Your description of the NHS sounds exactly like the Canadian healthcare system.
>>Keep begging my parents to just go private [...]
Except for this difference as we don't have the option to choose private care except for a out-patient services (e.g. physical therapy) and certain drugs & therapies. I'm speaking primarily about Ontario and British Columbia, but I think the other provinces and territories are similar.
Hospitals, diagnostic services and physicians are all funded by public taxpayer dollars at both the provincial and federal level, but it is indeed a single healthcare system.
It's the case nationwide in Canada due to rules in the Canada Health Act: if a service is provided by provincial governments (so MSP in BC or OHIP in ON) then it cannot be offered privately.
There have been some workaround attempts in BC (such as the Cambie Surgery Centre, which lost a court case recently-ish) and AB's recent move to give contracts to Catholic health care providers, but the only true "private" option in Canada is the airport.
I could go on about this at length and how it makes me a pariah amongst a flood of anti-American conspiracy theories, but this is a thread about the UK (of which I'm also a citizen) so I'll resist.
>>Keep begging my parents to just go private [...]
Except for this difference as we don't have the option to choose private care except for a out-patient services (e.g. physical therapy) and certain drugs & therapies. I'm speaking primarily about Ontario and British Columbia, but I think the other provinces and territories are similar.
Hospitals, diagnostic services and physicians are all funded by public taxpayer dollars at both the provincial and federal level, but it is indeed a single healthcare system.