Privatised NHS? Paying for insulin?

If the NHS is privatised like in the US, you will be paying for everything including insulin.

So you know who to vote for, don't you?

None of the parties have made any suggestion of privatising the NHS as that would be political suicide.

Mr_Pot said:

None of the parties have made any suggestion of privatising the NHS as that would be political suicide.

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It is a gradual insidious process. The NHS has been underfunded. Spending per patient will fall this year. This will continue for as long as the Government believes it can get away with it. Underfunding is a political decision, not an economic one.

As mentioned it would be political suicide to make the NHS private so the answer is as a whole it will never happen. Whether or not it is privatised in part is another question and this I think yes certain parts of what we now consider the NHS will eventually be run by the private sector, or you will have to pay for these certain services yourself. This part private situation and how far it goes will largely depend on which political party is in power. I would say where the Conservative party is concerned it would be a certainty, Labour then some of it and like wise the Lib-Dems.

Johnjoe13 said:

As mentioned it would be political suicide to make the NHS private so the answer is as a whole it will never happen. Whether or not it is privatised in part is another question and this I think yes certain parts of what we now consider the NHS will eventually be run by the private sector, or you will have to pay for these certain services yourself. This part private situation and how far it goes will largely depend on which political party is in power. I would say where the Conservative party is concerned it would be a certainty, Labour then some of it and like wise the Lib-Dems.

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Yes. You cannot actually trust any of them to keep their promises.

dbr10 said:

Yes. You cannot actually trust any of them to keep their promises.

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This is because promises are made to rope in the voters and are often (if not mostly) aimed at the category of voters that traditionally vote for you. Most of it is wishful thinking, fantasy, idealistic. When grim reality strikes, the promises are too difficult and too expensive to keep. What I have seen from the Conservatives this election is reality - that hard decisions will need to be made.

A lot of people are already subsidising the NHS by buying Libre's.. so there is already back handed ways of getting diabetics to cost the NHS less...
All the T2's buying codefrees and libres etc are also subsidising the NHS coffers...

Bluetit1802 said:

This is because promises are made to rope in the voters and are often (if not mostly) aimed at the category of voters that traditionally vote for you. Most of it is wishful thinking, fantasy, idealistic. When grim reality strikes, the promises are too difficult and too expensive to keep. What I have seen from the Conservatives this election is reality - that hard decisions will need to be made.

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I'm not sure the decision to underfund the health service was a hard decision. I believe it was a decision they wanted to make. The austerity narrative has been fixed in peoples' minds, so there is not more discontent with the state of things. My doctor says the NHS is in a terrible mess. Our local A&E has closed. I remember, before our hospital was built, one of my work colleagues had a heart attack and died in the ambulance on the 13 mile trip to the nearest A&E. That will happen again. The Government will underfund the NHS for as long as it can get away with it. We are the six largest economy in the world (the fifth before 23 June). Don't accept that there is no money. We should be spending at least the European average on healthcare.

donnellysdogs said:

A lot of people are already subsidising the NHS by buying Libre's.. so there is already back handed ways of getting diabetics to cost the NHS less...
All the T2's buying codefrees and libres etc are also subsidising the NHS coffers...

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Yes they are. Everyone should be entitled to a meter or CGM. The NHS/NICE makes the rational calculation that 135 amputations per week are cheaper than proper care for everyone.

Until someone is willing to stand up and have a grown up debate on the NHS, this is all rather a moot point. As it stands right now, the country as a whole doesn't seem to want to pay more taxes to fund the plethora of public services that everyone wants more of.

The NHS is expensive. Either we all pay more to use it as it is now, or it changes. The original intention of the NHS was to provide healthcare free at the point of access where there is clinical need. Are all services currently provided free of charge given through a clinical need? That's where the debate lies.

The nhs has the envy of the world. Why should we change something others can only dream of?

tim2000s said:

Until someone is willing to stand up and have a grown up debate on the NHS, this is all rather a moot point. As it stands right now, the country as a whole doesn't seem to want to pay more taxes to fund the plethora of public services that everyone wants more of.

The NHS is expensive. Either we all pay more to use it as it is now, or it changes. The original intention of the NHS was to provide healthcare free at the point of access where there is clinical need. Are all services currently provided free of charge given through a clinical need? That's where the debate lies.

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People seem to want Scandinavian levels of services, but only to pay US levels of taxation.
It was suggested recently that we should link health spending to an agreed percentage of GDP like we do with defence. I think that may be a way forward.

dbr10 said:

It is a gradual insidious process. The NHS has been underfunded. Spending per patient will fall this year. This will continue for as long as the Government believes it can get away with it. Underfunding is a political decision, not an economic one.

