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Over the years there have been many cases where British families have run appeals for funds to get their children treated in the US. Such stories have appeared in the news several times. More often though they have happier endings. More often than not the treatment they get in this country is either not approved or simply not offered on grounds of cost, because of course if you have free healthcare then it follows that means "rationed" healthcare.

While living with me in UK my wife developed a gall bladder problem. She was put in hospital for a few days put on morphine for the pain and then sent home. She was told it would take 6 weeks to arrange the necessary tests to confirm the initial diagnosis and then probably anwther 4 months to schedule the surgery. in the meantime they said if she had problems again they would readmit her to hospital and put her on morphine if she needed it. So they would waste money on a hospital bed/nursing care/food/drugs/etc because they could not speed up the surgery, that is government healthcare for you at it's best.

We then inquired about private treatment. The lead surgeon informed us that if we wished to go down that route then she could be admitted to the local "private hospital" (where like all the other department heads in ran a separate practice) in which case the tests could be arranged next week and the surgery the week after. So that is the route we followed. Gall bladder removal for a fixed price of 6,000GBP, some people in UK have medical insurance we didn't so I just paid cash. That's the thing in UK you can sometimes short circuit the public system if you have the money.