There have been two consistent policies across the past 13 years: underfunding of the NHS and overfunding of the private sector.
In the same month that the government closed 5,000 NHS beds, it block-booked all 8,000 beds in England’s private hospitals, and covered their entire operating costs. In return, these hospitals were required to do … nothing. It was free money. Rather than relieving the pandemic pressure, the 187 private hospitals treated, between them, a grand total of eight Covid patients a day. And, perhaps because they were now being paid merely for existing, they greatly reduced the other NHS-funded procedures they handled.
In 2021, through a scarcely noticed policy that seems to me just as scandalous as its corrupt PPE deals, the government extended these payments for doing nothing for a further four years, with a new “framework contract” for private hospitals. The expected cost is £10bn.
“Privatisation technique: defund, make sure things don’t work, people get angry, you hand it over to private capital.” - Noam Chomsky
As a French residents both you, me and many others on this forum are recipients of a part privatised health system here in France irrespective if ‘an old fart’ or’old bat’ (ask @John_Scully for definition) and I think we all or most agree that the French health system is superior. So, why keep knocking the NHS via the current government for stealth privatisation?
In my opinion the only way to save the NHS is indeed to part privatise in the same way as mutuelles work in France.
Edit: And although I haven’t said this before there is a lot of middle management deadwood that should be removed.
Initially, way back when, I wasn’t against the privatisation fashion. I thought it would bring efficiencies, but now I don’t think that has been the case. Poor legislation, poor regulation and cronyism seems to have knocked that on head. I also think certain core activities should never have been privatised.
I’m not actually so sure that is the problem with the NHS. Its a massive organisation which needs to have the proper controls in place provided by the middle management tier.
There is much evidence that fraud is rife (BBC - Ill-gotten Gains) and with fewer managers (as there are) the opportunity to exploit gaps in administrative procedure increases.
Part privatisation will only add to the burden. Profit before patients comes to mind.
The issues facing the NHS are complex.
The NHS has always included ‘private’ elements - notably most GP practices. There are however big differences, for example in contract forms, employment and pension status, asset ownership, etc - between this (which was always similar to the French system) and the Thatcherite, selling-off-the-family-silver to mega-corporations kind of privatisation the Tories favour.
(I know this stuff, by the way - it was part of my professional life - I was for example the advisor that moved a thousand NHS staff out of Hull PCT to the City Healthcare Partnership Community Interest Company - among other similar jobs - all done with trade union and staff backing precisely to avoid Tory-style privatisation.)
In utilities, transport, health, education, and other areas, France uses private providers, but generally with the state retaining core asset values and control, and often employer status too. It has not been dominated by that naive Tory ‘market knows best’ ideology.
On your ‘deadwood management’ point by the way - see my post:
I’d have no objection to private enterprise being involved in the NHS
But private enterprise will not inevitably bring improvement: see the US system, for example
And adding privatised elements to a system which has been neglected and run down for the past 13 years is a recipe for disaster, it seems to me
Britain won the war in 1945, England won the world cup in 1966, that was then but this is now. I have no doubt that the NHS in Hull welcomed the move when it occurred but that was then and now it doesn’t seem to have fixed the NHS. We cannot rely on past fix its to mend the here and now, different times different circumstances. I couldn’t get the following news link to work but the headline doesn’t read well for Hull
Always interesting to see folks squirm around - try to say the privatisation of the NHS is no different from the French health system’s inclusion of non-state elements, then when they find out, er, it actually is different, quickly change the subject.
Oh - and invent the idea that transfers to staff and community ownership, or the whole NHS ‘Right to Request’ process, undertaken principally (on the government side) to get people out of the NHS pension scheme, or (on the staff side) to avoid being sold off to US multinationals, were ever going to resolve the UK’s long-term underfunding of hospitals.
Which, incidentally, are not run by City Healthcare Partnership CIC in Hull (in the NHS, Primary Care Trusts are not the same as Hospital Trusts).
The ‘bring out your dead’ cart may as well follow the ambulances
There is just so much that is inhumane in this account that I do not know where to start unpacking.
That elderly fall victims are not treated as urgent priorities, so they may lay cold and wet in the floor for hours and hours is a cruelty no one could expect in a civilised country.
but yes perhaps in a war torn 3rd rate one
That the UK is supposed to be one of the richest countries in the world is heartbreaking when you read these direct accounts by people in the front line with real life experience of what is taking place.
Shame on Sunak and Barclay and the whole of the Tory machine who are allowing this to happen to a once great country and its once admired health service, of which I was once a proud member
My own experience of the NHS is varied. When Phil collapsed with chest pains in Croydon in 2020 I rang 999, a guy arrived swiftly with bags of technology, summoned an ambulance and got him to the cardiac unit in Tooting for insertion of stents all within 30 minutes. No complaints there at all. A few years before, aged Ma was constantly going in and out of hospital more from fear of dying on her own than from curable illness. By the time she died, I was somewhat disillusioned by the NHS and the care system. I believe that the NHS needs to take charge of the care system. You can be admitted to hospital any time of any day, but social workers employed by Social Services department of the local Council have to draw up care plans before you are discharged, and they don’t work weekends. So the Doc may say on Friday that you can go home but you won’t get there before Tuesday. This is causing bed-blocking and queues. In our experience the care plans were a waste of effort as the carers never read them, the care agencies were incompetent and I had to challenge every invoice (and invariably won) as we were charged for visits the carers had not made. Only once care is managed by the NHS rather than agencies will changes be made. Sadly the NHS is a behemoth which is slow to make changes, and nobody within the NHS wants to be responsible for care, so I can see no way out of the current mess.
and would that be the model for a privatised NHS too?
In my experience/understanding, local authorities were more concerned with ensuring they sold off people’s assets in order to pay for the care, rather than the provision of care itself…
Shameful!
