I cannot conceive of a health care systems whose first question is not 'where does it hurt?' but 'can you afford this?'.

I have several private options; I could opt to join one Civil Service healthcare plan, or stay with the one we get automatically (one of the few advantages of signing the official secrets act....) as an employee of the government, or I could opt to use the family cover Manitas gets through his employer with another private healthcare provider. Or I could stick with my GP, whom I have reason to believe is too busy to really pay a great deal of attention to any one person (average appointment time from date of call = 2-3 weeks). I made a sort of decision a while ago that I would stick with my GP, rather than 'queue jump' with private healthcare. Besides, we still have to pay one way or another. My employer takes back enough of my wages in National Insurance contributions every month to make me feel I've already paid once and shouldn't need to again.

LTS