The UK...and Canada soon to follow. US CITIZENS!!!! PLEASE THINK before you vote for "Medicare For ALL".
CANADA
"Based on national data per 100,000 residents, Canada's rate of medical assistance in dying (MAID) is higher than the total U.S. firearm fatality rate, though the total count of deaths is higher in the U.S. due to its larger population.
• Canada Euthanasia (MAID) Rate: In 2024, Canada recorded 16,499 MAID deaths, which translates to a rate of approximately 40.24 per 100,000 residents (or roughly 5.1% of all deaths nationwide).
• U.S. Firearm Fatality Rate: In 2024, the United States recorded 44,447 total gun deaths (including suicides, homicides, and accidents), which translates to a rate of approximately 13.07 per 100,000 residents." Pew Research
"Socio-Economic Pressures
• Poverty and Housing Deficiencies: Investigations and reports have highlighted cases where individuals sought or received MAiD not strictly due to a terminal medical prognosis, but because of severe poverty, a lack of affordable housing, or social isolation. National Institute of Health.
• Healthcare Strain: Long waitlists for specialists, mental health care, and adequate home-care or palliative support have led some vulnerable patients to view MAiD as a faster alternative to enduring systemic shortfalls or feeling like a "burden" on family members." The Guardian
THE U.K.
Here is an article WRITTEN by a practicing physician in Essex:
"Dr Copperfield is fed up with the dizzying circus that is accessing care in the NHS, and the position in which it leaves GPs
So proud of the NHS this week. And I’m sure you were, too, when you heard the widely reported story of how superbly the service dealt with a patient in Telford seeking an appointment with her GP. Her surgery was fully booked, so she was signposted to 111, who called paramedics, who advised she needed a GP appointment, which they booked. That’s how patient pathways work. That’s seamless care. That’s a user journey that could only have been bettered if that final GP appointment had been unavailable, resulting in a return ticket via 111 and another ambulance. That would have been the value-for-money scenic route.
Of course, going round in circles is not limited to accessing the NHS. Once inside, the process is just as dizzying. Hence my new, severely depressed patient this week, who has gone from psychiatric pillar to post with involvement from 111 option 2, First Response Team, Mental Health Crisis Team, the Urgent Care Department, A&E, a half-way house sanctuary and an admissions-avoidance team. Everyone, in fact, except an actual psychiatrist. His mental health may be not better, but he’s at least got to know the area.
And I find the same when I’m trying to access care for patients myself. For example, when confronted by the acute-on-chronic elderly care crisis known technically as ‘gone off her legs’, I have a bewildering number of choices. There’s the urgent elderly care helpline. A frailty clinic (actual). A frailty clinic (virtual). An urgent community response team. An emergency response team. The community nursing service. An acute visiting service. And so on.
Somehow, at some point, someone thought it would be a great idea to deconstruct NHS services into tiny silos. These give a semblance of specific and appropriate care, but the reality is the opposite. Because the characteristics they share include inaccessibility, facelessness, obstructive and ever-changing referral criteria, a predilection for screening, assessing and signposting over actually treating, and an inability or unwillingness to communicate with the other cogs in the machine. And, most of all, a complete aversion to ‘owning the problem’: once patients are sucked into this vortex, there is no way of knowing who, if anyone, is making, or willing to make, definitive management decisions.
Except, of course, those sat in the middle of this dysfunctional merry-go-round: that’s us GPs, who are left to make sense of it all.
Welcome to our great NHS! I say welcome, but actually, you might just want to walk around it a few times and go home.
Dr Tony Copperfield is a GP in Essex "
https://www.pulsetoday.co.uk/views/copperfield/the-nhs-is-circling-the-drain-the-care-merry-go-round-is-exasperating/
Additionally, the UK is LOSING 50% of all its newly trained DOCTORS!!!
UK citizens must pay for their education, to the tune of $230,000 per student...and then they up and LEAVE and go to practice medicine where they can actually make some decent money!
