Smoking Could Mean No Healthcare
Written by Stuart Stevens | Friday, 05 October 2007 | There are 0 comments
smokers are costing the NHS a large amount of money every year
Almost ten percent of all National Health Service hospital trusts are now restricting operations for people who are smokers according to a new report. In all sixteen out of the 152 hospital trusts in the United Kingdom have official policies in place which will restrict non emergency surgeries for smokers unless they first quit their habit.
The idea is that it is a utter waste of money to operate on a person who is constantly damaging his health by lighting up cigarettes everyday. Many of these hospital trusts also restrict non essential surgery for people who are extremely overweight unless they first make an effort to shed some pounds.
Critics of this policy infer that the actual reason for the surgery restrictions are due to hospital trusts being short of money and thus they are trying to find any way to slow down the number of surgical operations conducted every year. People who support this policy say that smokers are costing the National Health Service a large amount of money every year and this cash must be put to better use than trying to save people who have little interest in their own health anyway. There is also the argument that by telling people that they have to quit smoking in order to have an operation could in fact force them to quit and so it is in their interests anyway.
Smoking related illnesses cost the National Health Service millions of pounds each and every year and it is hoped that the new smoking ban enacted in the United Kingdom recently will help to lower the amount of people who smoke and also therefore reduce the big health bills that the state has to cough up for every year.
Many countries all around the world are enacting smoking bans in public places and the cynics say that real motivation for this policy is financial savings in the health sector. Whatever the reason, many individuals find it much easier to quit smoking now as they are not always surrounded by cigarettes in public places.
