I’m not familiar with UK politics. Why can’t they raise wages?

Bureaucracy, corruption...

NHS management is notoriously corrupt and a bureaucratic nightmare, which is why the national health service failed in the UK.

If you live elsewhere and are surprised to have never heard about this, it’s because it hasn’t been acknowledged yet by the government to save face, but anyone with relatives stuck on a NHS waiting list or who have sadly passed away waiting for an ambulance that doesn’t come already knows this.

The Conservative party wishes to destroy (by privatization) the National Health System. It will be replaced with a "health" system substantially identical to the American system.

The creation of the NHS was possibly the biggest peacetime mistake of the 20th century. It's irreformable now though, and given the bizarre NHS-worship in the UK, a political third rail to even discuss privatisation (not that privatisation would fix the underlying issues, but that's another discussion)

Leaving aside the political concerns of the governing party, the NHS employs a lot of people, it's the biggest employer in Europe and one of the biggest in the world, so even a 1% raise costs a lot of money.

>"We're spending £350m per week on this, isn't that mad?!"

Aren't you sorta forgetting the more salient point of this headline? That it was an outright fabrication with no justification or basis in reality?

I know, but it doesn't necessarily matter in this context, my point is that big simple numbers make good headlines, and complicated analyses do not.