People face unacceptably long waits for treatment while hospital buildings crumble apart. Patients die needlessly from a lack of care. People are stored on stretchers like expired Halloween candy on the shelf because there isn’t enough room in the hospital. Mental health patients live in cells filled with pests, and there is a critical lack of essential diagnostic tools like MRI machines.
This is not a dystopian tale. It’s the state of socialized medicine in the United Kingdom. And, if Kamala Harris has her way, it’s the future of medicine in America.
The new British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, has discussed a report he requested showing the horrors of the UK’s National Health Service (NHS).
Fixing the NHS has received support from all political parties since its creation in 1948. It was a key topic in Starmer’s campaign to bring Labour back to power. He announced a 10-year plan to “fix” the system, which will likely mean more spending and possibly higher taxes.
Reading between the lines, the NHS has faced problems for decades, dating back to its founding.
Starmer has promised that the NHS will not receive new funding without reforms. He highlighted three urgent areas: changing to a digital NHS, shifting more care from hospitals to local communities, and focusing on preventing illness instead of just treating it.
According to NHS figures, in January 2024, hospitals in England faced disruptions to patient care more than 100 times each week due to fires, leaks, and problems from old buildings.
Over the past five years, 27,545 incidents have affected clinical services, an average of about 106 a week. These incidents, caused by hospital buildings and infrastructure failures, are linked to a huge maintenance backlog that now costs £11.6 billion, about 14.5 billion USD.
All these incidents resulted in delays, cancellations, or other problems for at least five patients, each for at least 30 minutes. Based on an analysis of NHS data commissioned by Ed Davey, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, these disruptions affected at least 137,725 patients from 2018 to 2023.
But the facilities aren’t just falling in on patients. They are killing them.
Rebecca Hilsenrath, England’s health ombudsman, has launched an investigation into an alarming increase in sepsis among UK hospital patients. She expressed concern about the NHS’s “defensive culture” regarding its condition, which leads to an estimated 48,000 avoidable deaths each year in the UK.
She expressed alarm at the number of patients receiving NHS care who are still dying from sepsis. It’s an avoidable condition, also known as blood poisoning, that UK hospitals and doctors have been warned repeatedly about.
Public awareness of sepsis grew in May when Conservative MP Craig Mackinlay shared that he had to have all his limbs amputated because of the condition, with doctors initially giving him only a 5% chance of survival.
NHS trusts are supposed to check any patient suspected of having sepsis and provide them with antibiotics within an hour of diagnosis to lower the risk of harm, disability, or death. However, this doesn’t always happen, and the results can be fatal.
Hilsenrath said these mistakes are still occurring despite suggestions for improvement, repeated warnings, and promises to act. These problems include delays in diagnosing and treating patients, poor communication and record-keeping, and missed opportunities for follow-up care.
But avoidable deaths from sepsis are just the start of the problems plaguing the NHS.
Health leaders say the government’s plan to reduce the hospital backlog in England will not work without significant changes to how services are run. Labour wants to increase the number of appointments and operations by 40,000 each week to meet the 18-week waiting time goal. However, research from the NHS Confederation found that this would only provide about 15% of the extra capacity needed to meet the target.
The NHS backlog currently has 7.6 million people waiting for care, and over 40% have been waiting more than 18 weeks. The goal is for 92% of patients to be seen within 18 weeks.
Eighteen-week waiting periods for appointments and life-saving operations? Let that sink in. This is Harris’s vision for America. The NHS should serve as a warning. “Free healthcare” is far from free. It costs some patients their lives.
