Every time I get into any kind of discussion with Brits and Euros (no longer a single entity, of course) about the relative state of our nations, I get hit with the “at least we have free health care” jibe.
Well, sometimes “free” is better than nothing; and sometimes, it’s a lot, lot worse:
Our 15 hours of hospital hell after my mother’s stroke. We saw patients urinating in the corridor, nurses being slapped and ambulances queuing for hours… the NHS is truly broken.
I had called my mother for a quick catch-up when it became clear that there was a serious problem.
It was about 10.30am, an average Wednesday two and a bit weeks ago, when my usually sparky, chatty, bright and switched-on mum answered the phone in a way that suggested something was terribly wrong.
With a befuddled voice, she told me she wasn’t feeling well. She was confused and couldn’t work out how to open the back door to let the dog out. ‘I’m supposed to be at work,’ she told me, ‘they keep calling. But I can’t understand how to do anything.’
Because I’m paranoid, and because her mother – my grandmother – had died of one 20 years ago, I immediately suspected she was having a stroke.
I remembered the famous F.A.S.T test to recognise the signs – F for facial drooping, A for arm weakness, S for speech problems, T for time being of the essence if you recognise any of these symptoms.
My mum couldn’t tell me about her face, or her arms, but her speech was confused in a way I hadn’t encountered in all my 45 years on the planet, so I immediately told her to stay where she was while I called 999.
The emergency operator told me the call was marked as high priority and that an ambulance would arrive as a matter of urgency. I would soon discover that my definition of terms such as ‘urgency’ and ‘high priority’ were very different to the definitions used by the NHS in 2025.
Read the whole thing, for the full horror.
Yes, that’s the NHS and has been the NHS for over a decade. And the Brits are mostly in denial about it, still remembering the “glory days” of free quality healthcare that really never were.
Labour created the NHS, Labour destroyed it, and now people are voting Labour based on promises to “fix it”, which in their book only means getting rid of more medical professionals and clinics and replacing them with more paper pushers, managers, and consultants in expensive office buildings to come up with new slogans and propaganda campaigns.
It’s not as bad here in the Netherlands but still there are interminable waiting lists for a LOT of things. I’ve been on a waiting list myself since June 2021, a waiting list that was supposed to be two and a half YEARS but I’ve now been on it for almost four and a half years with no end in sight (last I heard it might take 10 YEARS for me to be seen). Critical but expensive procedures like open heart surgery are rationed deliberately at numbers per year way lower than the number required, with budget for them usually running out by September and everyone who comes after that being told they’ll be put on the waiting list for the next year (most obviously don’t survive those months, both saving the government money on procedures not performed and hospital stays not made AND by raking in the death tax on all those inheritances (which are 25-50% of a person’s total estate).
Free is a term that means you don’t really know what you are truly paying for something.
In a situation with “free” healthcare, it could end up costing you your mobility and long term health or maybe even your life. Then the bill won’t matter much.
“Caveat emptor”
And people in the US scream for government run healthcare because “every other industrial nation has it.” They never look further than that let alone ask about quality or efficiency of healthcare. These people have never dealt with government bureaucracy. Can you imagine the healthcare system run with the courtesy of the IRS and the efficiency of the DMV or the planning and zoning department?
The proven way to drive prices down and quality up, is to increase competition so that providers compete for patients or clients. We do this for every other good or service. the only time when this isn’t feasible is in emergency situations.
And yet, on average, the NHS works far better than the US’s healthcare system. The problem is expecting perfection. Sorry, but that’s not possible.
FWIW when my late father had a stroke the ambulance arrived within 5 minutes.
I don’t know about the NHS working far better than the US’s healthcare system, but in the US almost any warm body that couldn’t geet a job as a burger flipper can find a job in a hospital and the greater majority of hospital docs can’t find a position with the typical co-op that seems to be the model of better medical care in the U.S. today.
Quentin, no, it doesn’t.
I remember a billboard ad for a local hospital which read something like: “You’ll be seen by a doctor within 45 minutes or your visit is free.”
That hospital is still in business — I drove past it last week — and I defy the NHS to match anything like that level of service.
Yes, we pay for our medical treatment — thanks to the socialized ObamaCare, a lot more than we should — and yes, there are a considerable areas in our “healthcare” which could and should be improved.
But when I had a small but worrying medical issue a while back, I got an appointment to see my GP that same afternoon. Try getting that service in NHS Britain, I dare you.
Our healthcare isn’t rationed, for the simple reason that it’s abundant. Within five miles of my house there are no fewer than six major hospitals, and an uncountable number of small emergency care offices and specialist centers. Good grief, when New Wife had to see a dermatologist a while back, she had a choice of four within three miles of her office.
And that’s just in Allen, TX. Back in Plano, the numbers are even greater.
The NHS sucks badly, and the only thing in its favor is that it’s “free” — and rationed, and sub-standard, and inefficient.
Thanks, but no thanks.
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But when I had a small but worrying medical issue a while back, I got an appointment to see my GP that same afternoon. Try getting that service in NHS Britain, I dare you.
