Smoking, obesity and the NHS.?

There seems to be a body of opinion that does'nt want to treat smokers or overweight people on the NHS because they've contributed to their own problems. Using that criteria shouldn't we also refuse treatment to people sufferring with AIDS? The vast majority of whom contracted the disease during one of lifes more pleasureable moments.

old know all, don't give them any more ideas.

I think people misunderstand the issue here.

The reason smokers and obese people are sometimes (note "sometimes") restricted in what care is available to them on the NHS, is because doctors know that outcomes from surgery and other treatments for these people are often very, very poor.

No anesthetist is going to agree to surgery on a patient whose lungs are so wrecked by smoking that the anesthetic will likely kill them.

Similarly, no surgeon is going to operate on a morbidly obese person because the stress of the surgery will likely kill the patient.

This is why smokers and obese people are told, respectively, to give up smoking and lose weight.

Simple.

What's the alternative? The NHS succumbs under the weight of law suits from relatives of smokers and fat people who die on the operating table?

We'd save a lot of money if the NHS stopped treating sick people.

Same could be said about drug abusers, alcoholics.... The reason the NHS came about was so that treatment could be afforded by everyone, and as everyone pays taxes, no one area should be refused that treatment. Just my personal opinion.

The NHS was set up for all and should be for all. I'm a none smoker and normal weight but am dead set against the discrimination that seems to be all around at the moment. Smokers and the overweight pay as much as anyone else in NI contributions and taxes so are as entitled to treatment as anyone else.
Are we going to refuse treatment to sports players who become injured on the grounds it is their own fault for doing something 'risky'? Or refuse to deliver babies as the mother deliberately became pregnant?.....This country is becoming ridiculous.

You could go on and on in that vain. Not everyone with smoke related problems are smokers, its called passive smoking just as everyone who is over weight eats to much. Ever heard of a disease called Elephantiasis. It's when your lymph nodes stop working usually because of an operation. The fluid in that part of your body stops circulating goes hard and causes swelling which makes the sufferer look huge.It's also extremely painful. Taking the cause in mind I would argue the operation caused this therefore the surgeon is to blame not the patient. Aids is much the same. It's not all caused through unprotected sex. Blood transfusions, children born with the disease, need I go on. But to answer your question yes there are those in the medical profession who think this way esp. in my experience anaesthetists.

The NHS is a Labour monument to society, and despite inevitable problems the Conservatives would love to undermine it with the introduction of such measures as you mention.