The British government has been running the National Health Service, the largest government-run health care system in the world, on a tight budget for more than a decade. The NHS often bragged about having one of the most efficient health care systems in the developed world. On average, it spent less per person than its big European neighbors and a lot less than the U.S.
Now, the service paid for by the government is falling apart. On average, people who are having a heart attack or stroke have to wait more than 1.5 hours for an ambulance. People are being turned away from hospitals because they are too full. More than one in ten people in England, or 7.1 million, are on waiting lists for non-urgent hospital care like hip replacements. On Monday, thousands of paramedics and nurses went on strike, making it the largest strike in the NHS’s history.
The problems with the NHS are an extreme case of problems that are happening all over the developed world. Covid hurt healthcare systems a lot, and now people are living longer and have more ways to treat their illnesses. Costs will keep going up because people are living longer. The U.K.’s experience shows what can happen when the number of healthcare providers can’t keep up with the number of people who need them.
“The U.K. health care system is in a crisis like I’ve never seen before in my career,” said Nigel Edwards, the retiring head of the healthcare think tank Nuffield Trust and former head of the NHS. “The U.K. has made the mistake of thinking that cheapness means efficiency when it comes to health care, and it’s coming back to bite them.”
In order to save money, the NHS has cut thousands of hospital beds over the past ten years. Patients had to wait a long time to get treatment because Covid kept them waiting. In December, when the flu season got really bad, England’s hospitals were already at 98% full. The huge number of sick people clogged up the system in a terrible way.
Delays in treating people are causing >>> Continue at WSJ
Source: Wall Street Journal – Rephrased by InfoArmed