Fact check: 12% of GDP is spent in the UK on healthcare, 18% of GDP is spend in the US on healthcare. As I already pointed out, the US has free government healthcare for low income (<$50k/person) households and many states have expanded access beyond that. With the exception of wealth diseases (heart and diabetes) outcomes are overall better in the US across the board.
So the US already spends more on government healthcare, when you break down what it is spent on R&D makes up much of that value in the US. More than 50% of new medicines in the world are funded by the US government.
At the end of November, a record 7.2 millionpatients in England were waiting for non-urgent medical treatment on the NHS, known as “elective” care. This spans diagnostic tests and scans, procedures such as hip and knee replacements, but also cardiac surgery, cancer treatment and neurosurgery.
More than half of those on the list had been waiting up to 18 weeks and about 400,000 patients had been waiting more than a year, according to data from NHS England.
To avoid joining a waiting list, more and more people are paying for their own private medical care or taking out health insurance.
In the second quarter of 2022, the number of patients paying directly for private hospital care increased 34% compared with the same period in 2019 to reach 67,000, according to the Private Healthcare Information Network, which collects data on UK private healthcare.
The figures revealed a 184% jump in the number of people paying privately for hip replacements over that period, a 153% increase in self-pay for knee replacements and a 42% rise in private cataract surgery.