Year 12s: what will be the first way you research your future options? >>

Is anyone pro-privatisation for NHS?

I, like most people are against this, but I would like to hear arguments from the other side, and well articulate too.

If anyone is for it, convince me otherwise.

Posted from TSR Mobile

Scroll to see replies

Reply 1

L i b

The majority of contacts you have with the NHS are already delivered privately. GPs, dentists, pharmacists and opticians who do NHS work are all independent contractors. It actually works not badly, in my experience.

Sometimes private companies can have expertise and capacity that the NHS does not have. I don't think anyone seriously agrees that, if a service cannot be reasonably provided by the NHS - or in a reasonably amount of time - then it is fine for the NHS to send a patient privately. That's the 'last resort' model and it too has been used by the NHS since its inception, as far as I understand it.

As for the idea of competition, well, the thinking there is quite different. It suggests that you get better healthcare at a lower cost by a competitive marketplace. Which is largely how capitalism operates, and it generally delivers well: it drives innovation and standards. Pharmaceuticals, which the NHS uses, are generally developed privately, as are numerous new medical technologies. We don't seem to have a problem with the principle at work there.

I'm not say I completely agree with the competition rhetoric, but that's more or less the argument.

Reply 2

Huskaris

I'm not in favour of privatisation per se, but I do hate the fact that you could offer left wingers a 10% increase in efficiency with a 10% reduction in cost for example, and they would still not want it because of the word "profit" being involved.

One things for sure, the way the NHS is being run now is ****. If you are dying on a curbside, best treatment in the world, if you need something routine, or something that's borderline emergency but not with you leaking blood everywhere, you're ****ed.

Still though, it's the NHS, and its "free" so mustn't grumble!

Reply 3

Davij038

Now let's be clear on this: I favour mixed economies like in Scandinavia...but I do needn't think that full privatisation be the taboo that it is: the American model is awful but if we could implement a German style private health system if think that could solve a lot of our problems. That's not to say I don't think the NHS works: it does, however tax needs to be raised in order for it to function properly. What I don't think we should do is try and do both what the Tories and new labour did are doing .

Reply 4

Davij038

Original post by L i b

As for the idea of competition, well, the thinking there is quite different. It suggests that you get better healthcare at a lower cost by a competitive marketplace. Which is largely how capitalism operates, and it generally delivers well: it drives innovation and standards. Pharmaceuticals, which the NHS uses, are generally developed privately, as are numerous new medical technologies. We don't seem to have a problem with the principle at work there.

I'm not say I completely agree with the competition rhetoric, but that's more or less the argument.

The problem is in order to get more competitive costs are lowered: how will they do this? By employing less staff, this is the why we've got so many problems in our hospitals: they got squeezed and surprise surprise the hospitals have failing standards!

Reply 5

L i b

Original post by Davij038

That's ridiculous. It's a bit like saying because I demand a service at a reasonable price, it's going to be poor quality. Just as with any individual purchase, public sector procurement considers the quality of what is being sold as well as the cost.

Reply 6

L i b

Original post by Huskaris

The profit thing is a complete red herring too. Britain's biggest provider of private healthcare is BUPA, which is a provident association that reinvests all of its "profits" into the service it provides. Other providers, like Nuffield, are in similar non-profit situations.

In reality, the private healthcare market is very diverse indeed. But ultimately it's one of the largest non-profit sectors in the country.

Reply 7

Katty3

Just to point out, in some departments and circumstances, competition may increase stress on members of staff, making them less effective at doing their job. Also, in a lot of cases, continuity of care is important. Trust is not built up overnight, if you want to help certain people with certain difficulties (eg. a form of social anxiety disorder) then continuity of care is absolutely vital.
Generally speaking do you really want a health service that is little more than a rat race to the bottom, with demoralized staff, and then a lower standard of care. Surely it is better to have patient focused care delivered by staff who just want to do their job and provide care. Do you want to go to a doctor who went in to his/ her profession out of a desire to help the sick, (yes there really are people like that) or the doctor who is motivated by their next paycheck?
In my experience, NHS staff don't want to worry about whether or not they are being

Reply 8

Huskaris

Original post by L i b

Yeah but I switched off the second you said the word profit. And I'll shout before you can even give a proper explanation that you're an evil Tory. I'd rather watch someone die on a bed in an NHS corridor than allow anyone to make a penny out of the NHS.

