Why not? If NHS pays for it, it's funded by the taxpayers. If the regulatory agency pays for it, it's funded by taxpayers. I should note: I'm talking about being on the hook for the cost, not placing the fault.

Edit: this completely depends on whether or not the UK gov't pursues, and receives money from, the provider of the product.

Ok to clear up some things for Hedwards.
1. NHS docs are Salaried we got rid of per item pay as we felt that led to doctors doing more things than were actually needed to get their pay up.
2. The NHS is responsible for helping those that are ill, defective implants which they did not fit themselves (they will do implants for psychological reasons, not elective, you need a doc and a psychiatrist to sign off to get them on the NHS) are not their responsibility unless the person falls ill because of them.

Whats happend in this case is the NHS has rightly turned round and said it is not their responsibility to remove the implants but the responsibility of those that performed the surgery (if that company has since gone bust they have actually taken on the responsibility so they can be safely removed).

The argument is really happening to stop private firms charging stupidly low costs for surgery then giving the tax payer the burden of fixing it if something goes wrong.

Thank you, as you probably guessed this doesn't affect me one way or another, I'm just really curious about what's going on. I also am aware that the NHS isn't the nightmare that our politicians suggested it was when they were trying to beat back our efforts to institute a system to cover everybody.

I'll probably stop responding in here because I think I understand what's going on and sort of why in a general way. And things seem to now be going in circles a bit.

Again thanks to all for the perspective, I hope someday to be able to assume that I'll have coverage regardless of what happens to me.

Put it this way theres a quote the republicans made huge use of during their anti medical push about how a woman "nearly died" under NHS care what they did there was cut off the begining and end of the quote as it was actually about how the NHS saved her life and had she been in america at the time it would have cost her millions in health care.

That doesn't surprise me at all. I read the BBC regularly and I've never gotten the impression that the over all care from the NHS is lower than our care in the US. Sure it probably is less than what you get if you pay a buttload of money on private insurance and have a personal doctor, but for the care that people in the US actually have, assuming they have insurance, it's better over all.

Personally, I have a plan right now that's substantially less than what NHS would offer. It's a catastrophic plan and I have a $2k deductible and max out of pocket for $6k and no medication coverage and limited doctor's visits before paying the deductible. The only reason why I have a plan that I probably won't be able to use after this month is that I can't afford to pay the $500+ a month that I likely would end up paying if I end up in the high risk pool.

I currently am out of work because of that I have completely free health care when I was in work my max dental cost was £150 my max medical cost was £6.50 per perscription (note not per drug per perscription).
Now considering I have a phobia of dentists and have to see a specialist each time (I literally freak out once I enter the room no idea why...) I kinda like the NHS...

Well, that doesn't cover dental. I haven't bothered with dental insurance in years because it's so expensive for what you get. Unless one is in need of a root canal, bridge or many fillings it's generally cheaper to pay out of pocket. $600 for the year versus about half that if you just pay for the cleanings.

+1 for this.

£150 is a complete dental rebuild because of my phobia I put off the dentist waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too long I'm currently half way through a complete rebuild with permanent replacements >.<

Anecdotal evidence could put it either way. We have rockin' care locally, with costs well below the national average.

I seriously doubt it, there's likely to be very low maximums for some things that you just simply haven't needed. It certainly doesn't cover any kind of serious dental. Need an endodontist to redo a root canal? Good luck with that. Need Alledel instead of Locoid? That'll be a $50 copay instead of $10. Does your child need weekly speech therapy (or even 2-3 times per week)? You'll be out of coverage by the end of February. What if your child needs something even more expensive, occupational therapy perhaps? Have fun with that one too. Is your vision hardware 100% covered? Most people get 15% or so off retail. Your vasectomy will be covered, no problem, will a reversal be covered even if you're in massive, post vasectomy pain? Probably not. What's the lifetime maximum? Is it the old, good amounts (5 million or more?) or the new, kind of shitty amounts (usually under 1 million, some low enough that they'd cut off before the end of serious cancer treatments).

