Why Britain’s Prime Minister Prefers To See a Private Doctor

After weeks of speculation, the Brits have discovered the shameful truth: Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has indeed used private health care in the past. The conservative head of the United Kingdom has been quick to add that he has always been registered with a National Health Service (NHS) general practitioner and that his family has received “fantastic care” from an NHS hospital in his constituency, but that isn’t keeping British people from thinking him a hypocrite.

To American observers, the story is a total snoozefest. So the British P.M. received care from a private entity—what’s the big deal? U.S. politicians go to private providers all the time. But in the U.K., people would rather everyone get equal access to bad care than risk some people obtaining better care because they can afford it.

The Britons’ outrage is warranted. Sunak is an ardent defender of the NHS, having religiously cheered for the institution while COVID-19 was battering his country. Yet it turns out, when push comes to shove, the P.M. can’t trust the system with his health. He may give lip service to the NHS, but his personal preference is for private health care—and with good reason.

Over the past few weeks, the NHS has reached a breaking point, and it is in that context that Sunak’s access to private care has become a contentious subject. The millions of Britons who can’t afford the fancy care their P.M. received are one health emergency away from a living nightmare.

Nurses and ambulance staff have been striking all over the U.K. for several weeks now in protest of dire staffing and payment conditions, and patients are paying a high price for the upheaval. People are waiting for hours for an ambulance to arrive. Once they make it to the hospital, they have to wait again, sometimes for days, before being admitted to the emergency room.

While the severity of the crisis the NHS finds itself in today cannot be overstated, the NHS was showing alarming signs long before the pandemic. COVID broke the system, with employees quitting in droves and those who remained enduring immense stress. Wait times exploded during the pandemic, such that over one in 8 Britons is currently on a waitlist for medical care.

Sunak’s pending reform goal tells the whole story: that no Briton be made to wait longer than a year to be treated by the NHS. A year! To Americans, that seems like an inconceivable amount of time to wait for medi