Comment by pyman

The UK pays less per capita towards the NHS than most similar-income countries do.

And, it's very much a "public-private" health system. E.g. all GP's and most dentists are private businesses, paid for by the NHS to varying degree, but also with many providing private services.

The NHS uses an extensive network of private providers, including (when sufficient funding is provided) to drive down waiting lists. I've personally had a procedure carried out at a private hospital at the NHS's expense.

The NHS has many problems, but at the root of a whole lot of them is that the NHS needs a funding increase of 20%-30% to get to similar levels of funding per capita as similarly wealthy countries.

The UK spends about as much per capita on the NHS, providing universal care, as the US does on just Medicare and Medicaid.

It really makes you wonder what's gone wrong in the UK, considering how much taxes British people pay.

Unfortunately the main problem is chronic underinvestment by successive governments of all political inclinations. We tend not to fix our roof in the summer because we hope the other guys will be in government by winter when everyone inside is getting wet and they'll get blamed for the consequences of our decision. We've also made some poor choices historically around selling off national assets and questions of privatisation or public ownership.

This isn't unique to the NHS and ironically among the current Labour government the Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, is one of the few people suggesting significant changes that actually do make sense for the long term future of our country. Unfortunately a lot of them will probably require more than 5 years to implement and that puts the results over the horizon beyond the next general election. So the price for trying to "do the right thing" might be that he won't get re-elected to see it through. This enables the cycle of short-termism and lack of consistent investment to continue even though its horrible results are increasingly clear for all to see.

I think a great many countries have problems with healthcare. I think if you went hunting for anecdotes of healthcare failures you'd be rich in examples in a lot of countries. That said, I think in the UK it's a result of inefficiency and chronic underfunding for, at this point, decades.

I've lived in both the UK and the US and there are issues with healthcare in both. Maybe the model your country uses could scale up to populations the size of the UK and the US, maybe it wouldn't. Difficult to know.