Serge Orlov, a 62-year-old Briton, likes to rail against what he calls the tyranny of the European Union. Like most supporters of his country’s withdrawal from the bloc, he wants Britain to strike out on its own, a fully sovereign state unshackled from Europe’s pettifogging rules and the Continent’s overweening state, reports The New York Times.
But faced with excruciating pain and a seemingly endless wait for a knee replacement, Mr. Orlov temporarily shelved his euroskepticism to take advantage of a little known National Health Service program and jump to the head of the line — in France.
After waiting a year just for the possibility of the knee replacement he badly needed, he turned to Calais Hospital in northern France, where in a matter of 10 days he found himself on the operating table for the three-hour procedure, he said in an interview. He plans to get his second knee replaced in a few weeks’ time. Back home, it took him a year to receive a letter informing him when he might have the operation.
“Waiting, it’s just miserable,” he said, describing how he had been shuttled to five different hospitals in Britain over more than eight months. Waiting rooms are “full of sick people,” he said, adding swiftly, by way of explanation, “I can be a grumpy old git.”
Mr. Orlov, who has Russian-Italian ancestry, is among a rapidly growing number of British patients who are crossing the English Channel to seek medical treatments — mostly elective surgeries — in France.
Given that the Brexit vote was largely won on highly emotive issues surrounding British sovereignty and a misleading promise by politicians that leaving the bloc would free up 350 million pounds, or about $490 million, a week to fund the NHS, the paradox of Britain seeking aid from France is not lost on the French hospital, nor on Mr. Orlov.
“I find something quite ironic about it,” he readily admitted. “I think it’s hilarious, actually.”
After years of austerity, Britain’s lumbering National Health Service is under enormous strain, with severe shortages of beds and medical staff, all of which is producing waiting times for nonemergency procedures to stretch over months, and sometimes beyond a year.
To cope, the N.H.S has been quietly outsourcing some surgeries to three hospitals in France for the last year or so. It is a little-known partnership, because the N.H.S. is not eager to advertise the measures it is being forced to take.
But as more people join Mr. Orlov in crossing the English Channel — and with a predictable but particularly severe “winter crisis” this year, forcing the cancellation of tens of thousands of elective surgeries — word is spreading.
Mr. Orlov was only Calais Hospital’s 15th patient under the program, but it has received 450 inquiries from British patients over six weeks, after fielding fewer than 10 a month previously. With 500 beds and a surgery ward with an occupancy rate of 70 percent, the hospital could treat as many as 200 NHS patients a year, officials said.
Mr. Orlov marveled that he had a spacious private room in the French hospital, with a window looking out on some greenery and a television set that offered the BBC. Parking is free, he exclaimed several times. “And the food is pretty good,” he said as an afterthought. “I’ve got to say, I’m not averse to French cooking.”
Hospitals in Britain “are so old they should be museums,” he said. “It’s shocking what’s going on.”
NHS England’s outsourcing deal has technically little to do with Britain’s decision nearly two years ago to leave the European Union, a process known as Brexit. Rather, it has more to do with the myriad ways that countries across Europe are tied together, but that are often ignored in public discussions about Britain’s relationship with Europe.