Neighbour's ch system

[tony sayer]

In article , [e-mail] writes

Umm... Who's the "Gas Board" these days?. Presume you mean British Gas who are no more the board than npower are....

[Guy King]

The message from tony sayer contains these words:

Ah, but they like to act as if they are.

[airsmoothed]

Down here in the Sunny South ( Hants / Dorset border) a scale, polish & two extractions cost me 65 quid in total on the NHS. My local private dentist charges 70 quid for an exam IIRC.

[Roger Mills]

Agreed. But not if they go with BG and fit a combi!

[Mary Fisher]

Which they won't. Neighbour told chap he'd think about it, meaning bugger off!

Mary

[Matt]

Yes you might have invented the cyclone vacuum cleaner but you "didn't come up with" Dyson :)

I'd love to stick Dyson on a lie detector and challenge his 5000+ prototypes claim. Biggest load of bollocks I'd heard prior to Dribble's ramblings on Combi's!

[Bob Eager]

You left that last bit hanging...!

[Owain]

£41 for exam, S&P, and "re-sculpt" an existing filling.

If that happens twice a year, it's an additional £80 in tax I have to pay.

Owain

[Doctor Drivel]

Lord Hall, you are disturbed.

[John Rumm]

I think I only pay £45 for an exam scale and polish privately. Not sure what their tarrif is for a filling (not had one in 24 years!)... I shall pay more attention to the price list next time I am there.

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Guy King saying something like:

Many of these things are independently invented through the ages. I recall that there was a workshop cyclone sawdust extraction system that had been around for decades.

Novelty of application, I suppose. Just another way of nicking ideas.

[Guy King]

The message from Grimly Curmudgeon contains these words:

That was what he claims to have based it on - well, a similar thing on the paintspray booths.

[Matt]

....and that's just of the contents of your wallet.

Tucked away in the outake bin of one of Attenborough's wildlife series was the amazing proof that dentists are amongst the lowest form of life on the planet. I think the pecking order was pikeys, Volvo owners towing sheds, 4x4 owners in the cities, then dentists (closely followed by media studies students)

If dentists want their subsidised training paid for by the taxpayer then they should serve the taxpayer for a minimum of 10 years full time. Otherwise they should bugger off and work in bloody call centre or shovel shit down the sewage works.

[Mark]

Definitely! I've got one in my garage. It's a W-B Greenstar Highflow and is washing machine sized.

It also vents straight into a narrow passage. The building inspector had no problem with this.

Mark

[Mark]

Because they can't afford to pay for private treatment?

- or -

Because they have already paid for Dental treatment through their taxation?

Mark

[Mary Fisher]

Like pensions ...

Mary

[Mary Fisher]

Hurrah!

Ah - but he wasn't working with the new regulations ...

Mary

[Andy Hall]

So the obvious solution is for the arrangement to be taken outside of taxation and government control and the transation to go directly between supplier and customer

[Owain]

It would then become subject to market forces, and with dentists chasing profitable cosmetic work there is still the likelihood that basic dental care would be unaffordable for many people.

The advantage of NHS dentistry is that the prices are fixed.

Owain

[Andy Hall]

Take a look at this from today's news.

a system that was always supposed to be free at the point of delivery, the NHS is an unmitigated disaster.

This new arrangement is neither one thing nor the other and leaves all unconcerned completely unhappy with the situation.

Even with all of this, only half of the population is registered with a dentist.

At these prices, I don't think that the issue is about money from the patient's perspective, it's more about can't be bothered.