Years ago when I worked in Greece, families used to fly their poorly relatives to London to get better medical treatment. Now it’s cheaper, even with the cost of flights and hotels, to go to Lithuania for a hip replacement and Hungary or Turkey for a bit of dental work. ‘Health tourism’ is a big thing for all sorts of ailments, not just facelifts and boob jobs as used to be the case. And good business, I guess, for the medics and dentists who might once have hoped to come and work over here. I’m not, believe it or not, a qualified doctor, but my guess is that you get what you pay for, and various horror stories are already emerging of things going wrong without any chance or correction or redress. But that’s not really the point, is it. Noone should need to go in the first place.
“NHS is off the table and stay out of our elections, UK prime minister tells Trump”
In the real world, large chunks of the NHS are already sort-of privatised. In Gloucester, many cataract operations are carried out by a private company; which, yes, has cut waiting times considerably. In Oxford, three GP practices are now owned by a private company....
