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