In a post Covid world where wars are raging and against a background where the British NHS waiting lists are still incredibly high and with that NHS in crisis and in the middle of a doctors strike, it seems likely that the UK demand for private medical insurance is likely to soar.
John Aglionby in a solid article featured in the Financial Times of January 13th 2024, has pointed out that as people struggle to access the health care that they need, the demand for private medical insurance will increase. Based on figures for payouts of almost three billion private medical claims in 2022, the last year for which there is full data, Aglionby’s assertions seem realistic.
However, not everyone will be able to afford to finance their medical care through private medical insurance and it seems likely that many people in this country will be looking hard at alternative routes for securing health care provision. We may even be looking at a scenario that is virtually pre NHS in its thinking, where we could see people reverting back to their family health knowledge and the ways in which their parents and grandparents responded to illness within the family when they may not have been able to afford doctor’s fees.
At that time, the familial health care approach is likely to have been largely through herbal medicine and homoeopathy. On top of this and at a time when we do not know if we are dealing with long Covid or the effects of Covid vaccinations, many people are already looking for answers outside of conventional allopathic medicine.
Here at the Glasgow Complementary Medicine Centre, since 1986 we have been at the forefront of that herbal medicine/homeopathic milieu, an area which we still lead in, although we currently also offer acupuncture, hypnotherapy and various approaches to psychotherapy.