Had a quick look on Wikipedia - Germany spends $8011/capita versus $5493 in the UK, a 45.8% higher amount. Rather than suggest we pass our money through a profit-focussed middleman, like we do for car insurance, why don’t we try matching our spending first?
The global problem is that healthcare is costing significantly more as medicine progresses. Almost every Western health system is spending more as a % of GDP each year. The reason is that we are getting much better at treating what were previously very poor prognosis conditions. It wasn’t that long ago we had one not very effective treatment for multiple myeloma. If that didn’t work, there wasn’t much left to do. These days with have around 10+ regimens, and patients are living for much longer and going through 3, 4, 5+ types of treatment before nothing further can be done. These treatments cost up to £50k/month. But they also cost more from your doctor - who now needs to be a superspecialist and spend more time working out exactly how best to sequence your treatment, and you also need more specialist nurse involvement, and more time from day unit nurses to deliver the treatment.
I really don’t believe private is the answer. Someone here mentioned Germany has a private system. A quick look on wikipedia shows we spent $4188-5493/capita from 2018-2022, Germany spent $6290-8011 for the same time period - they spend 45.8% more than the UK. I would rather we first try matching our spending with a system we wish to emulate rather than privatise first.
Please don’t tell me what I need to learn about before arguing, especially if your point doesn’t directly address mine. The two views are:
I know which of those two I would investigate first.
Also an observation about language and how we frame things - “strategic excess” of the German system == “inefficiency” in the NHS. I’m not arguing one way or another here, but the way we use language can greatly affect the public discourse on the subject.