Medical marvel

I mentioned yesterday that Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) has its limitations that are distinct from ours here in the US.

Partly it’s because whenever my English friend needs medical care outside of the most basic services from her General Practitioner, there’s no calling up to schedule appointments at times convenient to her. She waits for a snailmail letter from the specialist org, which dictates when they’ll deign to see her. The appointment could be weeks or months out and there’s no negotiating that at that particular date/time she needs to attend the wedding of a child, defend her dissertation or be on a cruise ship off the coast of Antarctica. She just writes down the appointment and shows up.

But what was in my mind foremost was this Twitter thread over the weekend from someone I follow:

This man was betrayed by the NHS; he had to take things into his own hands and still died. The NHS is collapsing under the weight of an aging population and decades of underinvestment by successive governments, particularly under the Tories. And this is the result.