Pricey advice

If you had any sneaking suspicion that private health care might be better than the state-run system, the way a worried Times journalist was fleeced should be a wake-up call.

Richard Kerbaj phoned a private doctor because he thought he might have swine flu. The doctor asked if he had any symptoms, pronounced him fit and well, gave him the number for the NHS helpline - and charged him £99.

But suppose he did actually catch swine flu, he asked? Stay in bed, said the doctor, ring the NHS helpline and if necessary they'll provide some medicine.

And the cost if he had got exactly the same advice from his NHS doctor - or from an online source? Precisely nothing.

Despite all the evidence, there's still a general assumption that private care is always superior to public provision, that paying huge sums of your own money guarantees something extra.

But apart from merely being told something you could have been told by the NHS, you're just as likely to experience medical errors. It's simply that they're easier to conceal in private clinics.

If a routine operation leads to a serious complication like cardiac arrest, a private clinic may not have the specialist equipment or staff to deal with it. If they can't get you to an NHS hospital fast, you could die.

Many private surgeons are the same surgeons who work for the NHS, and the chances of their making a mistake are much the same. They're equally likely to be overworked, stressed, tired or simply incompetent.

Yes, you can probably jump a queue for treatment and get an operation in a few days. But if the operation goes wrong, what have you gained?

If I ever have £99 burning a hole in my pocket, it won't be going to Dr Tell-You-The-Bleeding-Obvious, that's for sure.

Scary pigs

Aren't you totally terrified of swine flu? According to the media, it might kill tens of thousands, devastate businesses and trigger countless miscarriages and birth defects. We should all be quaking in our boots.

Thank God for one intrepid soul ignoring the screaming headlines and asking what the fuss is all about. It's only flu, says columnist Simon Jenkins. If you get it, just take an aspirin and wait for it to go away again.

It's not even as debilitating as other types of flu, he reminds us. We'll hardly know we've got it. A sore throat, runny nose, aching muscles - hardly the end of the world. The only people dead so far are those with underlying medical conditions that make it hard to fight the infection. So why the panic?

But the tabloids are conjuring up lines of coffins and ravaged families, the government are diverting cash and staff from elsewhere in the health service, two thousand phone advisers have been recruited and reams of advice have been issued (much of it contradictory and confusing).

Pregnant women are scared they might lose their baby, but the risk is no greater than for any other flu. The woman who died after giving birth had used a wheelchair for 15 years and had serious medical problems.

We should all take a deep breath, turn our bullshit-detectors up a few notches and just laugh heartily at all the lurid headlines. Haven't these journalists got anything better to do, like asking why poverty and illiteracy are still so common in a highly developed country?

I sometimes think journalists get a sort of sadistic thrill from frightening us out of our wits and creating doomsday scenarios out of remote possibilities. Still, why let the truth stand in the way of a good story?

PS: Of course swine flu is child's play compared with the horrors of man flu....

PPS: Drug companies and retailers are making a killing out of swine flu hysteria, selling a gullible public everything from anti-bacterial hand wipes to thermometers and face masks. It's reported that internet sales of bogus Tamiflu are now higher than bogus Viagra....