Hold on, before you respond with furious consternation and disbelief, hear me out. Opponents of healthcare reform in this country always point to the United States as the only other alternative to healthcare provision which is highly dishonest. When I say "privatise", I don't mean sell off the NHS on the stock market to private investors and force people to buy absurdly expensive health insurance. What I mean is that we should make greater use of the private sector within the NHS itself. Let's be honest, the current model of healthcare in the UK isn't sustainable for all sorts of reasons from an ageing demographic to greater prevalence of health issues related to lifestyle choices (we Brits exercise less than we ever have and shove more processed junk food down our throats than ever before). Despite consistent increases in the NHS budget since 2010, we always see reports of A&E departments overrun and our waiting times in comparison to the waiting times of other healthcare systems put us to shame.
Contrary to popular opinion, there is a third way when it comes to healthcare provision. In fact, few other developed countries in the world have copied the UK's NHS model whereby the government has a near total monopoly over healthcare provision. Critics of this government treat privatisation as a dirty word as if it can't bring anything positive to the table but those criticisms are flawed for two reasons. Firstly, the NHS is hardly being privatised. Under 10% of the NHS budget is dedicated to private providers, meaning more than 90% of the NHS is run by the government. Secondly, the notion that private involvement in healthcare is an evil sin is rejected by the systems which countries like Germany, Switzerland or France have in place. In those countries, the government collects taxes to pay for healthcare, but a mixture of private companies, charities and NGOs and the government provide the healthcare. The resulting competition leads to an efficiency and quality of patient care which we couldn't imagine in the UK.
The OECD, World Health Organisation and Euro health consumer index always rank the UK in the bottom third when it comes to healthcare. Our waiting times are longer, our cancer survival rates are worse, we have less hospital beds and doctors per patient. On every significant metric relating to patient outcomes, the NHS is outperformed by these single-payer or social health insurance systems. Simply throwing more money at an already very expensive part of government won't necessarily translate into healthcare improvements. For example, within the G7 Italy spent the least per person on healthcare but had the second highest life expectancy. The NHS has very deep structural problems. It is an outdated system designed 70 years ago in an era where healthcare was the luxury of the rich and where private health infrastructure didn't exist to serve the masses. The world has since changed.
"Privatisation" doesn't have to mean going down the American route, we can learn a lot from our European neighbours who provide healthcare free at the point of use and do it better than us because they incorporate more private firms.