There were 6.24 million individual patients waiting to get treatment in England as of October. That’s about 1 in 10 people in the country waiting in the queue.
This is the dark reality of single-payer and a cautionary tale for the third of Americans who mistakenly believe Medicare-for-all is a good idea. Both funded and run by the taxpayer, the NHS relies on rationing treatment to stay afloat. This results in patients with serious health problems forced to wait for months or years to access treatment, hoping they don’t die before the doctor sees them. Wait times get exacerbated by the politics that inevitably become intertwined when government, rather than consumers, calls the shots.
