Yeah, it's a sad fact that the NHS is one of the very few things the government could actually fix simply by throwing money at it, albeit quite a lot of money as they would need to both provide adequate funding and additional funding to reverse the decades of underfunding.
No. Structures and organisation matter as well. While its definitely the case that we spend less per head than other European countries that have better health systems than ours, pumping money in to a health system with the wrong structures won't give the same outcomes.
The other thing to note is staffing - in order to meet the demands of population health today, we should have been training the professionals we need years ago. Doesn't matter how much money you throw at the NHS, if the staff (which goes far beyond the simplistic view of doctors and nurses) aren't there.
problem is though, even though it's so simple to fix they government don't want to as it would reduce the amount of money going to the private sector and many of them directly or indirectly benefit from NHS privatisation. Something that should really be outlawed, like how is it ethical for people with a vested financial interest in mismanaging a public service to be allowed to manage that service /sigh.
Ah, the old NHS privatisation trope. Most of primary care is private and
always has been, designed like that by Bevan himself. GPs, dentists, opticians etc, mostly or all private.
Better health systems in Europe have a much more mixed economy of public and private in secondary and tertiary care, as well as different ways of paying for healthcare. France, Germany, Denmark etc have lots of public and private mixes and their systems are definitely better than ours. It's not about the private sector per se, its about how you bring them into your health system. Think tanks like The Kings Fund have loads of interesting case studies about what works and what doesn't.
PS I'm not a clinician (my bedside manner would be
terrible), but I have worked with NHS orgs, including alongside guys from The Kings Fund. Its a fascinating and complex area of study, thinking about how to organise health systems in countries.