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Comment by urbandw311er | Hacker News Reader

In the UK, the answer is that the NHS is simply overwhelmed. There are too many people and not enough doctors so the whole system has been whittled down to the point where it is stateless and transactional. And still another net 600,000 people come here every year and we wonder why it’s getting worse!

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Yet they still artificially limit the number of medical school places available to UK applicants, to a number far below what we need.

This is not the case. Medical school places are up over a third since 2017. We import the amount of doctors we graduate every year, but we haven't meaningfully increased the amount of specialists and GP's we train in over a decade.

There is no shortage of doctors. There is a shortage of consultants/GPs.

> still another net 600,000 people

.. many of whom are NHS employees, since we don't train enough locally.

https://www.nhsconfed.org/articles/immigration-harming-nhs

"Recent NHS data shows that across all NHS staff in England (1.4 million), more than 17 per cent (264,815) are from overseas. Percentages for nurses are much higher – nearly 27 per cent of NHS nurses are from outside the UK (99,856 of the 372,605 nurses and health visitors recorded).

Further, the workforce plan is supported by the government, for example, having set a target to recruit between 51,000 and 57,000 international nurses by 2023/24"

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