Rob, why is it that the British socialized medicine doesn’t have enough own doctors and nurses? You guys are that dumbed down by Benny Hill or beer to graduate in medical fields? Or is it that, when medicine is socialized, the state determines how much is enough? And for that much (or rather little) only third-world medical staff finds it attractive?
AFAIK, the problems start in school, with the public (I know, not in the posh sense of public which, perversely, means private) offering being held down due to money, lack of good parenting in many cases - usually connected problems, but not always - and the general greyness of spirit that came into its own post-war, except for that brief window of the 60s, where those who could made the best of it, and the rest just carried on watching tv and feeling more and more out of it.
Throw in a strong labour union movement that was often communist-powered, if denied (I was in industry for some years and had first-hand confrontations), and incentives to throw out and change the lowly status quo are few and far between if folks are true believers in it. So, the base from which to pick the better brains is not overly huge. Then there's the cost of university if you don't happen to be Scottish. The educational services are there, but prohibitively expensive for many. Watching my granddaughters' graduation ceremonies, it's an eye-opener to see how many Chinese students there are, how many picking up advanced degrees. I have heard that those kids are very hard-working and that much sacrifice has often been made back home to offer them the chance to study, so they do. Good for them! As with in America, some stay and others do not.
Opportunity is not only in the West, and increasingly, neither is all the big money.Lower down the ranks, but as vital in their rôles, are the nurses as well as the cleaners, but again, the NHS has not got unlimited funds, and faced with an ever more self-induced incidence of food-realted illnesses, demand on the sevices grows faster than the money coming in, and pay packets have to be kept low in comparison to some others. Throw in a society where it can sometimes pay you more not to work, and there you go. I had a brief - very - chat with my new doctor on this; she wanted to go to Australia but, according to her, she'd have had to work for free for two years. She told me that medical salaries are far lower in Spain than in Britain, but hey, the lifestyle is better. She spoke as a doctor, so probably had a comfortable background just to get there. Not always the case with the nurses, many of whom work in Britain, but relatively fewer are making the trip, Brexit making them afraid, not just physically, but long-term, career-wise. As I've mentioned before, one granddaghter is a doc and works in a hospital in Manchester: she tells me that without the foreign input, the British system will have to call in the Automobile Association to fix it. Or to haul it to the scrapyard.
And think of it: less than 4% unemployment in Britain, I believe. Doesn't compute sensibly.