@SA – I was just asking, not asserting.
“Bearing in mind that the French health system is also under pressure from covid-19, they may have stumbled on a long que of people seeking the same.”
I doubt there’s any other “advanced” country which is as corona-insane as Britain. Basically much of the NHS has shut down and people have been clapping along with the prime minister to say “thank you”. I don’t know of any other country that’s as mental as that. Many nurses even now are going in to work and doing nothing all day long, because many wards remain mothballed – even as daily *reported* deaths “with Covid-19” are probably not even causing any “excess deaths” more than would be caused by the number of car crashes for the time of year being about 0.5 standard deviations above the 5-year mean.
@Nick – I wasn’t only thinking of hip replacements or heart bypass surgery, but of more minor surgery too, such as hernia repair or many other things, things that cost maybe a few thousand pounds privately in Britain but some people haven’t been able to get either on the NHS or privately – and indeed if people are claiming on private insurance then the usual route (expected by the insurer) is for them to see the guy who works as “their” NHS GP to get a letter after they’ve greased his palm, the same letter he’d write to refer them within the NHS (perhaps even to the same surgeon) without charging them – and all of this is difficult if the local GP surgery is telling you to eff off because you might spread germs, so you can imagine some people saying damn it, I will go to Ireland or France or anywhere I can get this problem fixed.