On a real note though you raised fantastic points but as I said above, very few people will listen to anyone putting that point across. Furthermore it is political suicide for a Tory to do something about the NHS, unless that's writing a blank cheque, which will still get some sort of criticism no doubt.

What it needs is a labour PM to go for it, Tony did to some extent, but didn't have enough time to put enough change in.

The answer is France. A private system which is the best healthcare system in the entire world. I think the biggest problem is that when you hear the word "private" in healthcare, people don't think about France/Germany which are obviously the kind of thing we would go for, they instead compare it with places like the USA which is/was a pretty poor system for the poorest in society... (Although they spend more per head in healthcare, the safety net just wasnt there for some)

The NHS needs a shake up and it needs to be funded better... Every political party knows it but labour get so much mileage out of claiming Tories want your kids dying on the street from the common cold, and so many idiots actually believe that, that any progress will be very very slow... If at all.

Reply 9

L i b

Original post by Huskaris

What it needs is a labour PM to go for it, Tony did to some extent, but didn't have enough time to put enough change in.

I think the days of Labour being able to push through policies that the Tories couldn't get away with are passing, unfortunately. They are in a far more fragile state now, and their traditional supporters don't have the same deference to the party they once did.

If it carries on as-is, combined with the inevitable disappointment of having a poor leader, I don't think the Labour Party will survive in quite the same form. They need to harden-up the core.

Peculiarly, many of their voters' second preference seems to be UKIP. Which raises big questions about their EU referendum and immigration positions. But if there's one thing Labour voters do seem quite united over, and staunchly left-wing on, it's the NHS.

The answer is France. A private system which is the best healthcare system in the entire world. I think the biggest problem is that when you hear the word "private" in healthcare, people don't think about France/Germany which are obviously the kind of thing we would go for, they instead compare it with places like the USA which is/was a pretty poor system for the poorest in society... (Although they spend more per head in healthcare, the safety net just wasnt there for some)

Almost all discussion of private healthcare here certainly defaults back to people slagging off the American model. It's a bit like Godwin's Law for healthcare funding.

It's odd though, hearing it from middle class youngsters, who would almost certainly have better health provision in the US than they do with the NHS. The quality of care for the great many is better over there.

(edited 9 years ago)

Reply 10

L i b

Original post by Katty3

Do you want to go to a doctor who went in to his/ her profession out of a desire to help the sick, (yes there really are people like that) or the doctor who is motivated by their next paycheck?
In my experience, NHS staff don't want to worry about whether or not they are being

Most GPs are in that situation, as private contractors (or at least employed by a surgery that is a private contractor). I can't say I've noticed them caring less than hospital doctors.

Reply 11

RF_PineMarten

Some private involvement is fair enough, but full privatisation of the NHS is extremely unpopular for good reason.

I wouldn't want to have it more like the American system, where it is run for profit and lots of people can't afford healthcare. There needs to be a public funded health service available to everyone, free at the point of delivery. That should be run primarily as a public service, not for profit.

Reply 12

Iggy Azalea

I'm in favour of privatisation. I don't want to pay for other people's healthcare. But my personal experiences have shown me that a government organisation should not run a medical establishment.

The quality of the NHS is debatable, but overall I have found it's incredibly poor. The system is significantly slow, I had to wait a year to receive an important operation, during which my conditions worsened and it made the operation a lot more difficult to perform. Even when I got the surgery, it was carried poorly and I ended up being referred to 6 more operations in the hope that they could fix the mess they made. The process was predicted to take 6 months to fix, but ended up taking up 5 years. My condition is still poor now, but I refuse to go to the NHS since they have done nothing good to help me. I attend a private practice and they have been excellent with me, providing me with everything I need and I'm making a good recovery.

