Thread: Should the NHS foot the bill?

Obesity surgery costs the NHS roughly 32 million pounds per year. Should the NHS being paying for this kind of surgery? Should people take more responsibility for their weight problems?

I do think people should take responsibility for their own and their children's health generally though. I also find it difficult to understand how people become so obese that they need surgery.

I have been underweight and overweight and at both points I have thought right hang on things are getting out of control. I need to sort it out now. That was my responsibility

AFAIK if you want surgery on NHS you have to lose weight first i think, but correct me if im wrong.

Part of me says that people should take the responsibility for themselves but I think I'm right in saying that to get surgery like that on the NHS, you have to lose a certain amount of weight on your own first so it's not like people can just eat and eat and never have to do anything for themselves.

Also, the NHS treats a lot of things that are preventable, or where you can lessen the risk yourself. They still treat people who've been in motorbike accidents even though it's known that motorbikes are more dangerous than cars, they treat smokers, alcoholics, people who've been injured doing extreme sports. At least in the case of obesity, I would argue that a lot of the people who get so overweight that surgery is a good option probably have some other kind of issues rather than just pure greed. In that way, you could look at weightloss surgery as treating the side effect of an illness, where depression (or something else) is the illness and the obesity is the side effect.

My best friends sister in law has just had a gastric bypass on the NHS and she was a size 30. i personally think that the NHS shouldnt be doing ops like these, or any type of body correction surgery (ie boob jobs nose jobs etc)

I think its 100% up to the person overweight to sort it out. nobody should be able to get to a high weight and just get the easy option to get out of it. There are a number of ways to loose weight easily. from slimming clubs to exercises to personal diets. NHS should not be the ones who have to deal with the overweight population. they got in that situation. they should get them selves out of it.

Maybe there should be a yearly health check appointment and have your height weight etc checked, the BMI calculation should be re done so its not so daft. and maybe if people are in the serveryly obese catagory then they should be placed into slimming groups etc

This would save the Nhs so much money

I don't see it as black and white. I would personally hazard a guess that most people who are obese have other problems than over enjoyment of food. I can't imagine not deciding to take action once I reached a certain weight but others are obviously different and have other issues that prevent them from dealing with their weight problem. I think each case has to be looked upon individually and people shouldn't make assumptions about the magnitude of the problems lots of obese people have.

Oops just saw Rach's post which was similar.

I do think that people who let themselves gain such an amount of weight & don't help themselves by attending sliiming classes or whatever else help they are offered should be made to pay part cost of surgery themselves. This might give incentive to people to take more responsibility & moivation themsleves to lose the weight. Those that have a medical condition that cant be helped & those that have done everything they possibly can is a different case. It is frustrating that such a huge amount of money is being spent on people who could diet & lose weight other ways like most people do, I think it's laziness to continue eating unhealthily & then expect to get the surgery paid for. Obv each case is individual & needs to be looked at by the NHS to determine whether they should qualify for free surgery or not.

I'd be interested to know what costs the NHS more... a very obese person staying very obese and then going on to get problems associated with their weight e.g. heart problems, bad knees that need to be fixed, or an operation to remove the weight before the other problems develop. I'd guess that the surgery would probably work out cheaper in the long run, and it's healthier for the person too. It's a sad fact that the NHS has to prioritise and work out how best to save money, which is why you get the sad cases of people being denied expensive drugs that would prolong their life for a few months. If operations to stop people being so fat save money, it'd actually work out better for everybody else if these people get the surgery! The only way to change that would be to stop treating people for illnesses associated with their weight or diet but that's a very slippery slope.

good point Rach, i expect a lot of heart attacks & subsequent surgery is result of obesity. I personally cant understand how somebody with no associated medical condition to cause it can let themselves get to that stage, but thats just me.

I think people have a responsibility to lose a degree of weight themselves before they qualify for surgery but I don't agree that it shouldn't be funded at all. The NHS does treat smokers, people who drink drive etc and I think we would all be pretty horrified if a lung cancer patient was refused treatment.

I agree with Rach that the NHS probably do a cost analysis of whether it costs more money to treat people for all the associated obesity conditions or just try to knock the obesity on the head. I think people should have to go through some pretty intensive counselling because there are nearly always underlying issues in overeating. The surgery will likely be a waste of money if these issues aren't also dealt with.

I agree with MC and Rach on this one. Obesity is NOT black and white however much people like to believe it is. If it was a simple case of "eat less, move more" then we wouldn't have an obesity epidemic - there's a huge psychological element behind obesity that often people ignore or just simply don't understand.

I don't have a psychological element to my obesity (as far as I'm aware lol) but I believe there is a physiological element (coupled with good old fashioned gluttony ). I have no concept of when I'm satisfied and I do burn less than the average calorific usage of most women. There are ways of boosting your metabolism and I'm currently doing the Slimming World plan which works wonders for us greedy folk.

I do think that a certain amount of responsibility falls on the "patient" (and all of it in my case) but it's not a clear cut thing with a lot of obese people.