Mike, NHS is the envy of the world” who said that? Why has no other country copied it? In particular western European countries who after the war rebuilt their states and had every opportunity.
Well, WW I have been a contributor to the NHS for over half a century, and reliant upon it for the last 10 years, and once before in the early eighties, and to compare the service received, I have attended several hospitals and doctors surgeries etc throughout Europe, Scandinavia, Australasia, and the Americas, for accidents and emergencies etc., not just for me, but for the whole family and whereas some are state of the art super providers, there is usually a super price to pay as well, compared to the free service here!
Having had one particular parachuting accident, the cost in the US would have been some $150,000 compared to zero here, and a cousin had a bone marrow treatment costing over $5million , yes Million, in California, whereas here would have been free on the NHS, , I could go on, but this sort of personal experience and anecdotal evidence from my travels confirms that the NHS is the envy of the World, as far as patients are concerned .
‘Patients’, Politicians may ask in some surprise, but let’s not forget that the NHS was established as a service for ‘patients’ not and I repeat not as a career path for staff, medical or otherwise, and certainly not something to be used by politicians & trade unions alike, to gain political points, and he plain fact is that this ‘badly managed, highly inefficient money pit is eating up money at a frightening rate, a lot of which is wasted instead of being used to provide ‘ super healthcare ‘?
Nevertheless it is a Godsend but clearly is not perfect, and really is often badly managed & poorly financed, and in some areas is grossly inefficient .
I used to volunteer in a hospital and met many people from other countries who felt that our NHS was superb!