[Aengeuad]

Of course the NHS has an incentive to lower costs, it's in their interest for doctors to prescribe the most cost effective treatment as patients rarely stop coming back as a result of ineffective treatment. Does this mean that objectively good preventative treatment (like physio) and quality of life elective surgery get pushed to the back of the triage queue, and that individual needs are occasionally failed? Absolutely, and in these cases where the NHS falls short there's always the option of going private, which just highlights that healthcare is always political.

In a purely private healthcare system (which doesn't exist in the developed world) the politics are firstly whether you can pay and secondly how much you can pay. No point offering free dieting and lifestyle advice when risky weight loss surgery (which has a notoriously low success rate) offers instant success, got a bad back or knee? Try out this risk free* (*not actually risk free) surgery! It wasn't that long ago in the US that getting cancer without health insurance was a death sentence, and that again is a political choice, one that the US government reneged on.