WSJ: The U.K.’s Healthcare System Is in Crisis; 500 die every week due to treatment delays

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The U.K.’s Government-Run Healthcare Service Is in Crisis

WSJ

For more than a decade, the British gov­ern­ment has run its Na­tional Health Ser­vice, the world’s largest gov­ern­ment-run health­care sys­tem, on a tight bud­get. The NHS prided it­self on be­ing one of the lean­est health­care sys­tems in the de­vel­oped world, spend­ing less per head on av­er­age than its large Eu­ropean neigh­bors—and far less than the U.S.

Now the state-funded ser­vice is fall­ing apart. Peo­ple who suf­fer heart at­tacks or strokes wait more than 1½ hours on av­er­age for an am­bu­lance. Hos­pi­tals are so full they are turn­ing pa­tients away. A record 7.1 mil­lion peo­ple in Eng­land—more than one in 10 peo­ple—are stuck on wait­ing lists for non­emergency hos­pi­tal treat­ment like hip re­place­ments. The NHS on Mon­day faced the big­gest strike in its his­tory, with thou­sands of para­medics and nurses walk­ing out over pay.

The NHS’s woes are an ex­treme ex­am­ple of is­sues play­ing out across the de­vel­oped world. Health­care sys­tems, hit hard by Covid, are un­der pres­sure as peo­ple live longer and have a wider range of treat­ment op­tions. Ag­ing pop­u­la­tions mean costs will keep grow­ing. The U.K.’s ex­pe­ri­ence is a warn­ing of what hap­pens when sup­ply in health­care pro­vi­sion can’t keep up with de­mand.

“The health­care sys­tem in the U.K. is fac­ing a cri­sis like no other I have seen in my ca­reer,” said Nigel Ed­wards, the re­tir­ing chief ex­ec­u­tive of the Nuffield Trust, a health­care think tank, and for­mer chief ex­ec­u­tive for the NHS. “The U.K. has mis­taken cheap­ness for ef­fi­ciency in its ap­proach to health, and it’s com­ing home to roost.”

The NHS has lost thou­sands of hos­pi­tal beds in the past decade in its drive for ef­fi­ciency. Covid de­layed treat­ments for pa­tients, re­sult­ing in a vast wait­ing list. Hos­pi­tals in Eng­land were al­ready at 98% ca­pac­ity in De­cem­ber when the bru­tal flu sea­son be­gan to take hold. The mass of sick pa­tients gummed up the sys­tem to dev­as­tat­ing ef­fect.

De­lays in treat­ing peo­ple are caus­ing the pre­ma­ture deaths of 300 to 500 peo­ple a week, ac­cord­ing to es­ti­mates from the Royal Col­lege of Emer­gency Med­i­cine, a pro­fes­sional as­so­ci­a­tion in Lon­don. One in five British peo­ple were wait­ing for a med­ical ap­point­ment or treat­ment by the NHS in De­cem­ber, ac­cord­ing to the U.K. Of­fice for Na­tional Sta­tistics (ONS).

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