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Comment by this_user | Hacker News Reader

Maybe should actually read the article.

> The National Health Service, the celebrated pillar of the British cradle-to-grave welfare state, has a backlog of 6 million patients—almost a tenth of the population—waiting for treatment. The health service now has to spend more money settling maternity-malpractice claims than it does on actually providing maternity care. Many Brits can neither obtain an appointment with a publicly funded dentist nor afford a private one; in a 2023 survey, one in 10 reported doing DIY dental work, in extreme cases extracting their own teeth or gluing broken crowns back together.

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That article fails to note that the USA lags behind the UK in global rankings of overall dental health. We are either joint fourth (Sweden) or fifth; the USA is ninth.

NHS dentists are scarce for policy reasons that are inexcusible. But private dental care here is not actually particularly expensive unless you want it to be, and it is good.

(Again, don't imagine that "private healthcare" in the UK is expensive in the way it is in the USA).

We have our problems and they are escalating in some ways, but my main issue with this article is that again US writers tend to assume that words and terminology have their US meaning and broader connotations.

Standard of living comparisons that use US concepts (car ownership, air conditioning ownership, even in the recent past comparing how many people dry their clothes outdoors, which is common American poverty indicator) just cannot capture the nuance in a way that makes sense.

>The health service now has to spend more money settling maternity-malpractice claims than it does on actually providing maternity care

This figure is from an article in the Times, and has no connection to official NHS figures. The Times just guessed how much it might be, and reported it as fact. Then, since The Times is a paper of record, other news outlets have run with it.

> since The Times is a paper of record,

You misspelt "is the paper of Rupert Murdoch".

It is paywalled. I only had access to the first two paragraphs. Regardless, that description changes nothing. "The NHS is overburdened" is a problem, but it is still better than not having the NHS at all.

https://archive.ph/FMSfO

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