NHS waiting lists drive more Britons to pay for medical treatment

Growing numbers of patients in the UK are paying for private medical treatment because of the record delays people are facing trying to access NHS care, a report has revealed.

They are using their own savings to pay for procedures that involve some of the longest waiting times in NHS hospital, such as diagnostic tests, cataract removals and joint replacements.

The increase in the willingness to self-pay is closely linked to a desire for private treatments that was increasing even before Covid struck in March 2020. But many private hospitals were unable to meet that demand for much of the pandemic because coronavirus disrupted so much normal healthcare.

Dr Tony O’Sullivan, an ex-NHS consultant and a co-chair of the campaign group Keep Our NHS Public, said: “The government’s deliberate and sustained running down of the health service has resulted in a two-tier system. The NHS is now in a permanent state of distress, leaving patients desperate for care, and – if they can afford it – feeling as if they have no choice but to go private, undermining the very vision of equality and care a well-funded NHS was so famous for.

“Hard-working people would not need to line shareholders pockets in this way if the NHS had not been underfunded, understaffed and neglected for so long.”

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Source: The Guardian, 20 April 2022