Hi MDinana,

Yes, there is private supplemental insurance available in the UK, but you wouldn't want to rely on this insurance without access to the NHS. This insurance will get you a few additional extras not provided by the NHS such as limited cosmetic surgery and the occasional medical checkup when requested and some additional cosmetic dentistry services. It will not however pay for any real life medical emergencies or long term care, as the private companies will bail out and you will be left with just the so called 'basic' service provided by the NHS. The private medical insurance does not cover the basics in medical care. There have been many cases where privately treated patients in private hospitals have had to rushed to the NHS to save their lives.

There is care for the elderly with long term medical problems. To say that an elderly person with cancer will just be sent home to die is incorrect. There is hospice care for anyone with terminal cancer, although some may choose to die at home with their families around them. In Scotland there is also long term personal care for the elderly with a mix of private and local government care homes (this would be free long term care provided by local government services). This free long term care for the elderly has not been available in England and Wales.

The NHS is by no means perfect, there are problems with over management and the rationing of resources at the moment because of government plans to introduce an internal market system of health care (large computer system contracts for the eventual billing systems have been awarded to US corporations with the aim to privatise the NHS, with the aim of asset stripping the NHS organisation have resulted in the billions of dollars of tax payers money being wasted) but it does give everyone in the UK access to free medical care without worrying about being landed a huge bill at the end. It is free at the point of use. It might not be up to the very best standards of medical care available for the top five or ten percent of the population in the US, but it provides good quality medical care for everyone in the UK at a substantially lower proportion of the countries GDP.

The UK NHS has nothing to learn from the free market US medical care system. It may well treat the top 10 percent of US citizens with the best health care in the world but this is at the expense of the bottom thirty percent who get very little health care.