Good article. It would be interesting if there were any cases of American children who had the same medical problems as Charlie Gard or Alfie Evans, and a comparison between the British process and the American process for dealing with it could be laid out in an article like this.
Single payer, with ‘affordability’ built in...gives you the cheapest health care possible. It’s not anything you’d want to brag about.
I reminded of a story out of the UK about twenty years ago. A Brit guy (bit overweight, maybe in the 250-270 lb pound range) had knee issues. His local medical group said yeah...you definitely need a knee replacement surgery. But they said....you have to lose roughly 60 pounds for us to approve the surgery.
The guy looked at them....in serious pain. There’s no way to build an exercise program or effect weight loss....with the knees in this condition. Their comeback was...we will give you pain-killers to help in this episode.
The guy goes back to a local pub to drink off this impossible solution. The pub owner, from India...speaks up about his cousin who is a doctor in India, and they do surgery like this for a much cheaper price. Communications go back and forth, and there’s this price suggested for the knee replacements, two weeks in some Indian resort hotel for recovery, full-up dinners, etc....all for around equivalent of 5,000 dollars. The guy pulls out some savings...gets some help from relatives, and pays for this out of his own pocket.
I think most Brits now operate this way.