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The UK has private health insurance available for purchase too, right? I'd be curious to see what that per capita amount is. Does UK private insurance mean you
by filoeleven 2y ago
The UK has private health insurance available for purchase too, right? I'd be curious to see what that per capita amount is. Does UK private insurance mean you opt out of the public system, or does it provide coverage for more things on top of the public system?
- Latty 2y agoYes, it's not opt-out, just additional coverage or the use of private facilities. Apparently about £1k per capita[1], I'd suspect a lot of that is probably dental due to a huge shortage of NHS dentists. Historically private healthcare here was just about fancier rooms, better food, etc... Now it's often "the NHS said I need to wait 6 months to get this procedure, if I pay I can get it next week". A lot of the time with the same doctors and same facilities as if you went NHS. In general, if you weren't waiting a long time for NHS healthcare, people were happy with it: five or so years back I worked for an American company that offered private healthcare as standard, even in the UK, and the healthcare company offered you £50 a day while you got NHS treatment rather than actually using their services while you had coverage, as it was obviously much cheaper for them, and everyone I knew took that deal every time. Increasingly this is less true though, a decade and a half of being slowly throttled, then Covid, and you can feel that everyone is rushed and stretched to breaking point. [1]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/283221/per-capita-health-expenditure-by-country https://www.statista.com/statistics/283221/per-capita-health...
- filoeleven 2y agoThanks! So even including the folks who get private insurance on top of NHS, the healthcare spending difference between the UK and US is massive.