"D"
I make no excuses except for the fact that with the limited resources the NHS has, it does a pretty good job.
Rods2 post is a typical knee jerk reaction to issues like this. The reason being no one hears about the millions of ops that do happen on time, with out any complications. You dont hear about the extra hours that doctors and nurses put in without pay to go the extra mile for patients. For every odd bad sory you hear, there are probably thousands or more good outcomes. But nobody likes to post about good things that happen to them, its always easier to criticise than to praise.The NHS Budget is £120bn a year which is about 7.5% of GDP or just under £2,000 spent per person per year, if this is limited inadequate resources, then please tell me what is required? 100% / 200% / 10,000%, 1,000,000% of GDP before the workforce of the NHS feel they have adequate resources?

Please tell me why all those that work in the public services use the excuse of inadequate resources, yet in the private sector, whatever the resources we have (often on wafer thin budgets), we just get on with it, to get a result, as if we don't it's a P45.
The French system also consumes about 7.5% of GDP and on all of the measures I have seen, from patient satisfaction, infection rates, waiting times and cancer survival rates it easily out performs the NHS. Why so?
I agree that the US system is good but very expensive, and also exclusive with many people having no access to medical treatment.

Do I think it is a good system, NO, and to me this is how a private system should not be organised, the French public / private system is much better. I want this country to have a good health system that gives value for money and IMHO the NHS is not fit for purpose to deliver this.
My response is not a knee jerk reaction, but from the experience of many friends and relations. Including, my ex-wife being minutes from death from internal bleeding, (heart stopped from lack of blood) from a bodged NHS operation.
I'm very fortunate in that too date, I've enjoyed very good heath with the only minor hospital treatment I've needed has been as an outpatient.
Several times when I was with my ex-wife I paid for private consultancy and operations as it was the only way to stop the endless appointments with consultants, each taking a minimum of 6 weeks between appointments and getting no where. Eight appointments means that is a year of your life gone, which in my ex-wife's case also meant that where she could hardly walk from a chronic back problem and was bored and frustrated where she couldn't work.
Recent experience again with a close relation, was that nurses spent much time, talking about their personal lives, weekend plans, jokes etc. with a patient buzzing for assistance considered a pain as they were dragging them away from enjoying themselves.
My experience on the competence and attitude of doctors and nurses has been always good in private sector (you are treated as a customer, not a number) and from exceptionally good to exceptionally bad on the NHS.
I have several English friends who have retired to France and ALL of them on using the French system have made the comments from how much better it is, to several saying until then they hadn't realized how bad the NHS was in comparison.