Amir, in the UK, one always has the option of using private care and paying for it oneself. So, while the NHS is available to all, so is private care and the cost associated with it, along with insurance to cover that portion if desired.
However Davey that can be a really bad decision because if you take private care for an illness the Health Care trust may refuse to treat you at all.
There have been many cases where patients want to use some of the newer drugs that have been certified but Care Trusts/Medical Association rule that the medication is not cost effective, however if the patient then wants to look at paying for this privately they are in effect cut off from NHS in all ways.
The irony is these people paid National Insurance and tax (so contributed to the NHS all their life), looking to take some of the burden off the NHS by using some of the newer drugs privately and yet they are then refused access to NHS services such as specialists,monitoring via scans,etc - the key point being general aspects that were not linked to the private solution.
So then their only option is to ignore the new drugs (not talking about all just some that have good results but are expensive) and stick with ones that are less effective with the NHS.
Same story with Alzheimer tablets; deemed to be not cost effective and so not available.
I was a fan of the NHS, but Gordon Brown started to be too clever and created several different kind of trusts that are involved from the business-procurement-regulation-regional-local-etc and it is a mess, combined with lumping care trusts with PPI-funding that is up to 10x more expensive and put onto local budgets, locking in the health trusts for a ridiculous amount of time for expensive external contract services.
There was an interesting research program done showing how the various types of care trusts, budgets, and PPI all interlink; it is freaking incredibly complex and does not work.
The hospitals that are well known for their services here in the UK, well they do a lot of charity raising or supported by charities to help.
Cheers
Orb