Comment by pyman

It's very much more about speed. Waiting lists varies greatly - I just took my son to the GP this morning, after we booked last week. The only reason it wasn't sooner was that they wanted blood test results first. He had blood tests booked in the morning after we booked, and we were seen ahead of time - the appointment took 5 minutes. There was zero wait when we checked in at the GP.

New Years Eve, my son was referred to an out-of-hours GP service within an hour of a phone consultation.

But while the shortest wait I've had for a video consultation for myself (via the NHS) was literally 10 minutes, the longest was two weeks.

If you have an emergency, you will be triaged and given a faster appointment if you use the right channels (111 - the non-emergency alterantive to 999/911, or urgent care walkin centres, or A&E as the last resort), but of course many things that are not an emergency will seem intolerable to wait for, and then it absolutely sucks if you can't afford to pay your way to be seen faster.

This is a political/cost issue - the NHS is bargain basement in terms of amount spent per patient compared to many other countries.

A large proportion of doctors in the private sector also works for the NHS, so quality of clinical experience has never been a concern to me.

E.g. when my ex looked for a doctor when she considered having a c-section done private, the top expert she could find was an NHS consultant that worked privately on the side. This is the widespread, and often the private clinics are operated by NHS trusts, as a means to supplement their budgets, and/or the operating rooms etc. are rented from NHS trusts.

If anything, my only negative experiene with lack of experience here has been with private providers (the only nurse that has ever struggled to draw blood from me in my entire life failed to get any blood from me after 3 agonisingly slow attempts where she rooted around in my arm for a vein. Every NHS nurse that has drawn blood from me or my son have been so fast at drawing blood you hardly notice before they're done even when they're filling multiple containers)

But if you want to be pampered, then private providers will be nicer. They're also nicer if you e.g. want more time - GP's are expected to allocate an average of something like 7 minutes per appointment for the NHS patients, for example, and how flexible they will be varies, while with a private GP you can pay for however long appointments you want.

In a lot of cases they are the same doctors working for both the NHS and having private patients.

About 10% of people have private health insurance, but note that a large proportion of service providers in the private space also work for the NHS.

E.g. my old GP used to provide both private and NHS services (they were precluded by their NHS contracts from providing private services to people registered with them with the NHS).

Many NHS trusts also provide private services, as they are allowed to do so to improve utilisation and supplement their budgets, so in practice this is part of the reason the NHS is so cheap compared to universal systems in similarly rich countries.

Most private hospitals in the UK also e.g. rely on NHS for intensive care, and this, along with relying on the NHS for first-line care (A&E, GP's unless there's a wait, etc.) is also why private health insurance in the UK is unusually cheap, and why private hospitals in the UK are unusually cheap (if you're in the US, and planning elective treatments, it can be cheaper to fly to London and do it here, even factoring in hotels - and some Central London hospitals have hotel suites, and at least one have or had a previously Michelin starred chef because they cater - literally - to high-end international healthcare tourism).

The median wait to be seen by a specialist is currently 14 weeks, but the range is much larger and some patients will wait as much as a year for a non-urgent referral. Those waits are on top of a lot of de-facto rationing; referrals will often be rejected for fairly spurious reasons, purely to manage demand.

Speaking personally, the biggest issue isn't the waiting, but the chaos and uncertainty. Every part of the NHS is in a constant state of crisis management. I don't terribly mind that I usually have to wait about two weeks to see my GP (family doctor), but I do object to the fact that I'll invariably be seen by a locum (temporary) doctor who doesn't know how the local systems work and won't be there if I need a follow-up appointment. I could live with waiting lists if they were always 14 weeks, but it's incredibly disruptive to not know if it might be 14 or 40 weeks, to not know if your long-awaited appointment will be cancelled with no notice due to staff shortages or industrial action. I've almost got used to the fact that the corridors of my local hospital are permanently full of "temporary" overflow beds, primarily occupied by frail elderly people, often in considerable distress, sometimes obviously neglected.

I'm fairly high-agency and I feel that the system is hostile and difficult to navigate; I have no doubt that many patients who are less able to advocate for themselves suffer preventable deaths because they fell through the cracks.