So, I have often railed against the concept of for profit healthcare. I believe, with my whole heart, that its a bad idea. A bad idea at its core. Making money from people who are sick I find unpalatable, but I think it places those working in the business in a massive conflict of interest.
Instead of the patient being someone who’s best interests are your whole and entire point of working, they become a source of cash. They become your means of being paid. It twists what should be broadly altruistic into something with a reward for a specific behaviour. Denying care or giving extra treatment may make you money.
It worries me, from the vague concept to the fine detail.
And then you see stuff like this. And oh, look, the things I thought were true about for-profit healthcare, they are. I understand that in Europe they’ve managed combined or single systems of for-profit/charity/government healthcare in a way in which that does, apparently, work well.
But the UK has an appalling record of privatisation leading to disaster. And now we’ve let the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats wrestle the last piece of our grand experiment from our hands. The mechanisms to privatise the NHS aren’t just in place, they’re functioning. Private companies are running NHS trusts and slapping that proud blue rectangle on their work, saying “look, we’re NHS, trust us”. And I trust them as far as I can spit them.
It makes me painfully sad. It makes me want to cry. I see where we’re going. Don’t say we didn’t warn you when we get there.
