It's the worst of both worlds, what people have described as a "playing at shops" market: the surgeries are private, so they're all little businesses with inefficiencies and poor IT, but they look and feel like a poverty-striken government service. Many have Squid Game appointment systems (rush the phone at 8am precisely and hope you get a slot). The user does not acually pay money at the point of service.

NHS dentistry is a lot more .. honest about "we don't have any NHS appointments, but you can have the same service from the same person at a higher price, in which case we do have an appointment".

The worst of both worlds would be all of those problems + a bill that bankrupts you at the end. Which is, for what it's worth, what the US is like. The US medical system is also ludicrously oversubscribed and has insane wait times for lots and lots of routine health things.

> The US medical system is also ludicrously oversubscribed and has insane wait times for lots and lots of routine health things.

The number of doctors per capita in the US increased a lot for decades[0], but stalled over the past 10 years. I wonder if the blame lies at the AMA's feet.

For what it's worth, my personal experience with routine medical care hasn't been too bad in three (very different) states, though it's unclear to me what my expectations should be. It seems like the US is worse than average for primary care wait times and better than average for specialist wait times among developed countries[2].

[0]: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/2020-2021/DocSt.pdf

[1]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/186092/active-physicians...

[2]: https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/242e3c8c-en/1/3/2/index....

I have known GPs to try that too, although it is much rarer and I do not know anyone (even in London) who has been completely unable to find a GP (one person did have to ask the NHS to find her one willing to take her though).