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this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2026
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I think initially there'd be a huge spike of people going to the doctor for problems they've just been living with because they can't get it looked at. The healthcare system would get hugely overwhelmed because I'm sure they wouldn't prepare properly for this.
Long term, wait times would be months to years like in the UK. The system would likely never catch up. You'd probably end up with a private expensive sector due to the huge demand* to "skip the queue", and a public sector if you're willing to wait 2 years. Oh look, it's turned into Australia's system.
We don't really need speculation at this point because we already know what the pros and cons are. There would be huge economic and health benefits from health problems being prevented rather than letting them get bad. But people would go to hospital for a common cold and scraped knee or drug seeking behaviour, wasting precious healthcare resources. The costs would be astronomical, subsidised by the private sector. Etc.
The reason why australia and the UK's public health has gone too shit is due to decades long chronic underfunding. Universal Health Care and long wait times don't have to go together
Of course, but if more socialist countries struggle to justify increasing the funding of the already massive cost of healthcare, I doubt that the states would manage a well funded one. In fact it may even be sabotaged. But theoretically if it had good funding then yes most of those problems go away.
They aren't socialist and the govs that oversaw the decline were conservatives.
But yeah, I agree it would be one hell of a logistical and political undertaking. I suspect they could try state by state. That might make it more politically managable at least.
It's been joked that Australia is half socialist, and I kind of agree with it. Never been to the UK so I can't say much about that.
“Months to years” is the exception not the rule in the UK, you’ve been fed bullshit corpo propaganda. I’ve always been able to see a GP within a day, and when I needed some minor physiotherapy it was about two weeks.
The only person I know who’s had to wait more than a couple months was an elderly relative who wanted some quite complicated ankle surgery in order to be more active, and ended up going private - which is just as much an option here as it in the US, only considerably less extortionate since instead of being a cartel they’re competing with free.
I've never been to the UK, I've only heard it's similar to the situation in AU second hand from people who have actually lived there.
For example when I needed to see a psychiatrist it took 18 months, a rheumatologist took 24 months, and general medicine physician took 20 months. My ex's psychiatrist took 12 and psychologist took 6, only because it was a critical emergency. I'm glad you had a good experience though
nah its the conservative parties fucking over the NHS budget thats why.