Dr. Martin Hash Podcast

While training as a doctor, I did my Basic Sciences in England, and while there utilized their fully socialized National Health Service, the NHS. In comparison, during my medical training rotations in the United States, I served in The Bronx, East Oakland, and South Miami, three of the most notorious hospitals in the nation. I've also visited over 100 countries, spent a year touring Africa, and I'm an attorney. In my estimation, the British healthcare system is best, not because of the NHS, but because it has both public healthcare and private healthcare options, with preferences among its citizens about evenly split.

If a Brit wants free healthcare, there's the NHS, and it's fine but Americans would have to get used to not being such prima donnas. The rest of the population uses U.S.-style, insurance-based private healthcare, with service & capabilities very similar to the U.S. This is where Market Forces play a part: healthcare in the UK is free but utilitarian; no glass & chrome palaces so 40% of their population opts for private healthcare, but because the alternative is free, private healthcare costs are kept low. It’s an effective market choice trade-off that has little to do with quality of care or wait times, those are mostly the same; it's more for status, a benefit British companies can offer significantly cheaper than the U.S. Great Britain has the best of both worlds except that the people who use private healthcare still have to pay for the public one.