Shocking Report Reveals The True Cost Of England’s ‘Free’ Healthcare System

Leftists across the US continue to pine for the kind of socialized medicine imposed on citizens in many other Western nations, including across the United Kingdom.

And even though the inherent deficiencies of such systems (including high taxes and long wait times) have been widely exposed, recent data from the UK government itself shows just how deadly socialized medicine can be.

Breitbart provided this report:

Analysis of official government data by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine estimates that over 1,300 people died a month in Accident & Emergency (A&E) departments last year because they were forced to wait too long for treatment. The 15,860 avoidable deaths over the course of 2025 is ten times higher than a decade earlier, and is said to be a result of British hospitals where overcrowding has been normalised.

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The Royal College said the rate of avoidable deaths in A&E started to rise after a patient had been kept waiting five hours and continued to rise every hour thereafter. Incredibly, 1.74 million patients in emergency rooms in Britain were forced to wait at least 12 hours last year, and 489,000 had to wait over 24 hours.

According to the official standards Britain’s socialised healthcare service, the National Health Service, functionally all patients should be seen within four hours of arriving at A&E. The last time that happened nationwide was in 2015.

The Times of London states the main reason for extremely long A&E wait times is not the emergency room itself, but rather that the other departments in hospitals are so overcrowded they cannot admit any more patients for treatment. The inability to move arrivals onto other parts of the hospital where they should be leaves the ER itself to become a giant waiting room for grievously ill people, with many accommodated on beds in corridors.

This is just the latest example used by advocates of the free market to decry efforts to expand socialized healthcare in America:

I was in an NHS clinic in 2010 and an older gentleman with COPD came in with his wife. He was struggling to breathe. They told him that they were booked for the day and had to come back tomorrow.

— SFC Rock "doc" Roll (@RockRol54750183) June 10, 2026

Here’s one alarming anecdote, with the full text of the post to follow:

𝐒𝐇𝐄 𝐖𝐄𝐍𝐓 𝐈𝐍 𝐅𝐎𝐑 𝐀 𝐊𝐍𝐄𝐄. 𝐒𝐇𝐄 𝐂𝐀𝐌𝐄 𝐎𝐔𝐓 𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐓 𝐀 𝐋𝐄𝐆. 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐒 𝐈𝐒 𝐖𝐇𝐀𝐓 “𝐅𝐑𝐄𝐄” 𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐋𝐓𝐇𝐂𝐀𝐑𝐄 𝐀𝐂𝐓𝐔𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐘 𝐂𝐎𝐒𝐓𝐒

Roseanne Milburn, 61, of Winnipeg, had a routine procedure turn into an amputation — not because the… pic.twitter.com/baA7Ez1wZ4

— M.A. Rothman (@MichaelARothman) June 8, 2026

S𝐇𝐄 𝐖𝐄𝐍𝐓 𝐈𝐍 𝐅𝐎𝐑 𝐀 𝐊𝐍𝐄𝐄. 𝐒𝐇𝐄 𝐂𝐀𝐌𝐄 𝐎𝐔𝐓 𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐓 𝐀 𝐋𝐄𝐆. 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐒 𝐈𝐒 𝐖𝐇𝐀𝐓 “𝐅𝐑𝐄𝐄” 𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐋𝐓𝐇𝐂𝐀𝐑𝐄 𝐀𝐂𝐓𝐔𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐘 𝐂𝐎𝐒𝐓𝐒

Roseanne Milburn, 61, of Winnipeg, had a routine procedure turn into an amputation — not because the surgery failed, but because Canada’s government-run system couldn’t find her a bed.

A surgeon at Winnipeg’s Health Sciences Centre removed dead tissue from her knee, then sent her to Concordia Hospital with the plan to bring her back that same day so a specialist could stitch the wound (CBC News). She was never brought back.

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There was no bed at HSC. So she sat at Concordia with an 𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐧 𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐠𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐰𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐞𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐝𝐚𝐲𝐬, waiting for the system to make room.

As the video narrator put it: “𝘌𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘥𝘢𝘺𝘴 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘢𝘯 𝘰𝘱𝘦𝘯 𝘸𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘯 𝘊𝘢𝘯𝘢𝘥𝘢. 𝘕𝘰𝘵 𝘪𝘯 𝘊𝘶𝘣𝘢, 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘪𝘯 𝘔𝘢𝘥𝘢𝘨𝘢𝘴𝘤𝘢𝘳, 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘪𝘯 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘧𝘢𝘳-𝘧𝘭𝘶𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘳𝘥-𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘳𝘺. 𝘕𝘰, 𝘯𝘰, 𝘯𝘰, 𝘪𝘯 𝘊𝘢𝘯𝘢𝘥𝘢.”

By the time a bed opened, the wound had rotted past saving. The doctors told her the leg couldn’t be salvaged. On a Friday in December, Roseanne Milburn lost her 𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐥𝐞𝐠 — over a missing hospital bed.

This is not a freak accident. It is the predictable output of a system that rations care by making people wait.

In 2025, the median Canadian waited 𝟐𝟖.𝟔 𝐰𝐞𝐞𝐤𝐬 from a GP referral to actual treatment (Fraser Institute). For orthopedic surgery — the exact category Milburn needed — the median wait is 𝟒𝟖.𝟔 𝐰𝐞𝐞𝐤𝐬. Nearly a full year. By design.

That is 222 percent longer than the 9.3-week wait Canadians faced in 1993 (Fraser Institute). The system isn’t getting better. It’s getting slower — and the waiting list itself becomes the rationing mechanism.

Defenders call it “𝘧𝘳𝘦𝘦”. It is not free. Roseanne Milburn paid for it. She paid with her leg.

Every politician selling “𝘔𝘦𝘥𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘈𝘭𝘭” is selling this — the bed that never opens, the specialist who never comes, the wound that turns black while a bureaucrat shuffles a list.

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𝐀 𝐰𝐚𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐚 𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐚 𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐚𝐫 𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐚𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐝.

Here’s an excerpt from The Guardian’s report:

There were more than 300 deaths linked to long waits every week in 2025, up from 30 a week in 2015, according to analysis by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine.

The RCEM’s president, Dr Ian Higginson, said he wondered how many more deaths it would take before there was a meaningful plan to tackle the crisis.

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“We have to ask why this awful problem isn’t the subject of relentless focus and political conversation. The number of deaths linked to long stays in our emergency departments explicitly show the system is failing the patients it is meant to be caring for,” he said.

For its excess death estimates, the RCEM used a study of more than 5 million NHS patients published in the Emergency Medicine Journal in 2021. This found there was one excess death for every 72 patients who spent eight to 12 hours in A&E before being found a bed. The risk of death started to increase after five hours and got worse with longer waiting times.

Using this method, the RCEM estimated there were 15,860 excess deaths in 2025 related to long waits. The figure was down slightly on 2024 (16,644) but up nearly tenfold on 2015 (1,657).

Higginson said: “As an emergency doctor, it’s heartbreaking that patients arrive to our emergency departments in their time of need, and we can’t do our jobs properly because we are full. To make things worse we are being asked to focus on the least sick patients to try and marginally improve headline statistics, rather than on those who need our services the most.