As an American who can’t afford proper healthcare, I’m so sad to see the British neglect the NHS

I’ve always admired the NHS. Free at the point of access, I envied my British friends never having to worry about how they were going to afford medical bills. I live in America, where my health insurance premium is more than $300 a month. What I would give to have an NHS. That is the global gold standard in healthcare.

Or, it was, anyway. The NHS is no longer the world’s best healthcare system, according to research by the Commonwealth Fund. Access to care and the negative experiences faced by those with lower incomes toppled the NHS from the top spot to number four, behind Norway, the Netherlands, and Australia. The United States, meanwhile, is once again dead last.

These findings should alarm folks on both sides of the Atlantic. They serve as both a damning indictment of America’s failed healthcare system and as a warning for the UK of what is to come if the Conservatives are allowed to continue their assault on the NHS. From Westminster to Washington, our policymakers must act to better improve healthcare for the people of the two countries I love most dearly.

Health insurance in the United States has traditionally been provided through one’s employer. As a freelance writer, though, I am technically my own employer. Thanks to Obamacare, I was able to obtain private health insurance through the exchange, but the cost is still astronomical. On top of my premium, my deductible comes to more than $8,000. This means that, barring some catastrophic accident or emergency which runs up medical bills, I’m still left paying out-of-pocket for most of my healthcare.

These visits are not cheap. I was recently diagnosed with Grave’s Disease, a thyroid condition which requires medicine to treat. I must pay out-of-pocket for each of these visits, each one costing at least $75 — and often more once lab work, ultrasounds, and other tests are factored in. I live in fear that my insurance will refuse to cover the medicine the doctor prescribed, as they did when my GP put me on an allergy medication.

Still, I am in a fortunate position that I am able to pay even this. Not all Americans are so lucky, as I well know. Three-and-a-half years ago, my teenage brother was hit by a school bus. Our mother was raising him by herself, making little more than minimum wage. As such, he was on Medicaid, a public health insurance program for low-income Americans.

Yet even this left my mother scrambling to cover hospital and subsequent medical bills. She resorted to crowdfunding on a GoFundMe page to make sure my brother — who was run over by a government vehicle — could obtain the healthcare he needed to recover. There were nights I sat with her as she cried, worried that my brother would be discharged from the hospital before he was ready because Medicaid would stop paying or that she would not be able to afford his physical therapy and other aftercare.

It is morally reprehensible that a mother would be left to fundraise for her injured teenage son’s healthcare in the wealthiest nation on earth. She covered what she could of what Medicaid wouldn’t, but there are limits to what our working-class friends and family could do. To this day, the teeth that bus knocked out of my brother’s mouth have not been replaced because my mother, and now my grown brother, cannot afford the bill.

This is an obscene yet natural consequence of living with a healthcare system which puts profits above people. Eleven percent of Americans are uninsured, with millions more underinsured and paying astronomically high medical bills out-of-pocket. Collectively, Americans owed $140 billion in medical debt last year alone — a figure that will no doubt increase thanks to the pandemic. To even be able to pay for the privilege of not dying, the health insurance industry requires us to jump through burdensome hoops to access that care.

To find an endocrinologist that my insurance might even cover, should my bills total more than the $8,000 deductible, I had to drive 45 minutes to one that was “in network” — a trip I now make regularly and which costs quite a bit in gas and time. We have created a multi-billion-dollar industry that is little more than a bureaucratic nightmare hindering patient health. It is no wonder the Commonwealth Fund found we ranked dead last in administrative efficiency.

All of this should serve as a terrifying reminder of what those of people in the UK have to lose. Despite the fall in rankings, the NHS is still a national treasure. It is, however, a treasure that is increasingly under threat by a Conservative Party hellbent on seeing it privatized. Earlier this year the government’s own former chief scientist accused Boris Johnson of engaging in “chumocracy,” warning that the government is attempting to “privatize the NHS by stealth.”

This bears out in the data. Between 2010 and 2019 — a decade of Tory rule — the amount the NHS spent on private sector contracts more than doubled while overall spending on the health service slowed in the same time period. Years of Conservative neglect have led to what one watchdog group called “catastrophic” pressures on the NHS which have led to an overall decrease in patient care. This has been exacerbated by the pandemic, with wait times at their longest in 14 years.

Still, at least the UK ranks number one for affordability in the Commonwealth Fund study. That is something that the British public should take pride in. But this study should serve as a siren alerting us all to the dangers the health service faces. The NHS is no longer the benchmark by which other healthcare systems should be judged — and that is down to the Tories. They cannot be allowed to continue dismantling this most vital British institution.

As for America, nothing short of a complete overhaul of our healthcare system will do. It is a national shame that we allow ourselves to be victims of a greedy, profit-driven industry that puts the bottom line before our lives. We need to demand that Congress provides healthcare free at the point of access to every American, regardless of their income level. How much you can pay should not determine how long you can live.