As a government belonging, I also have found the legal side to the NHS cruel. You also cannot sue the NHS or take any legal action them. My cousin is a diabetic and she went to hospital to have her baby. The birth was traumatic and resulted in a C-section. She had to remain in hospital for a while to recover. But as the staff were so negligent and poorly trained as well as the fact that a diabetic doctor hadn't seen her resulted in my cousin entering a hypo attack and she drowned in the shower. She was dead for a good 4 minutes and had to be resuscitated. Had she been checked none of this was have happened.

We tried to take legal action, gathering and taking pictures of her hospital notes to show she hadn't received the care she specified. But they soon covered up their tracks by forging the notes a day after we had them, making it seem like my cousin's fault that she was diabetic and that the staff had checked. If this was a private hospital it would mean the law could take a 3rd person stance and enable all those people who have been screwed over to get justice. We would complain if there our food is not up to quality, or if a phone or car was poorly manufactured, why should we take a 'oh well' stance to healthcare, especially since our well-being is at risk?

I would like to see an American or Canadian system implemented, where most people pay for their healthcare (with or without subsidies) except the very poorest in the most significant situations. Call me blunt, but this system teaches people to be a lot more careful with their money.

(edited 9 years ago)

Reply 13

Abstraction

No thanks, I don't want healthcare put in the hands of profit-seeking psychopaths like in America. 45,000 people die a year there because they can't afford healthcare, and it's perhaps the most costly and inefficient system in the Western world.

Reply 14

MindTheGaps

Original post by Abstraction

The real problem privatisation has is simpletons who can never understand that private and American are not synonyms.

For a start the government spends more per head on health in America than it does here. For seconds there are plenty of better examples of insurance based systems on the continent.

Reply 15

Rakas21

Original post by JohnPaul_

I, like most people are against this, but I would like to hear arguments from the other side, and well articulate too.

If anyone is for it, convince me otherwise.

Posted from TSR Mobile

Well this ultimately depends on what you consider privatization.

I am fully in favor of contracting out services in cases where an in house team could not provide the service as cheaply or with significantly greater quality. In this sense, I have no time for people that whine that 49% of the NHS could be contracted to the private sector. I'm also not really bothered about profit, in a competitive market (most cheap services have plenty of competing companies), profit margins are relatively small. Indeed people often forget that GP's have been contracted privately from the beginning.

Now I'd like to split the remaining NHS in two. Outpatient services and whatever the stuff like heart, cancer and major surgery is called.

With regards to the big stuff I think the NHS is the better model. In the USA for example we see people having to pay for the multitude of drugs they need after a heart bypass. This is a relatively large market failure.

With outpatient services though (keyhole surgery, foot specialists ECT..) I think that the NHS can be pretty woeful and I do believe given the rampant competition (I was quoted 7 per month by 2 companies for outpatient insurance with the private sector) that NHS provision for working people is not really needed and should be treated in a similar way to dentists and opticians. From there we can cut the government budget and taxes or reinvest savings back into core services like heart and cancer. I have a friend for example who was told he needed to see a specialist for his ankle but was given an appointment for nearly 3 years time which is shocking. Despite being an ardent socialist he couldn't wait that long and so sought help in the private sector, he was seen by Nuffield (I think) within a week and put on some 6 week programme. Needless to say his attitude has very much softened to private health care given that his previous stance was a religious fondness for the NHS.

Reply 16

Mackay

People who are pro-privatisation/pro-the USA model are, in my experience, sociopaths.

Reply 17

gladders

The trouble is for pro-privatisation people is that they don't make much of an effort to distance their plans from the American model, which is almost universally seen as an example of how not to run a health service. I've heard many here argue in favour of a French model, which seems desirable, but the most likely people to enact it, the Conservatives, are on the whole europhobic and pro-American. It isn't much of a leap to understand they seek to provide American-style care.