That’s an interesting question, the answer is “it depends”. 
As far as the NHS is concerned, there’s a postcode lottery for speed of diagnosis. 
At its best, your local NHS hospital will match going private. At its worst you’ll be waiting far longer.
Referral to treatment ought to be within 62 days for most cancers in England. 
New treatments are not generally immediately available on the NHS because an organisation called NICE needs to study how cost effective each treatment is. For example a treatment which costs £1m per patient but adds only an average of 10 days to life expectancy wouldn’t get through. This is similar to the USA where medical insurers undertake a similar process. 

That said, many novel treatments (many funded by CRUK) are available as part of clinical trials.

Finally, all treatments are free at the point of care for UK citizens. No-one in the UK is made bankrupt by the direct cost of cancer care. 

I hope this helps!

Dave

That’s an interesting question, the answer is “it depends”. 
As far as the NHS is concerned, there’s a postcode lottery for speed of diagnosis. 
At its best, your local NHS hospital will match going private. At its worst you’ll be waiting far longer.
Referral to treatment ought to be within 62 days for most cancers in England. 
New treatments are not generally immediately available on the NHS because an organisation called NICE needs to study how cost effective each treatment is. For example a treatment which costs £1m per patient but adds only an average of 10 days to life expectancy wouldn’t get through. This is similar to the USA where medical insurers undertake a similar process. 

That said, many novel treatments (many funded by CRUK) are available as part of clinical trials.

Finally, all treatments are free at the point of care for UK citizens. No-one in the UK is made bankrupt by the direct cost of cancer care. 

I hope this helps!

Dave