Sorry to read and run I'm on way to bed . Good luck with all the answers you need. I'm British , now living in Asia and have lived in Au so have experienced care across the board. I'm still a believer in the nhs having lived in Oz where youmhave to pay for everything. Having said that the nhs is under massive strain. I believe in an acute situation you cant get better however for chronic illness there are gaps , and yes sadly your post code has a huge influence. There are many unrealistic targets. that staff across the board are forced to keep within. Although in Australia you pay for everything , my husband was serious ill and we didn't pay a penny when he was admitted as there is a respirical agreement between UK and AU in emergency situations. The care was second to non without the same pressures as the NHS .
You should never have a problem with referral , but may have to wait. Private in the UK
is very expensive without cover . A lot of people feel this is a better level of care but things like blood bank accecability , crash team etc are not always on site . Depends again what you may need. The fancy surroundings don't always equal great service , but you won't have to wait. On the plus side most of the private drs all do public work so they're excellent and keep up to date.
Good luck with all of this . Take care
What is needed is a mix of the best of both worlds - and given the size of this country - over three hundred million people - there's no way we could completely support the medical needs of this country with our own NHS. I'd love to see an NHS for primary care - so many diseases could be eliminated and so many of them could be caught earlier with good, solid primary care in this country. Nationalize the primary care, leave the option of private insurance, and do some sort of mix for the secondary and tertiary care.
I'm sorry for airing my views on this, but as a nurse - and as one interested in primary care as an NP, who was essentially raised in this country's version of an NHS before my father retired (military medicine - in reality it's the closest thing we've got) and who now works for it, I realize the desperate situation this nation's in and how badly something needs to be done. I lived without the protection of the old CHAMPUS and now the TRICARE system for several years and believe me, it was scary as hell. I even spent two years of my life with no coverage at all. REALLY scary.
I'm married to a Brit - so I've seen and heard the other side of the pond's situation and its problems - but I agree with the individual on this board who said anything's better than when you essentially get nothing.
As for high taxes, take a good look at the "hidden" taxes you pay in this country. Our tax rate is as high - if not higher - than England's. And we get nothing. There's no safety net. If you lose your job, YOU COULD DIE in this country. We are the only First World nation on this earth where people go bankrupt because they got sick. (If you want to see something really scary, go on the Public Television website and look for the episode of FRONTLINE called "Sick Around the World" - watch the jaws of the MDs in the other nations they visit literally drop when they're told people in the US go bankrupt because they can't pay for medical care.) It's part of what drove me back to active duty after nursing school: I'd see some 30 year old with Stage IV metastatic ovarian cancer, and I'd think, holy crap, what will I do if that's me, and I can't work?
In this country, if you lose your job, you lose your insurance. Don't believe that Medicaid kicks in - it doesn't. If you still own your house, you probably won't get Medicaid. Your assets could be worth way too much to qualify. Medicare only kicks in if you're 65 or older or suffer from end stage renal disease. No private hospital in this country will treat you for something like cancer if you continuously are unable to foot the bill - and they don't have to. An emergency department cannot let you die, but an MD does not have to treat a chronic disease like cancer, with treatments that cost thousands of dollars EVERY TIME YOU GO TO THE CLINIC (i.e., in the course of a day, i can hang about ten to thirty grand's worth of chemotherapy on a handful of patients). No public hospital has to treat your cancer either - not that most of them could, since they rely on the big university and referral centers to treat their own patient population.
My boss told me that, after retirement, she came BACK to military medicine to work because of a conference she once sat in on at a major university health system. She actually HEARD a committee deny someone a bone marrow transplant - which would have cured her cancer - because that woman lost her job BECAUSE she had cancer and couldn't work. She lost her insurance and therefore lost her ability to pay. It's an allocation of resources game - and this uninsured woman lost because she had no way to pay. The hospital committee had no choice but to deny the procedure. True story. It's not something I'd lie about.
There is no safety net in this country.
In this country, we have some of the most advanced medical care in the world, and it's inaccessible to over fifteen percent of us. Almost ten percent of us - about 28 to 30 million - are underinsured, so we get inadequate coverage for services that we can't hope to pay for. And the AARP says 1.8 million Americans file for bankruptcy every year due to medical bills, and that 50 to 60 percent of ALL bankruptcies in this country are prompted by medical expenses people can't pay.
They say most of us are one major illness away - in fact, one good car wreck, really - from bankruptcy.
Complete socialization of medicine is not the answer. But the present system is not doing the most good (don't even get me started on what's wrong with the pharmaceutical and insurance industries in this country) and even those of us covered under it aren't benefiting in the best way. I know. I've lived it, and I have friends and family breaking under it. Something has to change.
OK - thanks for letting me vent!!!!
When my DD was born, 14 years ago, I had just started a new job, so my policy did not cover anything maternity related; 180 waiting period. The entire pregnancy was out of pocket. But here is the sad part, the company was more than willing to cover her once she was born!
but I know many have had bad experiences 
