So let her pay to have it done privately - if not in the the UK then elsewhere. What she doesn't have the money you say? Then too bad - she should have saved her money earleir. Her fellow citizens don't owe her anything. Health care isn't a right.
She should take responsibility for her self. So...get a second mortgage, have your relatives kick in, spend your savings, sell you stuff, stand on as street corner with a sign. The alternative is to take your chances. No one owes you anything. Society owes you nothing.
What a jerk. This isn't about a private citizen with free market health care. This is about a person who has been made to pay into a mandated health care system which she believed would pay for her care no matter what age she is. Health care is a right when the government forces you to participate and makes you buy their insurance, that makes it a right. This woman is a victim of socialism and most likely the reason she has no money to pay for the operation is because the government taxed it all away from her and her husband in their younger years.