But we do let the market decide the price for defense and certain educations. BAE Systems is massive in the UK, and goes a long way in ensuring that the price for defense is a function of the demand. Higher education does take tuition fees in the UK, again letting the market decide the price for this service. Firefighters and police are notorious for being rationed, to the point that it only works due to goodhearted volunteers.

Also, as nationalized healthcare is payed by the taxpayer, politicians have an obligation to make sure that the costs are minimized as much as possible. The only way you can make a service cheap while still giving the service to all who needs it, is to set it to the market clearing price; something almost impossible in the public sector. That’s why the NHS is always rationing, yet the cost for NHS keep going up year after year, to the point that a large part of the 90% debt-to-gdp of the UK is due to the NHS. If I wanted to be outrageous, I could easily make the accusation that the British citizen have sold away their children’s future and loaded them with debt so that anti-depressants could be bought here and now. The large majority of NHS cost is not in any way related to life saving services, so implying that making the NHS as costless as possible would kill people is really a strawman. At worst, people who have made bad lifestyle choices will have to face the consequences of these choices. People who are actually deadly ill due to circumstances not of their doing have been, and can always find help.