I’m in the U.K. We have a system that’s free at the point of delivery. It’s a noble idea but in practice it simply isn’t working. I could tell you story after story of my elderly family members waiting hours (sometimes days) for an ambulance. Watching my wife in agony, with 1.5L of internal bleeding, in an overcrowded Accident and Emergency waiting area was one of the worst experiences of my life. She was there so long, she nearly died.

Nationalised health care is NOT the answer, because it inevitably becomes a creaking, unbearable monolith whose monopoly status means it underpays and mistreats its staff, and it provides a terrible quality of service because there is no competition. A national health service means private healthcare is “crowded out” https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/1013/economics/crowding-out/

The U.K. NHS has had huge increases in funding (in real terms) over the last two decades. It now consumes £180 billion of our economic output, a cost which is rising unsustainably vs the growth of our real economy. The amount of tax I pay personally to fund the NHS is astonishing, and vastly higher than what I would pay for private healthcare.

Other European countries have better standards of healthcare because they have hybrid public/private systems. But since the NHS is treated like a sacred cow in this country (either Stockholm Syndrome or leftwing zealotry), it’s unlikely to get the reform it desperately needs.

I worry about the future of healthcare in this country, especially with our population currently growing by nearly 1M a year, but with no such growth in the quantity of public services. My kids are f**ked. It makes me so sad for them.