[vidarh]

As someone in the UK with income in the top 1%, I have never bothered with private insurance because I genuinely don't feel I need it. I occasionally pay for private GP services, and I've paid for some private services for my son, but for the most part the NHS works. It has waiting times for non-essential things, and if you don't want that, you can pay for insurance that gets you seen faster and it costs a pittance. But if you need treatment, you get it. Overall, paying cash for healthcare here is also so much cheaper that for Americans, for elective procedures with short-ish recovery, flying to London can be a cost-effective option compared to US hospitals.

I'm sure that if you're rich enough, you have fantastic care available in the US, but from what I've seen of prices for pretty basic stuff, I'm not so convinced most of the top 20% in the US have healthcare I'd consider tolerable.

[vkazanov]

As someone in the same income range, and many friends in comparable spot, I have to say that NHS is sometimes ok.

Here's an NHS case.

Case 1. My friend's wife had her body going numb, like, completely senseless. They didn't have a private insurance back then. It was maddening hard to get past the GP. And then there were numerous tests, and queues, and... She had a viral brain infection that was, luckily, easy to fix. Could go horribly wrong should they wait for a couple more months.

The problem is that GPs are afraid to assign tests other than the most simple blood tests (unless it's an obviously broken bone).

Case 2. My wife fainted in the middle of a family dinner. It looked serious, and I recognized the sympthoms thanks to dr. ChatGPT. Our car was at service that day. I was trying to get an ambulance but calling all the publicly available NHS numbers but all we got were endless questioneers. We had to force the situation by taking a taxi right to the hospital door. She had an urgent surgery the same evening, quite serious.

Again, there's just TOO MUCH backpressure from NHS at the entrance. Once you get past these filters, it actually it decent.

OTOH, with my highest tier private insurance I had an MRI scans, kidney checks, blood tests all done within a week or two, mostly because of how I had to coordinate things between various private clinics. Not fast, sure, but acceptable.

[vidarh]

"all the publicly available NHS numbers"? The number you should call if it looks serious is 999 (or 112; same thing). If they don't send an ambulance, then sure, that's a problem (and one worth filing a complaint about), but the times I've called 999 the reaction has been immediate.

As for tests, one of the reasons they "are afraid" has nothing to do with being afraid, but what is medically indicated. A lot of private services will do everything "just in case", the NHS won't. That means you often get people wondering why they've not been sent to an MRI for example (as one of the most common examples), because it's only actually affecting outcomes for a very small set of diagnoses. But some GPs certainly do get it wrong, and people need to be more aggressive about changing GPs if they feel they're not being heard.

[vkazanov]

Yes, I know, 999 was what we called.

So how it works, unfortunately, is that GPs get a lot of pressure to not do things "just in case". But "just in case" is the only way you can notice things that are wrong on a deeper level.

What, for example, is "back pain"? In 90% of the cases this can be fixed by, say, 10 sessions with a physio. But sometimes it can mean something serious, like a spinal disk injury.

Or sleepiness. 98% of that can be fixed with lifestyle and diet changes. But sometimes this can a sympthom of something scary.

Or my wife's example: didn't feel quite right for 3-4 weeks then fainted. Turned out to be serious. The full GP discussion would have taken weeks.

Or my friend's example: increasing numbness, nothing serious at first. Major brain infection. The GP actively tried to downplay things.

I don't know if there is a solution to this. Right now it feels that without chatgpt-assisted self-diagnoses and being aggressive with getting over the GP wall the system tries to avoid helping out.

[HDThoreaun]

On the other hand doctors on the US prescribe far too many tests. These tests are generally set to have a 5% false positive rate so if you prescribe 14 tests you’re more likely than not to get a false positive. From talking to doctors it seems extremely common for something like that to happen and it’s always a headache when it does.

[archagon]

How much do you pay for your private insurance?

[vkazanov]

Wasn't me, it's a corporate perk

[mytailorisrich]

As soon as you need treatment beyond standard GP/prescriptions, like checks/analyses or specialised consultation/treatment then private insurance comes very handy to get good care quickly.

Waiting times are not only for non-essential things. The only thing with no waiting time is A&E if you are in immediate danger of death.

The NHS is some "safety net" that does the bare minimum at this point, or no longer anything at all (eg. dentistry).

Interestingly, nowadays if you have a good job and private insurance in China you get better routine checks than in Europe/UK. Even Chinese hospitals are extremely thorough and quick compared to British ones (at least the main Chinese cities)

[vidarh]

I have had extensive rounds of tests for various things with the NHS over the last several years, and never had a problem sufficient to feel private insurance, even as cheap as it is in the UK, to be worth it. I don't doubt it's worth it for some, but there's a reason - and while costs will stop some, costs does not explain nearly all of it, given how cheap it is - that only about 10% of the UK population has private insurance, even with the underfunding of the NHS in recent years (e.g. 20%-30% lower healthcare spend for capita PPP adjusted than comparable economies does have an effect).

There's an inflection point, sure, where you start spending enough privately that the insurance is worth it, but so many of these things are so cheap here anyway that the gap from between where it starts to pay off until you're ill enough to get reasonably fast treatment with the NHS is quite narrow.

Sometimes people think it is wider than it really is because people want and push for treatments that are not medically indicated. E.g. patients pushing for pointless MRIs is common enough that same-day MRIs is a huge industry here even though they only make an impact on outcomes for very specific symptoms.

[mytailorisrich]

Private care is still quite affordable on a good salary so I can understand that you feel that private insurance is not worth it, but you were also very lucky with your NHS experience.

For instance the UK have very bad outcomes for cancer because things tend to be caught late and treatment delayed thereafter. Frankly, for anything potentially serious or time-sensitive I would go straight private (and in fact the NHS tells you to do that when they ask you if you have private insurance).

The NHS has much bigger problems than funding. Even the new, left-wing government has indicated that they won't increase funding without reforms.

[vidarh]

> The NHS has much bigger problems than funding. Even the new, left-wing government has indicated that they won't increase funding without reforms.

It's always very convenient to starve something of funding for years when you want to insist something needs to be reformed before you can spend as much as it costs to provide service at an adequate quality.

Reform or no reform, outcomes won't improve without increasing the funding, as no other system in a comparable country manages to deliver more at the NHS cost level.

[mytailorisrich]

The point is that throwing ever more money at a bottomless pit isn't a solution. Hence there must be changes, not just more money.

Another issue is that the NHS is a religion. It is blasphemous to suggest departing from free-of-charge delivery or private involvement (although that's already what we have). Even suggesting "reform" is badly received.

[consteval]

The reason is that private intervention is tricky. The US has a fully private healthcare system, and as you can see from this post, it's shit.

I'm from the US so excuse any oversimplifications, but over the past couple decades I've noticed a trend of US-ification in British politics. I would be careful with looking to greener pastures.