IS IT REALLY FREE?
As a free healthcare system, the NHS has seen several changes to what is now considered required healthcare, initially, all forms of healthcare were provided at zero cost to the patient. This inevitably led to funding problems. Nowadays all forms of critical healthcare ate cost free, but ancillary healthcare such as dentistry and optician services for adults, are no longer mercenarily free.In the case of children, all healthcare is still free, although for some things, like dentistry, waiting lists can be extremely long, and in some cases, some areas of the country no longer have dentists with open space in their client books. In effect, this will force parents of children requiring any form of healthcare that has restricted supply, to seek private care. Ironically, the private healthcare provider chosen will often call upon the services of the same doctor, clinic or practice that would have serviced the NHS treatment. This is due to the fact that the doctors and medical professionals involved are contracted to a minimum number of hours work for the NHS, outside of these hours they are free to provide private healthcare, at far greater profit. For this reason many medical practitioners seek to maximise income by minimising obligations to the NHS and concentre on working within the private healthcare sector.