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Comment by ReptileMan | Hacker News Reader

A lot of fellow Eastern Europeans travel back home to get medical care. This is good testament about the quality of care and personal in UK - since ours are like take out of a horror movie

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Eastern Europeans doing "medical tourism" is often powered by higher salaries in the West and lower living standards in the East. That's true not only for healthcare but for majority of services. You absolutely can get quality private care in the West - it's just much more expensive. The private care is also much less affordable for the locals in the East.

Since when is NHS private care?

The three options are NHS, private local and private Eastern Europe. On the axes of fast, cheap/cheaper, near, you can pick two.

At least in Germany, you can opt out for private health insurance. I don't know if that's the case in the UK. There're also many private hospitals in Denmark. And in the latter, you have right to get treated in those if there're no public healthcare options available in reasonable time. But both Germany and Denmark suffer from the same issues as the UK, of course.

That is to say, private care is often available in the West. It just comes with a hefty price tag.

While true, isn't that a rich life benefit in general? E.g. Brits can choose (important hat they have options) to trade some time to get even cheaper and just as good healthcare services compared to Mississippians who don't have such an option at all. So an aggregated quality of life for Brits is even higher because of that.

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