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Just on the free healthcare thing - in the UK, the NHS is hugely iconic national institution, and politically it's almost a no-go area in terms of its founding principles.
Which is not to say that privatisation hasn't been creeping into the NHS for some time - it has, starting in earnest with the Thatcher governments on the 80s.
However, no matter how right wing a party is, it would be almost political suicide to make an all out effort to remove the basic tenet of the NHS - universal care, free at the point of delivery.
Unfortunately, what's tended to happen since the 80s is (IMO) a managed decline of the NHS, with layers of management brought in and services allowed to decline in quality and availability.
The result is that the public do start to question the model, see the NHS as second rate, and start to lose some of that loyalty towards it.
However, it will take some time to ever get to the point where a government or any stripe is safe to even talk openly about moving away from the NHS model.
And hopefully that point will never come, and instead the NHS will be given renewed commitment and support both from government and the wider public.
It really is one of the very best things about the UK, and were we ever to lose it, it would be a criminal dereliction of duty by those into whose care it has been passed.
The NHS has already largely been privatised. GPs were always private contractors but now GP groups have been increasingly bought by US companies, with the largest GP group in England, The Practice (half a million patients), being completely US owned
NHS Logistics was privatised 2006-2019 (part of DHL, later Unipart) before becoming a government owned company.
NHS internal operation capacity has essentially frozen since 2014, with the increase coming from the private sector. Over a third of “NHS” hip and knee operations, 60% of cataract operations, and a fifth of operations overall are contracted out to private companies.
In terms of “internal” structure the service has been broken up into more than 500 legally distinct “Public Benefit Corporations” who can set up commercial subsidiaries and bid for provision contracts between themselves, as well as entering into commercial partnership with foreign companies such as the Mayo Clinic’s involvement in Oxford’s NHS provider.
Social care has been almost totally privatised at this point.
The current health secretary, Wes Streeting, is in favour of increased private involvement in the NHS so expect the trend to continue.
Out of hours doctors are all private doctors (they have been for years) and hospitals now have a department you get sent to when you shouldn't be sent to A&E but its still kinda urgent, and those are private too. Also, last time I needed a surgical procedure they sent me to a private hospital. So yeah, you're absolutely right.
All fair points - but the fundamental point about people getting access to free healthcare has remained so far.
Free at the point of care.
And even that isn't true. A dental crown costs 300 quid.
You’re unfortunately very mistaken there. That fundamental was shattered in 1993 when social care was separated from the NHS (free at point of use) and instead given to local government (means tested pricing at point of use). Ever in search of savings for their limited budgets, local governments promptly privatised and outsourced their services. We went from 65% of care home spaces being publicly funded at the end of the 1970s to 6% a decade ago. At-home care went from being 95% publicly funded in 1993 to 11% in 2012.
This sector of healthcare is beyond breaking point, with over 100,000 unfilled staff vacancies in care homes alone. This creates a backlog as NHS hospitals can’t discharge patients who need residential care that doesn’t exist.
If you’re expecting a free-at-point-of-use care home later in life, think again. That is gone. Unless you have a large accumulation of savings to burn through things don’t look rosy.
I don't disagree, but I wasn't really talking about care homes, I was talking about treatment, operations, maternity care, etc.