it has been done we haven't always been in the EU before the eu we had industry, if you didn't like your job you could leave it in the morning and get another one in the afternoon, we had less but what we did have was constant and secure, if you got too sick and couldn't work you got paid benefits, if you worked hard all your life you got a pension and could retire at a decent age. if you were ill you could make an appointment go see a doctor and talk to them for as long as needed, or they would even come to your house.
We have industry now, UK manufacturing is stronger than ever, we're the 11th biggest manufacturing country in the world which for a tiny rock in the Atlantic compared to the likes of India, China, America, Russia, Korea etc puts us in a very strong place.
What we don't do is knock out a billion pairs of knickers and biros, but we now tend to be associated with quality goods and services and complicated high end products other countries can't make reliably.
Many places have unfilled posts at the moment and recruiting for businesses is becoming harder than ever. Recently at work we wanted a receptionist and could not find one for love nor money, people just didn't apply for a basic receptionist job with a 20k a year salary.
If you're too sick now and can't work there are benefits, sadly though years of people playing the system have spoiled this for the genuine people. We all knew people growing up who didn't work after losing their jobs in recessions and spent the rest of there life on the sick. Someone I went to school with back in the 80s, father literally did nothing for the rest of his life when the factory he worked in closed down and he spent the next 20 years watching tv and smoking, eventually dying from complications of the latter.
My parents are retiring at a decent age and I have a good pension I pay into every month, so I don't expect to have problems come retirement age. I can get an appointment at my doctor, once finishing work at 5, driving over an hour to get home and my GP fitted me in for an appointment after 6pm. After which I walked across the road to pick up my tablets and went home. The reason we have such problems with the health system is because people abuse it and themselves. In the 60's we didn't have the huge levels of diabetes, obesity and heart disease, liver disease and cancer. Much of which could be argued to be down to lifestyle choices. People didn't used to go to A&E for a cold or a sore finger 3 weeks after symptoms began, without taking so much as a paracetamol.
Many of the problems we have these days are caused by an overwhelming sense of entitlement and irresponsible attitudes to society. "The governmen, council, schools, NHS, etc, should fix my problems." And the "It's not my fault I'm (insert problem here) beliefs.