Here's the thing: The UK NHS is merely sort of an Ultimate Poster Child(tm) for government program as Savior of Us All(tm). Proof? We can't even get rid of the US Department of Education. (One more way in which the founders' wisdom became a dead letter once the limitations imposed by the Enumerated Powers were breached (or more often perniciously redefined as whatever they needed to be for the power grab du jour).)

Good luck to us all.

Throw it into the lava pool!
... No! it is ... My "preciousssss" ...

This what Democrats would foist on the United States, but at an order of magnitude in size & cost. Medicaid for all. Rationed care and a new black market for some. Lowest common denominator for all. Ezekiel Emmanuel would fit right in, providing guidelines on care denials for infants and the elderly (oh, and so many elderly we will have as boomers age out of acceptable cost). They rail about having an employer or insurance company between you and your doctor, yet they want an army of government bureaucrats instead. Health care meets the DMV

Reform of the NHS is not a no brainer.

Because of Chantrill's Law. You can never reform a government program because people refuse to have their free stuff taken away.

People with money avoid the NHS. Everyone else gets third-world care.

Still waiting for a cogent explanation from the members of the NHS Cult to this particular riddle:

If Nationalized Health Care is so bloody great, why then does the UK now have Corona Virus death rates at more than TWICE those in the US??

I'm certainly not holding my breath for an answer. But it is sad to watch the Non-elected Controllers of the Cult rapidly expand the list of what is now euphemistically deemed "non-essential" surgeries and procedures, which will not now be performed on The British People to make way for all those Corona Cases...

Why does Germany have a rate less than ours or the UK’s? They also have universal government-sponsored health care.

No, they do NOT. The German system is a combination of State funded and PRIVATE Health insurance programs.
It is universal ONLY in the sense that citizens must make mandatory contributions to the State fund. However, they also may, and a surprisingly large number do also contract with PRIVATE health insurers.

Thank you for confirming exactly what I said. It IS universal, and mandatory in the sense that no one’s allowed to avoid paying into it. I don’t really care about the specific structure, what I care about, like most other people on the left, is that the structure ensures that everyone has access, and that those who can’t afford the private route are funded by those who can.

That, I think, is what gets at the issue of “religious principles”. The “religious principal” with regard to healthcare policy for people on the left is that whatever the structure, everyone gets access whether or not they can pay. Meanwhile, the religious principle on the right seems to be that if you can’t pay, you shouldn’t get assured access.

The system the Germans use isn’t actually all that different in principle from Obamacare, and we see how receptive the American right was to that idea.

Yes, it is not ALL that different BUT...
It is substantially different in a critical respect. whereas Obamacare was intended to penalize so called Cadillac Plans, i.e., those private or employer sponsored plans that provided ample benefits in order to minimize the effect / potency of these type of plans, the Germans did not do that. Obama wanted to destroy private insurance as a means to achieving "Single Payer - the germans DID NOT and are quite content with their MULTI-PAYER system of health insurance. Nor, do i recall, the German plan mandating that private insurers MUST coversu ch *critical*, *essentail* health services as transgender surgery.
A bit of a difference, hey mate!

And as for those on the right thinking if you can't pay, you should not have assured access (whatever the heck "assured" means) that is simply false. We have Medicaid, Medicare etc that provides such assurances. Additionally, it is the Law in the US that no person may be turned away from emergency and / or other services due to an inability to pay. In fact, those costs are factored into hospital billing structures and consequently private insurance premiums.

No, Obamacare was designed to disrupt the existing medical insurance regime in the US and as a result of that expected failure FORCE the country into an NHS style single payer system.

BTW: AS to assured, what level of assurance is there in NHS when can be assured of a 4 - 6 month wait for an Ultrasound or MRI whereas in the US we are generally able to obtain these imaging services within a week, if not sooner depending upon the severity of the condition.
Keep the NHS RIGHT WHERE IT IS - in the UK - not here.

I’d buy your argument if it weren’t pretty obviously the case that many people on the American right simply don’t accept the idea that one person should subsidize healthcare for another person who can’t afford it. You point out that we have Medicaid in the United States for the poor, that’s true, but you studiously neglect to point out that many on the right think this is absolutely wrong in principle and that Medicaid should be completely eliminated. And as for people being able to go to the ER, you’re speaking to a physician here who’s well aware of the fact that ER’s do NOT provide any care whatsoever for the vast majority of primary care conditions that people commonly suffer from. I practiced medicine for many years in Massachusetts before Romneycare was introduced here and I very definitely saw hundreds of cases of uninsured people who could NOT get basic healthcare - do not try to tell me otherwise.

Again, the fundamental problem with your argument is that if we imported EXACTLY the same system that the Germans have to the US, one which quite openly forces the population at large to pay taxes to provide healthcare to people who otherwise can’t afford it, the right would immediately shoot it down. Like I said, it seems to be a “religious principle” for many people on the right that nobody should be forced to pay for the healthcare of other people who can’t afford it.