There is a lot to disagree with in your post. >If it would cost more money to stop someone dying or going blind or suffering other major health problems than t

There is a lot to disagree with in your post. >If it would cost more money to stop someone dying or going blind or suffering other major health problems than the typical worker is worth, the NHS just doesn't provide that treatment. My brother had an extensive program of neurosurgery as an infant, I would be amazed if the dedicated care that he received stacked up to less than 40 man years of expert effort (nurses, GP's, surgeons, anesthetists, radiologists, pharmacologists - the list goes on). Vast money was also spent on the equipment required to provide the care, and the drugs. This was all provided by the NHS, and is provided routinely. So - your statement is flatly untrue. On the other hand I have received very little treatment on the NHS; I have required medical interventions but only after I was rich enough to get insurance. This is the key to the economics. Some people require heroic intervention to survive, most people (until they are in their old age) require very little (especially if engaged in preventative health improvement) - this is what makes it sustainable, not parsimony with the treatment. >This is across the board. On the one end of the spectrum, the NHS only rolled out flu vaccination for infants this flu season and vaccinates a lot less aggressively than the US in general - if you have to vaccinate a large number of people to prevent a few serious illnesses that doesn't work out cost-wise. The UK and NHS have strong policies and incentive structures to drive vaccination, precisely because without it a large number of people suffer illnesses that are very expensive. I don't know the numbers but I am pretty sure that 10k vaccinations are cheaper than 2 weeks in hospital for one child with measles. Your reasoning simply makes no economic sense; prevention is clearly better than cure, and cheaper. > some bizarre business where the NHS decided not to offer a cost-effective cure for Hepatitis C to most people with it, even though it's a communicable disease with serious long-term health effects and curing them would probably save money in the long run, because the short-term cost was too high. Or you could say "the NHS used its purchasing power to drive a procurement deal which enabled it to launch a program to eliminate Hep-C by 2025, and had to fight in the courts to make it stick" which would be factual. >I'm not sure how well the NHS would cope with a coronavirus pandemic either. In a good year it barely has enough resources to handle the seasonal flu, and this has been the worst flu season for it in a long time. Well - all health services will be stretched. We will see - when the numbers are available - which ones performed the best - for all citizens. I will hazard a guess that systems that routinely leave a large proportion of their population unprotected will expose that section of society to much greater mortality than those that are comprehensive public health providers. In terms of "barely has enough resources" isn't this the optimal? Isn't the point to have just enough laid on to deal? Rather than wasting the resources that could for example buy a proton beam system covering an epidemic that doesn't arrive?