have expressed their fears over the state of the National Health Service this week, saying that they are worried whether it could survive in the future with increasing numbers of people heading back after dropping their private medical insurance. But experts are concerned that the NHS will struggle to cope from the extra demand from those who have decided they can no longer afford their private health insurance premiums with the current financial downturn. Private medical insurance policy holders may be advised to think twice about cancelling their policy though, because if the NHS does fail to meet the extra demands as efficiently as it can at the moment, waiting times and general hospital conditions could fall. This seems to be ironic as avoiding these are often among the top reasons for choosing private medical insurance in the first place.


The full effects of the increase in demand won’t be seen immediately and the extent to which the NHS will be stretched is unclear, as the Department of Health source reportedly explained. “Ministers want to see how much of an impact th¬is will have. Just because you stop having private healthcare doesn't mean you will be using the NHS immediately. You have to be ill first. So it will take time for the full picture to emerge. But the NHS is in good shape, in surplus and will be able to cope." Despite this optimism, many people remain concerned, some even predicting that the effects will be seen in the short term as well as the long term. With the full extent remaining to be unknown, those who wish to avoid potentially longer waiting lists may want to think twice before cancelling their existing policy and losing any benefits they have built up in the process. If money is an issue, they may wish to consider a cash plan private medical insurance policy which can still offer many benefits but at a much lower cost.

Nurse specialists have become a controversial addition to the workings of the NHS. They are designed to ease the pressures upon doctors by carrying out some of their roles for them but some people have argued that this is merely a way of cutting costs by getting around paying higher wages to a more qualified person. The introduction of nurse specialists has also changed the roles of nurses themselves, with an increase in auxiliary nurses to carry out the traditional hands-on tasks. But again this has caused concern for some people who believe that they are not experienced enough to work with ‘nurse’ as their job title. The only way to avoid this increasingly common situation for people who have concerns about this is to get a quote for private medical insurance to enable them to have access to hospitals outside the NHS.


Increasing the number of health visitors instead of nurse specialists has been suggested as a way of improving the health service. Health visitors may be taken for granted but they can actually be vital in picking up on early signs of child abuse and post-natal depression. In recent times, the number of health visitors has dropped, in fact figures have shown that it is at it’s lowest since 1994 meaning that many cases of these often hard to spot conditions may go unnoticed. A lot of women themselves do not even realise they have post-natal depression so they may wish to take out private medical insurance as a precautionary measure to ensure that symptoms are more likely to be picked up, either as part of a general well-being check up or with better access to health visitors and doctors than they would on the NHS.