I don't doubt that you've had a lot of labs and stuff paid for, maybe even some that you were surprised they covered, some coverage is very good, relatively, as long as you kind of luck out. Even United Healthcare (a very large provider nation-wide with mediocre care) charges upwards of $800 per month for family coverage. That's not something a married pair of $9/hour people can usually pay for.

Some states are better than others about demanding minimum treatment levels from any insurance company that operates in said state, even if you get some benefit from company X, don't be surprised if it's denied to everyone else in the other 49 states.

You're talking payment and insurance. I'm talking quality of care. Two different things.

I think it will go like this.

This clinic is liable to the customer and has to compensate him for any unexpected faults.

The manufactorer is liable to the clinic and has to compensate the clinic for any unexpected faults.

The clinic can rely on any approval agency. Should it turn out that they were careless then you can surely sue them. Only in Europe the height of such compensations are greatly limited.

If it turns out that the manufactorer fooled the approval agency then the agency is out of the game but now the manufactorer would even be on criminal charges. Then the bosses could go to jail.

Anyway if the manufactorer is bankrupty the clinic is misfortunate because the hope of getting the money back they have to spend for compensating the customers is very low then. In this case maybe the clinic could have gotten an insurance against such cases. Or it just has to select the providers more carefully, maybe double-checking the quality, ...

But you're right. This should not have happened. Somebody made a mistake/crime and this person should pay for it - in a good system.

However it is impractical if all the customers would sue the manufactorer directly. Instead let the retailer, last contract partner do it. Also that adds a value to be last contract partner.

The other way around if the clinic goes bankrupty, then of course customers could directly sue the manufactorer, since it is their faulty material.

Only in the case that both, clinic and manufactorer go out of business then the customer should pay for himself/herself.

But then the NHS pays presumably. I don't really like it. I don't really like to socialize the costs of aesthetic surgery but this is different - it's basically like an illness/health threat through no fault of one's own. So it's okay to be covered by the NHS which in turn can try to get the costs back from the clinic which in turns can sue the manufactorer if he is still available.

I have lived in the US and the UK, unfortunately I find it all too easy to believe the misconceptions about socialised medicare after the media frenzy that was concocted by the conservative politicians in 2009. To be completely honest, I have not noticed a difference in the quality of care, UK hospitals don't have huge fountains and they don't hassle you for your insurance information...and that's where the dis-similarities end.

According to wikipedia (the link for which is below) the costs per capita in the UK are half of what they are in the US, there are a couple reasons for this: One, they are trading medical supplies with European Community countries which also have socialised medicare, and therefore the cost is spread over a larger area. And two, doctors on average make between £80,000 and £100,000. That easily puts them in the top 5% income bracket, but it is about half of what a doctor could hope to make in the US. One of the reasons they make so little compared to US doctors is because medical school here costs a fraction of what it does in the US (£50,000 compared to $200,000, although that costs has gone up with the recent bastardized sell-off of our university system by the bastard Conservatives...yeah, they suck in every country).

As for the issue of the implants, my opinion is that they are faulty and the private medical facilities that fitted them should be held responsible. I've heard that the implants are not dangerous but they were designed for going in a mattress not a woman's body. Medical procedures and products should not be treated with caveat emptor and they should get a refund or the a new procedure that does it correctly without extra costs. It should be noted that consumers in the UK have much greater protection against faulty products and property than their counterparts in the US, so for US readers that finds this unusual remember that UK buyers are used to and entitled to a greater degree of protection. The link for the UK's The Sale of Goods Act is below for anyone who wants to look into it further.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_health_expenditure_(PPP)_per_capita
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1979/54/contents

What tends to confuse me about that is largely that it's not really US private insurance against socialized medicine, it's basically US private insurance against dozens of different socialized medicine systems.

It's worth noting that around here public facilities are required to spend 1% of taxpayer dollars on artwork as part of the funding process, so if you go to one of our public hospitals you'll see fountains or paintings and that sort of thing. In the offices themselves that is usually paid for by the doctors.