Cosmetic surgery is not widely available on the NHS. Only in certain situations do the NHS pay for cosmetic procedures, but where should the line be drawn between cosmetic surgery necessary and beneficial and people using it because of physcological reasons. The NHS spend around £5.7million on giving people surgery, should costs be cut or rules be tighter.
Only on rare occasions do the NHS pay for cosmetic surgery, only if it is required to protect someone’s health. For those with facial disfigurement it would be very difficult to feel ‘normal’ or comfortable with themselves. It seems fair procedures like removement off a faicial birthmark or congenital condition or disfigurement cause by illness or injury to be free on the NHS. People with this kind of problem simply cant help it, and may not have the money to spend on surgery. People in these situations must feel deeply grateful for the NHS’s payments.
However, many people (especially women) take advantage of the free surgery. It has been reported that women are persuading doctors to perform surgery by exaggerating their unhappiness with themselves. This makes the free surgery problematic as It puts pressure on the NHS to tighten rules, and makes it unfair on those that need surgery. It is wasting money operating on those that do not need surgery but want it. Surgeons feel pressured by patients and give in so they do not need to face the guilt of turning down an unhappy patient that strongly feels they need surgery. This is wasting money and makes you think twice about the free surgery. The NHS has a limited amount of money and needs to be spent carefully so patients that need treatment do not lose out.
Another procedure the NHS can pay for is bariatric or weight loss surgery. It makes sense to perform this surgery on seriously obese people as it reduces hospital admissions and cuts long term costs to the health service. The treatment makes patients less likely to have type 2 diabetes, high