Is that a joke? With NHS you have to wait to get GP appointments, wait several weeks for examination by specialists, more waiting in waiting list for surgery... The backlog for everything is huge!
In NHS you can literally wait years for non life threatening surgeries.
There is a long history (20 years) of people who gave up, did their surgeries in France, and sued NHS for reimbursement. More recent stories are from EU, when NHS was part of unified health system (they should pay for medical procedures done in other EU countries to UK citizens).
Dealing with NHS if you need surgery, is basically full time job. You have to navigate Kafka like administrative labyrinth. Sometimes you have to drive 10 hours, to other side of country, because the only specialist who takes new patients is in Scotland.
NHS is doing everything it can, not to pay! If you have any problems and can do so, save your mental health, and just do medical tourism to Turkey, Malaysia or Thailand!
how is this different from NHS?
Three weeks. I am told to wait three weeks. The doc wants it last week. We are having to call around and mess with coverage questions. Similar for my dad and a specialist. Waiting a month while having breathing issues.
People wait already for emergency medical situations, but we pay a premium. And I am still not sure what my 20% shared cost is gonna be for the ambulance and hospital stay. And yes, that factored into my decision to even be treated, which, had I stayed home, may have killed me.
Fuck our system. Medical should not be for profit. It should cost money to run because it should be a service.
In UK we had to wait 10 hours in ER before talking to doctors. Only passing out would get us some attention! Getting MRI was impossible in system. We had to pay privately for MRI, as part of building up case to get surgery approved.
And we also pay good money to NHS.
I still need an MRI. Haven't had one. It has been over a week and I am still waiting on a back up option to open up next week. Meanwhile, nobody knows what my heart is doing aside from EKGs that a nurse can run that say something aint right yet.
Our system is broken.
My experience of healthcare in capitalist America is exactly the same in that regard. I have a mole I want examined, and one of the dermatology practices I called (part of a major local health system) was taking appointments for March 2025! I usually have to wait 3 or 4 weeks to see my primary care doctor (though I suppose I could settle for a rando doctor with an opening or a nurse practitioner and be seen sooner, but whenever I've done that there have been other issues).