What you need to know about public healthcare in UK

As a resident of the UK, you have access to the free public healthcare system – NHS, which stands for National Health Service. The NHS offers a broad array of healthcare services ranging from general practitioner (GP) consultations, hospital treatments, dental care, to specialist consultations. It’s funded by taxes (this is what you’ve paid for if you were charged IHS upon your visa process). Some NHS services like dental care come at an additional cost.

• Most consultations and treatments, including surgical operations and hospital stay, are available to you for free (unless you choose to go private or pay to skip the waiting lines). Ambulance, essential screenings and vaccines are also free. 
• You would normally have to pay for medications prescribed to you, unless you are eligible for free medications covered by the NHS. Check if you can receive your prescription medicine for free on the NHS website or read the checklist below. The current prescription charge is £9.65 per item.

• Waiting lines in the NHS are long. Often very long. Depending on which GP practise you are assigned to, you may be waiting for your initial consultation from a couple of days to a week or more. The queues for specialised consultations or procedures can take months.
• If you have medical insurance, you may be able to skip the queues. With most medical insurance packages, you’d still be seen by the same doctors at the NHS affiliated facilities, but significantly faster.
• There is a common joke that the majority of specialists in the UK prescribe paracetamol for most conditions. While this may not be entirely true, it’s quite uncommon for doctors within NHS to overprescribe or overtreat – the general advice would usually be to let your body rest and restore by itself, unless interfering is absolutely necessary.