Complaints about the delay in their treatment as a result of the pandemic.
As I was in the middle of the discussion, I was reminded of Chris Barrow’s legendary saying “Don’t wrestle with pigs in sh*t because the sh*t stinks and the pigs love it”.
We had seen the individual immediately prior to lockdown (before we knew we were locking down) and although they had suffered a moderate complication I was sorting that at the visit that they were attending now.
They were even using the interesting angle of argument that because they were paying privately this shouldn’t have happened.
Interesting to consider that private patients should not be subject to any of the disadvantages of a global pandemic where as clearly they felt that that was the province of NHS patients.
They had decided they wanted their treatment quicker under private arrangements than they would have achieved under NHS hospital arrangements and as I was politely trying to explain that it would be very unlikely that would be back into the NHS system for a considerable period now, that was not convincing them of anything.
On this occasion I just adopted the ‘zone out and keep quite mode’ got on with correcting the situation as it was and everyone seemed to part on reasonable terms.
It does highlight though, a significantly difficult philosophical position that will be adopted by part of society.
We can’t really buy ourselves out of this situation.
If you’re used to throwing money at things to solve problems, you may struggle to throw money at this in the long-term to solve it as a problem.
Viruses, pandemics and global climate change are not particularly amenable to change from individual bank balances.
Much more of this to come I suspect as people begin to realise the true significance of where they are and how disadvantaged they may become.
Blog Post Number - 2427
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