Is it worth having private healthcare just now?

[ssd]

I dont even mean with having covid, I mean with everything else. The news is full of awful stories about people having operations and investigations cancelled.
Is it worth paying for healthcare if you can?

We have just taken out a policy through my husbands work for private health and dental.
I work in the NHS and have always been against taking out a private policy, however with the ever growing waiting lists we felt we needed the option to go private.

We are retired now so don't have the work policies anymore so would probably self pay for some things, typical non urgent operations that take years on the NHS like hip replacements, we have savings for this, boosted even more by not being able to go on the lovely holidays we had planned.

Our BUPA policy through DH's work now bypasses GP's completely. They have telephone access, so you just phone them up, and they refer you direct, cutting out the GP. We are giving up on our NHS GP too, even for minor issues, we go to Babylon health, or get prescriptions direct via pharmacies dispensing systems.

I had a hysterectomy privately last year after being fobbed off and having appointments repeatedly cancelled by the NHS for 2.5 years. I never even got to see a consultant, despite being dangerously anemic and in horrific pain most days. Just rushed telephone calls with junior doctors who refused to take me seriously.

I couldn't leave the house as I flooded uncontrollably if I walked more than a few minutes.

I saw the same consultant I would have seen on the nhs within days privately and was sorted in a very short time. He confirmed that none of the tablets and injections the nhs had suggested (but never actually given me, because of covid) would have helped. I needed surgery and would have become iller and iller without it.

We were fortunate to have money in savings but it was a massive expense which I feel extremely angry about having to had spend.

If I could afford private health insurance I'd have it like shot.

The NHS is broken and is not offering worthwhile care to people who badly need it from my point of view. I was ignored and left to rot. No one cared one bit, from my GP to the junior doctors I spoke to when I a granted a phonecall with months between.