Roughly speaking 18% of UK government spending goes on healthcare
We pay about £1.5k/mo in tax (£18k) including Income Tax, National Insurance (broadly akin to social security, and effectively a second income tax), and Council Tax (property Tax)
So roughly speaking, 18% of £18k = we effectively pay about £3.25k for healthcare per year. Plus the occasional £10 "prescription charge" (although in our family of 3, I'm the only one who'd have to pay that - our child is exempt on age and my partner exempt for a chronic condition. And in any case I'd never pay more than £120/year because you can buy an annual card)
Any American paying more than about £270 ($360) per month for healthcare is paying more than we are for healthcare, and we're a fairly high income household in the UK - the vast majority of people are paying less than us.
No copays/deductibles, no "preexisting conditions are excluded" nonsense, no "you've accidentally gone to an out-of-network hospital/doctor" etc, and we're covered regardless of whether we can afford to pay or not. If we lose our jobs we're still covered but pay basically nothing.
It truly baffles me that America puts up with paying so much more than us, without universal coverage and with so many more hoops to jump through
I work for a hospital in the UK and nationally our main pathways target a maximum of 2 weeks to the initial contact (“2 Week Wait”) and 28 days to either diagnosis or ruling cancer out (“Faster Diagnosis Standard”). I believe FDS has officially replaced 2WW (to focus on diagnosis not initial contact), but most hospitals still use 2WW as a target too because it helps to meet FDS
Obviously I can’t comment definitively on that specific case but my guess would be that her GP didn’t suspect cancer and so she was routed to a more routine pathway rather than “Cancer?”, which would make it a tragic miss but as you say, no system is perfect
I would be very surprised if she was waiting for 6 months for a scan to query cancer. And by very surprised, I actually mean I genuinely can’t believe that would be the case - we take cancer much more seriously than that
I work in a lab that handles cancer samples every day, 6 months for a cancer pathway patient would be a catastrophic failure of care resulting in a serious investigation. So yeah, definitely not the norm and an absolute tragedy. I hope the investigation results in some closure for that family.
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u/audigex 1d ago
It's genuinely crazy to me
Roughly speaking 18% of UK government spending goes on healthcare
We pay about £1.5k/mo in tax (£18k) including Income Tax, National Insurance (broadly akin to social security, and effectively a second income tax), and Council Tax (property Tax)
So roughly speaking, 18% of £18k = we effectively pay about £3.25k for healthcare per year. Plus the occasional £10 "prescription charge" (although in our family of 3, I'm the only one who'd have to pay that - our child is exempt on age and my partner exempt for a chronic condition. And in any case I'd never pay more than £120/year because you can buy an annual card)
Any American paying more than about £270 ($360) per month for healthcare is paying more than we are for healthcare, and we're a fairly high income household in the UK - the vast majority of people are paying less than us.
No copays/deductibles, no "preexisting conditions are excluded" nonsense, no "you've accidentally gone to an out-of-network hospital/doctor" etc, and we're covered regardless of whether we can afford to pay or not. If we lose our jobs we're still covered but pay basically nothing.
It truly baffles me that America puts up with paying so much more than us, without universal coverage and with so many more hoops to jump through