My MP thinks the NHS should be privatised

[Gigihadr]

Tory MP. Told me the NHS should be gotten rid of and we should be charging for healthcare

I was horrified AIBU?

Obviously. no MP would ever say such a thing.

They did.

Something has to change.

NHS has been criminally mismanaged for years, needs to be run like a business to ensure that the right people are in the right roles and value for money is sought.

You can chuck all the money you want at it and blame Tory spending cuts. Makes no difference, the NHS is a boat with a gigantic hole in it

Your MP has probably got personal business interests in private medicine like the majority of Tory MP's and this why they are deliberately destroying the NHS, so they can line their own pockets.

I have no doubts about that!!

obviously not employed

Why obviously? There are certainly over 65s still working.

Tory MP is a stupid prick. What's new?

Any mp would be ridiculously stupid to say these things in public-.if you have this recorded op you could make a mint selling to the press!

Which mp was it?

Why would naming the mp make you not anonymous?

I had a private one to one meeting with them. Doubt they’d repeat it in public. They said the public would need ‘persuading’ that the NHS is now no longer fit for purpose

If he is this free and easy with his opinion then I doubt you are the only one he said it to.

You do realise that most gp practices are private businesses?

@TheThinkingGoblin

What will happen is a public-private model like they have in Australia.

Is anyone interested in an explanation of this model? (I'm Australian.)

YANBU. Private profit healthcare model would be horrendous for many. Good article by Sir Michael Marmot explaining why increases in NHS spending needed as well as some reform. He recently co-authored Health Equity in England: The Marmot Review 10 Years On.

From article.

“To understand the funding position, it is best not to listen to what the government is saying: the problems cannot be simply attributed to the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, or “greedy” doctors and nurses. The problems began in 2010.
Health spending per person, adjusted for demographic change, grew at 2% a year under the Conservatives from 1979 to 1997; at 5.7% a year under Labour from 1997 to 2010; at -0.07% from 2010 to 2015; and at -0.03% from 2015 to 2021. In other words, even Margaret Thatcher, who declared there’s no such thing as society, increased NHS funding at a higher rate than the Conservatives in the 2010s. David Cameron declared he wanted to create a “big society”, and he and George Osborne reduced NHS funding per person. Cameron also said that there would be no more top-down reorganisation of the NHS and then, with his health secretary Andrew Lansley, did exactly that. It marked what Chris Ham, former head of the King’s Fund, described as the political failure that led to the decline of the NHS.
Other European countries have taken a different approach. If the UK had increased its healthcare expenditure from 2010 to 2019 as much as France did, we would have increased our current spend by 21%, and by 39% if we had matched Germany. The NHS needs more money. It would help in filling the 150,000 vacant full-time posts. Paying doctors and nurses appropriately would help. But we do need reform as well.”

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/apr/24/labour-wes-streeting-nhs-britain-europe?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

US healthcare is amazing. It's miles better than the UK so I have no objections to the same model.