No Free Lunch

This article just highlights the idea that no system is perfect. The NHS has a very noble goal, which is the paternalistic idea of taking care of everyone, but it has encountered the fundamental flaw, which is that there is no free lunch. Medical care is expensive. Medical care continues to get more expensive, as more and more (expensive) technological advances come about.
In many ways, the NHS has the right idea, to focus on prevention and primary care, to provide incentives for prevention and to monitor new drugs/advances to keep care as cost effective as possible.
The NHS is not the only option for the British, people who want "extra" care can pay for it via (supplemental) private insurance. Maybe this option needs to be expanded, to take away some of the drain on the public system, much as private schools in this country take away some of the volume from the public school system.
Perhaps there should be a co-pay for drugs or some sort of deductible for the high volume users.
There is no such thing as free health care. The government is paying for it out of taxes, and the cost of the care continues to go up, out of proportion to inflation, the result is an unsustainable system, which is nice while it lasts. The only solution is to contain costs or raise revenue. Cost containment is already in effect through careful review of cost-effectiveness studies, but other options would be to limit proceudres/tests/drugs/access or abandoning the idea of 'free' universal health care (I don't think anyone is suggesting to go that far). The only other solution is to raise revenue, either by raising taxes, or introducing some variation of fee-for-service.
Ironic, but not surprising that this discussion continues in the UK, while we struggle with the opposite here.