UK here, NHS is constantly being underfunded and gutted by contracting out to private companies, it still works but just barely.

For example, ambulance target response time for a cardiac arrest, not a simple heart attack but full on unconscious not beating not breathing, used to be 8 minutes or less. Now they aim for 20 minutes and only achieve that 60% of the time.

I’d much prefer a Norwegian style model where you pay say £30 per doctors/non-emergency hospital visit up to a cap of £150 per year with those who can’t afford that getting those fees paid for by the government.

Some additional things I would add would be a slowly increasing VAT on private healthcare until it reaches double the normal VAT, paying student nurses/doctors a full wage and full living cost loan for the duration of their studies, whilst working they do not pay the interest on those loans, then if they move abroad before the university loans are paid back they have to pay the interest back as well.

This would massively increase funding for the NHS by taxing those who can definitely afford the burden because at double VAT the only ones who’d still opt for private healthcare are those who employ workers and therefore no matter how much they try to wriggle out of paying tax they can’t avoid this one.

The second would increase the number of medical students and stop the current drain of young medical professionals leaving for other countries.