My son has lived in the London area for 25 years. I know how their healthcare system works. You can be on the NHS plan OR you can buy private healthcare insurance.
There are hospitals for those who use NHS and SEPARATE hospitals for those with private policies. If you have a private policy, you see a doctor faster and if you have to be the hospital, you have a private room.
If you have NHS and wait a long time to see a doctor and then have to be in the hospital, you are placed in a ward with other patients in a NHS hospital for the masses.
My son's wife wanted them to have NHS free medical care as she, a liberal, wanted to be like the majority of people so he canceled the private policy. Then, she had a bleeding ulcer and had to be in the hospital in a ward for a number of days. She said she couldn't sleep with other patients being nosy and couldn't get the nurse to respond to her when she needed the nurse. She wanted him to go back to the private policy, so he did. She is a fake liberal, wants to be one of the common folk, however she went back to private insurance and the son is in a private school rather than being with the masses and their house is in an upscale neighborhood where people there are millionaires.
The point is, there are two ways to get healthcare in England - private AND National Health Service - which is private and private hospital or mass care and mass hospital.
Very informative, Marcella! I had read in the comments about the public/private distinction, but thought they were talking about insurance - not actual hospitals!
I wonder if that will naturally happen here...or if Obamacare/HHS/The Tyrant will regulate the private facilities into extinction. Probably not...after all, how would all of the other fake liberals (which is most of them) get quality health care? Like that one infamous moonbat said “I wanted everyone to have health care, I just didn’t think I would have to pay for it” the liberals want everyone to have the same quality of health care as long as they don’t have to be part of it.
Just to clarify - you don’t have to choose between private and NHS and are then stuck permanently with that choice. You’re free to use the NHS for some things and go private for other things. I (and many others) do this, and have done for many years. Many doctors work both for the NHS and for private practice, and also often hire NHS facilities for private work. The main advantage in private care, to be honest, is not so much the quality of the care but in the ability to ‘jump the queue’ for appointments, and the quality of the ‘hotel’ (as distinct from medical) facilities in a hospital if you need to be admitted.
The UK’s NHS is, in some ways, actually BETTER than Obamacare because it allows this choice of going to a private insurer (even though those who choose this option STILL are forced to pay NHS taxes). Obamacare FORCES people to change their existing insurance to plans they don’t want. Obamacare’s goal is to have NO OPTION outside of Obamacare. Then when Obamacare ultimately drives insurance companies into bankruptcy by forcing them to pay for preexisting conditions, the Gov’t can step in and take over the insurance carrier “to protect the Public Health”. So, in many ways Obamacare is actally FAR worse than what’s available in the UK but the NHS gives us a small window into “some” of what we have in our future.....the difference is that Obamacare will be a LOT worse.