It seems to me that the General Practitioners in the UK are just doing the job to pick up their inflated pay cheques each month. Medically speaking, I really feel on my own with this. I had a flare up a couple of weeks ago. I woke up, area around my mouth was blue, breathing was difficult and my O2 was 75. Phoned my GPs surgery, answer phone told me to go to their website. On their website it said all appointments for the day were fully booked and to call 911. 911 wanted to send an ambulance, I burst out crying on that, as it brought back the terror of the total neglect and incompetency I was subjected to from my last medical emergency 18 months ago. That's another story, but we settled on them sending an ambulance to give me what treatment they could at home. Ambulancemen were amazing, they gave me oxygen with a salbutamol nebuliser and stayed with me until my O2 was stable. A couple of days later, my daughter managed to get me a GP appointment. I asked the doctor for oxygen at home, he said he couldn't prescribe it, only the pulmonary rehabilitation team can do that. I asked for salbutamol to put in a nebuliser, he said he couldn't prescribe that either, that was the pulmonary team as well, but he didn't refer me to them. I asked for a prescription for Champix to help me stop smoking, he said he couldn't prescribe that, and I would have to go to the stop smoking clinic. The doctor did say he wanted a blood test, but they don't do them at the surgery. He gave me a piece of paper with instructions on how I could book the blood test. He also wanted me to have an x-ray, and gave me another piece of paper to book myself an appointment. So in my experience, mandatory National Insurance contributions are just more Government grift, to pay for a NHS service that isn't fit for purpose. That is the reason I'm doing all this research. My thoughts now are to get on a pharmaceutical trial, because that seems to be the only way my COPD / emphysema is going to be monitored by the medical profession.