Private hospital patients and NHS inpatients report near-identical recommendation rates when measured with a recommend-based instrument. Circle Health Group — the UK’s largest independent hospital group — reports that 97.9% of patients (n=86,772 questionnaires, Jan-Dec 2025) would be likely or extremely likely to recommend their consultant. Inverting gives roughly 3% who would not recommend. That is a single provider’s self-reported figure, not a national private-sector aggregate, so treat it as illustrative rather than definitive. On the NHS side, Borrelli et al. (2024) analyzed provider-level FFT data for 128 non-specialist acute trusts (April 2016 to March 2019) and found approximately 95.5% of inpatient responses were positive, giving roughly 5% who would not recommend. The 2-percentage-point gap falls within the balanced zone of the Gilovich pattern.
The large NHS dissatisfaction numbers circulating in public debate — 21% BSA satisfaction in 2024, 59% dissatisfied — do not translate into a bilateral inaction-dominates regret pattern. Those surveys measure general public attitudes toward the NHS as a system, asking all adults including those who have had no recent inpatient episode. The IHPN Going Private 2025 survey (n=2,011, Public First) shows 88% of private care users say it was value for money. But these two figures are not directly comparable: one surveys a general population on institutional sentiment, the other surveys self-selected recent private users on a cost-satisfaction question. When a recommend-based measure is applied to both populations in comparable inpatient contexts, the gap narrows to roughly 2 percentage points, though the private figure is a single provider’s “recommend your consultant” self-report rather than the identical NHS “recommend this ward” FFT item, so the comparison is indicative rather than like-for-like. UK private medical insurance market growth (ABI 2024: 6.5 million insured, up from 6.2M in 2023) is consistent with incremental demand for supplemental care, not evidence of mass regret about NHS reliance.
The entry’s geographic and temporal limits bear stating directly. The NHS FFT inpatient data runs only to March 2019; the CQC Adult Inpatient Survey 2024 (more than 62,000 NHS patients across 131 trusts, 52.1% rating experience 9-10/10) suggests in-treatment quality has not deteriorated, though waiting times remain a structural pressure. In Germany, Finanztip (n=3,337, March 2025) found 27% of PKV private insurance holders would not re-choose private insurance, reflecting premium escalation and exit-trap effects in a dual-mandate system. Australia lost approximately 1.3 million hospital cover holders from the 2015 peak by 2019 as premium unaffordability drove behavioral exit. Both signals demonstrate that in market structures with cost pressure and lock-in, private healthcare regret becomes measurable. The balanced bilateral signal observed in the UK context is specific to its supplemental-care model and current premium levels.