[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.