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Yes i agree they slowly build the case by cuts in funds and then present it as the burden and finally moved it to privatization.

ickihun said:

The nhs has the envy of the world. Why should we change something others can only dream of?

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Whilst lots of people in the UK like to tell themselves this, it's not really true. I know of few people in a number of healthcare systems in Europe who would trade what they have for the NHS (notably they have a hybrid model where they have to pay for some of it, but it is not at the high price of the US model). But they are willing to pay more to get more, which is something we in this country seem to be averse to.

But let's look at a few facts of NHS Spending.

In 1950/51, the UK government spent roughly 3.2% of GDP on the NHS. In 2015/2016, it was around 7.3%. The graph looks a little something like this since 1900:



More importantly, when you look at the way that Healthcare is paid for in most G7 countries, the UK, Canada and Italy are the ones where most is paid out of taxation by the government. In both Germany and France, where taxes are higher than the UK, there is an additional payment (compulsory health insurance) for healthcare.


The question isn't really about "privatisation of the NHS" it's about whether the NHS remains "free at the point of access". The two debates are somewhat different, as the entire set of NHS services could be provided by private entities obtaining cost reductions through use of commercial scale practises without it costing the man on the street any more than it does now. But therein lies the issue.

We don't have a a vision of the NHS made up of a series of private companies providing the same services as we receive now at the same cost as we pay now, as that's somewhere the electorate in general simply doesn't want to go. Likewise, we don't have a debate over whether we should operate a different payment model to ensure the NHS has the funding it requires to enable it to provide the services we want to see it offer.

Instead, simply looking at it from a selfish point of view, we have a model where it's funding restricted and then if you want anything that is either not NICE recommended (e.g. CGM for Type 1s) or you want to fast track (avoiding waiting lists for hip operations), you pay either out of pocket or through private insurance. In other words, we are already operating the type of model that people are afraid to speak about and don't like because we continue not to have this debate.

We now have mental health care provided by Virgin in South Cambridgeshire. Sounds very much like privatisation to me. An awful lot of our wonderful NHS is up for sale. You get what you vote for.

We went through a period of "it is not really happening" hospital closures under Thatcher. My dad was in hospital 10 days he entered a full ward when he left there was only one patient left in the entire wing. If anyone who believes the stories in the Daily mail/telegrapg or Murdoch would listen to real life experiences of real people instead of media sound bites I could tell of the perilous state of oncology, outpatients and the blood testing subterranean depths of the Q E Birmingham in 1995. Trouble is I would then go on to tell of the disgust I feel for the media inspired condemnation of the wonderful new oncology services we got at the QE a few years later.

Some of the press (although I suspect not the ones I previously mentioned) have already reported that May intends to sell "underused" parts of the NHS. Not far from us (Worcester) there was recently a scandal because the NHS was sending patients "private" when there was actually NHS facilities available. It is all an arrangement to draw money out of public coffers into private interests. Those that do get the benefit of the magic money tree fully intend this policy will continue and become as entrenched as the public purse paying rents to private landlords.

Before worrying about the NHS and what will remain check out your future ability to pay. Put in your expected pay rises against inflation and have a look at your expected pension income and how old you will be when you get to draw it and what your life expectency is according to qrisk. Have a look at what services you expect to remain, libraries, parks/public space, affordable places for the youngsters to raise their families (and how old they will be when they pay their mortgage off), what age you will actually become entitled to the free bus pass, etc, etc. Hmm and the amount we have got to find for the childrens deposits on their house purchase(s). Ouch

RosieLKH said:

We now have mental health care provided by Virgin in South Cambridgeshire. Sounds very much like privatisation to me. An awful lot of our wonderful NHS is up for sale. You get what you vote for.

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That is not really privatisation but contracting out of services. You are not being charged directly by Virgin it is still part of the NHS "free at the point of access" service as @tim2000s has said. I am sure the NHS contracts out all sorts of services, maybe security, parking, laundry etc. I am however wary of contracting out on any large scale as this relies on the NHS designing and managing the contract effectively.The NHS and government departments do not have a good track record with private contractors, witness the large IT projects. If it all goes wrong it is the taxpayer and not the likes of Richard Branson that seems to foot the bill.

Mr_Pot said:

That is not really privatisation but contracting out of services. You are not being charged directly by Virgin it is still part of the NHS "free at the point of access" service as @tim2000s has said. I am sure the NHS contracts out all sorts of services, maybe security, parking, laundry etc. I am however wary of contracting out on any large scale as this relies on the NHS designing and managing the contract effectively.The NHS and government departments do not have a good track record with private contractors, witness the large IT projects. If it all goes wrong it is the taxpayer and not the likes of Richard Branson that seems to foot the bill.

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I think it is privatisation.