Per the reader blogs:

Health tourists are courted on the Internet by foreign doctors and hospitals that offer consultations online or with agents in the UK. Cost of a heart-bypass operation in India, including the flight and hotel, are less than half what the same would cost at a private British hospital. The shortage of dentists in Britain is being met by dentists in Hungary.

“The confidence that the public has in NHS hospitals has been shattered by the growth of hospital infections and this government’s failure to make a real commitment to tackling it,” said Katherine Murphy, of the Patients’ Association. “People are simply frightened of going to NHS hospitals, so I am not surprised the numbers going abroad are increasing so rapidly. My fear is that most people can’t afford to have private treatment – whether in this country or abroad.”

Traveling to a foreign country for health care is cheaper than getting it from a local private hospital (that is likely expensive because it has to compete with government hospitals)?  And the government hospitals are so slow and poorly run that nobody wants to go there?

Hey, America...let’s sign ourselves up for this. This “free health care” stuff sounds wonderful.