“pointless.
Give us the numbers of how many people in countries with socialized medicine, pay more and go to private hospitals.
If we didn’t have the private option we’d be dying. We keep the socialized system alive for the people who are too lazy to go to work basically. People who live on welfare.
A large chunck of the population “go private” anyway.”
Susan, obviously the numbers vary between countries, not all ‘socialised’ systems are the same.
Regarding the UK specifically though as this is what the article was discussing, 12.8% of the population were covered by private medical insurance in 2002 so it’s probably still somewhere in the 10-15% range.
http://www.privatehealth.co.uk/aboutus/industry/industry-marketdata/private-medical-insurance/
The private healthcare market is expanding largely as a result of NHS outsourcing to the private sector. For example, early last year my partner needed an operation on her foot, the local NHS could only provide the operation after 5 weeks but a local private hospital had availability in just a few days so she chose to go there and the NHS picked up the bill. This type of funded publicly, carried out privately arrangement is becoming more and more common as part of the largely succesful drive to significantly reduce waiting times.
One of my previous employers, a US company, offered private medical insurance to its workers but many people in my workplace decided to forego this and take a cash alternative instead.
So yes, some people do have private cover but the vast majority do not. They still might get private treatment funded by the NHS though if they need a procedure done and the NHS can’t do it quickly enough.