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I have experienced just such service. I dropped off a letter on my way to lunch and got a call back (from my doctor) to discuss the issue early that very afternoon. Followed by a personal appointment. I suppose that my living within 200 yards of my GP might make a difference.
And I don’t have to worry about bankruptcy from medical bills.
The NHS is far from perfect, but the surprising thing is that it treats so many people that these incidents are so rare and newsworthy.
It doesn’t. It works worse than Medicaid and VA medicine, and THOSE are a disgrace.
The only thing the NHS is good at is cutting funding to actual medical care in favour of DEI initiatives.
COMING SOON TO A HOSPITAL NEAR YOU!
I worked with many Brit service techs off and on for about 20 years, we talked over lunch or beers many times, and my take away from those chats was whatever was decaying in UK – slipping quality in manufactured goods, union dominance, political shift to the Left, devaluation of skilled trades, third world immigration problems – seemed to follow in the USA 10-15 years later.
Three years ago, I walked into a local ER with chest pains, and sat in a numbered chair in a hallway, waiting…. and waiting…because there were about 250 Hispanics, whole families of from four to seven people, very few of whom spoke English, overwhelming the ER triage system with sniffles, sore throats and screaming infants. It was absolute chaos, and I cannot understand how any healthcare professional can stand to work in that environment. After waiting about two hours, during which time the chest pain occasionally brought me to my feet, a nurse finally hooked up an EKG, announced they would do some blood work and imaging. Over the next nine hours, I had two blood draws, two xrays, two CT scans and saw three different doctors, was told I would be admitted, told I would be discharged, was served a meal and given a room number, but never got there because they didn’t have transport to get me to the room, and in the end was discharged home with a bottle of nitroglycerin pills.
That was Thursday. My cardiologist squeezed me in Friday, I had echocardiogram Monday, and failed a stress test Tuesday, had an attempted angioplasty Thursday, was too far gone for that, and was lucky enough to see a good thoracic surgeon Friday who did a quad coronary bypass early Monday morning thanks only to a cancellation. I feel I’m lucky to still be here, no thanks to illegal immigration.
If I were in UK and subject to NIH, I’m sure I would have died.
Unlimited immigration from the third world will destroy any first world civilization. I have to wonder how NHS would do without the Asian and African mobs. Not as well a a private system, but surely better than the overwhelmed and criminally broken system it is now.
Without mass migration by leaches who never contribute a cent to the country any country does better.
Like the UK, the Netherlands and other European countries are swamped by massively rising costs of services while money to run those services is going down and down because it all goes to paying the social security for those masses (and the cost of dealing with the crime wave they inevitably bring with them).
And it’s little different in the US when it comes to government services, like medicare/medicaid.
I see it here where I live outside Amsterdam. When the mass migration explosion started, healthcare waiting lists and failured exploded quickly. Services offered were stripped to the bare minimum, triage systems implemented to prevent people from getting even that, etc. etc..
And now there are rumbles to exclude ALL citizens over 55 years old and ALL citizens with chronic conditions and diseases from any and all healthcare in order to save money. Which would rapidly kill off all those “useless elderly people” and allow the government to rake in a lot of money through the death tax as well!
I am in London this week after a short stay in Rotterdam with my wife for a medical conference.
My wife’s nieces, all 3 doctors in the NHS, are gathered round. They are brilliant young doctors and surgeons, beginning their career in a system that couldn’t give two shits about them.
All three are headed out. The oldest is heading to Johns Hopkins for a surgical residency. The middle is finishing her ophthalmology residency in London, before moving to a fellowship in the US in corneal transplants and she won’t be returning to the UK. The youngest, and the only one married, is a research radiologist who is moving to Germany, with the hopes of landing in the US as soon as that wraps up.
Their Dad is a surgeon in the UK. He is 70 years old, does two surgeries a month, sees maybe 30 patients a month and make £169K a year. He’s made it clear that he will never retire, as his pension in under £17K per year. He also gets 16 weeks off a year. His daughters work 90-hour weeks for £44/year, a free Tesla, and get 21 days off per year. They all work in shithole hospitals that are grossly understaffed and overwhelmed by patients. They also have to be escorted throughout the facility because of the danger of being accosted by patients, family fellow STAFF. The youngest one (married) was physically and sexually assaulted by a fellow staff member, and was advised by NHS to “keep this issue internal” or otherwise risk losing her residency.
Common theme? They all, except the Dad, want out.
I have worked in direct healthcare delivery as a provider (corpsman, PA, biomedical engineer) and executive (COO, CEO and BoD) for more than 50 years. No reputable first-word healthcare delivery system would comfortably compare itself to the NHS for any reason other than for it to serve as a bad example.
My BIL (the surgeon), was able to manage his prostate cancer by dint of his close association to fellow practitioners in the UK, but only through fraud and deceit. He got his surgery, and his post surgical F/U, by moving (on paper) to a district outside his own Trust. He called in favors, he lied, he and others like him deceived the public trust. He was not a one off. He himself will tell you that hundreds, if not thousands, of similar patients without similar relationships, did not achieve his results. Their outcomes? “well, of course, they died.”
That is precisely what the NHS expect you to do…die.