[arethuza]

"In the UK if you opt out of public healthcare you can't mix and match services beyond the GP level, this may change in the future."

What do you mean by this? You can have pretty much any health service privately in the UK if you want to pay for it e.g. from BUPA:

http://www.bupa.co.uk/

[tankenmate]

If you choose to get elective surgery for a condition rather than waiting in the queue for the NHS your room isn't covered by the Govt, your post-op prescriptions aren't covered, etc. If you do wait however they are covered. If you need corrective surgery afterwards to fix something that went wrong in the first op you normally aren't covered for that by the NHS either.

[arethuza]

For some reason none of that sounds particularly unreasonable to me - once you decide to opt out of the NHS then you have to accept that you are paying for all of the costs. Note that this view might be because I'm in the UK and have private health insurance - although everything major (accidents, childbirth) I've relied on the NHS.

While mixing and matching might seem sensible I suspect that the resulting administrative complexities might introduce the same kind of inefficiencies that the US system appears to suffer from.

[rwmj]

That's different from opting out, which would mean not paying for the NHS at all. This is buying additional coverage.

You can't opt out of the NHS in the UK, except by not paying taxes, which usually results in a spell in prison.