Britain s National Health Service Meltdown – WSJ

The American left can t seem to quit its desire for single-payer Medicare for All. So it s worth noting that the United Kingdom, which already has a system resembling that socialist dream, is rethinking it amid another winter of healthcare misery.

The National Health Service s winter crisis has become an annual tradition, but this year s troubles for the free-at-point-of-service system are significantly worse. The NHS never recovered from the Covid pandemic. That means the normal winter wave of flu, Covid and other respiratory ailments is swamping hospitals and doctors offices already coping with a backlog of patients awaiting tests and treatments deferred by lockdowns.

Meanwhile, unions representing nurses and ambulance drivers have gone on strike for days at a time to demand higher pay from their government employer. Perhaps sensing the political weakness of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak s Conservative Party, the unions are resisting calls for work-rule changes to boost efficiency. They claim strikes don t affect critical care, but work stoppages inevitably mean more treatment delays.

The effects of all this on patient care can be lethal. Waiting times for ambulances for the most serious calls are getting longer, with the average response time reaching 10 minutes 57 seconds in December, compared to a target of seven. Once patients reach the emergency room, 35% now face waits above four hours between a decision to admit and transfer to an appropriate bed for treatment, the worst performance since 2010.

via www.wsj.com

I don’t think single-payer is really about the health care.