[tebbers]

As a Brit this article is laughable. People are literally dying in the UK because so called wonderful 'free' public healthcare doesn't have the ambulances to send to them. Tons of potholes everywhere too. Outside London and major cities, public transport is non-existent to very poor.

[dgildeh]

I know us Brits like to complain, but when I drove there last year the roads were all brand new and fantastic compared to what we have over here in California!

I did think to add some caveats about the NHS, my sister works there so I'm aware of all the issues there. However, I would rather choose that system, over the one here, which is extremely expensive, and doesn't even look after you if you lose your insurance for whatever reason.

I think overall, I would say the UK has a lot of challenges, and if I was still living there, I would actually feel ok to pay more taxes to support those services, because I'd be using them.

As opposed to here, where I pay almost the same rate of taxes, and feel like I get nothing in return!

[giantg2]

You both are funny. You haven't seen potholes until you've driven in PA.

[robopsychology]

They moved strokes to a 'Category 2' condition that requires an ambulance to arrive in 45 minutes. Having a father who had a stroke early in his life, this sickens me. My trust in the NHS is minimal and seeing how good the healthcare is in California I will be going private when I return. It is night and day, and my private insurance is less than my NI contributions were in the UK. If I message my doctor on my healthcares mobile application I could get an appointment within 2 hours. If I want a blood test I can go to the local office at Stanford and get one within 30 minutes, with my results sent to the healthcare app by the time I get home. It's just so so much better, the NHS really has failed when I look at it from here.

[pjc50]

The NHS needed a chunk of money put into it during COVID and afterwards, but so much was taken by "track and trace" and overt fraud (Michelle Mone etc) that it's struggling with budget and staff. The "£350m a week for the NHS" promised at Brexit never really arrived.

[robopsychology]

The NHS is the sixth largest organisation by employee-count in the world. At some point I think we have to address the elephant in the room that throwing money at it won't fix it, and we should look to other European countries that have a hybrid public/private system to help push efficiency and cost savings. There's so much inefficiency in the NHS it is mind-boggling and I firmly believe it would be addressed if they started to have to compete. The issue with private healthcare in the UK is they don't have the specialists they need to operate real hospitals - if you have complications in a private hospital they take you to an NHS hospital.

[burdapoint]

The NHS is chronically under-funded compared with other western European countries on a per-capita basis. It is one of the most efficient systems in the world in terms of £ in and outcomes out.

The underfunding is the cause of the inefficiencies that you have probably seen. It literally does not have enough staff, buildings, beds, mri machines etc to operate and is constantly fire-fighting.

Yes, it's a big employer, and? It provides health care to 70 million people, of course it is. Why do you think competition would improve things? the US spends more than 2x as much per capita.

[Symbiote]

NI primarily pays for unemployment benefits, state pension etc. You can't compare the NI numbers with health insurance.

[Symbiote]

Britain gets worse the longer a Tory government is in control, but should recover gig when that ends.

I notice there are now more potholes, more "please don't abuse our staff" signs, more strikes, more working-to-rule, more dirt, more delays, more homeless.

I think the article is correct if you consider it an average of the last 10 years or so.