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/07/04/nhs-brain-drain-abroad-at-record-high/
"Based on national data per 100,000 residents, Canada's rate of medical assistance in dying (MAID) is higher than the total U.S. firearm fatality rate, though the total count of deaths is higher in the U.S. due to its larger population.
• Canada Euthanasia (MAID) Rate: In 2024, Canada recorded 16,499 MAID deaths, which translates to a rate of approximately 40.24 per 100,000 residents (or roughly 5.1% of all deaths nationwide).
• U.S. Firearm Fatality Rate: In 2024, the United States recorded 44,447 total gun deaths (including suicides, homicides, and accidents), which translates to a rate of approximately 13.07 per 100,000 residents." Pew Research
"Socio-Economic Pressures
• Poverty and Housing Deficiencies: Investigations and reports have highlighted cases where individuals sought or received MAiD not strictly due to a terminal medical prognosis, but because of severe poverty, a lack of affordable housing, or social isolation. National Institute of Health.
• Healthcare Strain: Long waitlists for specialists, mental health care, and adequate home-care or palliative support have led some vulnerable patients to view MAiD as a faster alternative to enduring systemic shortfalls or feeling like a "burden" on family members." The Guardian
THE U.K.
Here is an article WRITTEN by a practicing physician in Essex:
"Dr Copperfield is fed up with the dizzying circus that is accessing care in the NHS, and the position in which it leaves GPs
So proud of the NHS this week. And I’m sure you were, too, when you heard the widely reported story of how superbly the service dealt with a patient in Telford seeking an appointment with her GP. Her surgery was fully booked, so she was signposted to 111, who called paramedics, who advised she needed a GP appointment, which they booked. That’s how patient pathways work. That’s seamless care. That’s a user journey that could only have been bettered if that final GP appointment had been unavailable, resulting in a return ticket via 111 and another ambulance. That would have been the value-for-money scenic route.
Of course, going round in circles is not limited to accessing the NHS. Once inside, the process is just as dizzying. Hence my new, severely depressed patient this week, who has gone from psychiatric pillar to post with involvement from 111 option 2, First Response Team, Mental Health Crisis Team, the Urgent Care Department, A&E, a half-way house sanctuary and an admissions-avoidance team. Everyone, in fact, except an actual psychiatrist. His mental health may be not better, but he’s at least got to know the area.
And I find the same when I’m trying to access care for patients myself. For example, when confronted by the acute-on-chronic elderly care crisis known technically as ‘gone off her legs’, I have a bewildering number of choices. There’s the urgent elderly care helpline. A frailty clinic (actual). A frailty clinic (virtual). An urgent community response team. An emergency response team. The community nursing service. An acute visiting service. And so on.
Somehow, at some point, someone thought it would be a great idea to deconstruct NHS services into tiny silos. These give a semblance of specific and appropriate care, but the reality is the opposite. Because the characteristics they share include inaccessibility, facelessness, obstructive and ever-changing referral criteria, a predilection for screening, assessing and signposting over actually treating, and an inability or unwillingness to communicate with the other cogs in the machine. And, most of all, a complete aversion to ‘owning the problem’: once patients are sucked into this vortex, there is no way of knowing who, if anyone, is making, or willing to make, definitive management decisions.
Except, of course, those sat in the middle of this dysfunctional merry-go-round: that’s us GPs, who are left to make sense of it all.
Welcome to our great NHS! I say welcome, but actually, you might just want to walk around it a few times and go home.
Dr Tony Copperfield is a GP in Essex "
https://www.pulsetoday.co.uk/views/copperfield/the-nhs-is-circling-the-drain-the-care-merry-go-round-is-exasperating/
Additionally, the UK is LOSING 50% of all its newly trained DOCTORS!!!
UK citizens must pay for their education, to the tune of $230,000 per student...and then they up and LEAVE and go to practice medicine where they can actually make some decent money!
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/07/04/nhs-brain-drain-abroad-at-record-high/
