OAP pays for op with fake cheque
Aug 1 2006 17:48
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/5234656.stm
BBC wrote:
Retired painter and decorator Roy Thayers was facing a nine-month wait on the NHS to get an angioplasty.Instead, the 77-year-old wrote out a cheque for almost £9,000 for a private operation at Hammersmith Hospital - despite only having £10 in the bank.
...
"The idea came on the spur of the moment. I love life, I love my dogs, I love fishing - why should I die for the sake of money?""I wasn't going to worry about the law until it came to me," he said. "I paid into the NHS for years to look after me but now the doctors were telling me they wouldn't so who's robbing who?"
Pretty good he got away with this, though I imagine they will check more in the future...
That's wicked 8)
here's another good 'scam' I'm sure you'll all enjoy from Northampton in the 70s. From a recent issure of Northampton Socialist Forum's newsletter:-
28 years ago: Rita Ward and the Great Northampton Hospital ‘lie-in”
We hear a lot these days about the ‘creeping privatisation’ of the NHS. We have a Labour government committed to turning our free National Health Service into just another business along the lines of the American model, which sees poor people refused medical treatment because they can’t afford it. Although the current Thatcherite leadership of the Labour party is more vicious than most in it’s attacks on the NHS (foundation trusts and PFI schemes being their current weapons of choice) such
thinking is, unfortunately, far from new. As far back as 1977 NGH was the scene of a battle against a Labour government’s attempts to marketise the NHS which saw a brave housewife and rank and file trade unionists take on the government and NGH management.
Rita Ward, of St. James’ Park road, Northampton had been in severe pain for 18 months and was waiting for a desperately needed gallstones operation. She was told she would have to wait another year -
unless she coughed up £400 (a lot more money in those days) in which case she could have it that weekend! Rightly outraged
at this economic apatheid Rita determined that she would get the operation at the same time as she would
have done if she was rich. Flanked by her family and local trade unionists Rita walked into the hospital,
removed the coat which was covering her nightdress and laid down in an empty bed. The trade unionists
informed the hospital workers of the situation and told them that they expected them to show some
working-class solidarity and treat her like any other patient. The hospital workers obliged, looked after
Rita and refused to remove her.
The next day it was national news, with journalists descending on NGH to cover the story. The
right wing press screamed about ‘queue-jumping’ but others, notably Paul Foot, pointed out that there
shouldn’t be a queue in the first place and if there is one you certainly shouldn’t be able to get to the top of
it by being rich.
The outcome was that Rita got her operation in the next few days, and no other patients had operations cancelled or deferred. As the Daily Mail and the Labour government tore their hair out Rita Ward, Northampton housewife, gave the country a lesson in how direct action and working-class solidarity can defeat the attempts of the moneymen to deny us our basic rights. The small victory we won in Northampton 28 years ago has, however, been followed by many defeats. With the NHS being slowly run down and sold off, PFI schemes and ‘foundation hospitals’ introducing market principles into our health service and more and more NHS services being ‘contracted out’ to private profiteers how many more are being told, like Rita, that they have to pay for health care, but are unable to take the action she so bravely took?