To worry Labour will (part) privatise the NHS?

[DrBlackbird]

A friend recently commented to me that Labour plans to continue to move the NHS further along the privatisation pathway. I’ve read the following in the FT:

Wes Streeting has said ..the precondition for additional funding would be reform, including through the rollout of new technologies and partnerships with cutting-edge private companies Also that Streeting has mentioned several times plans to use the private sector for hip, knee and eye surgeries funded by the NHS and dismisses concerns about using NHS funds to pay private providers.

The thought of further reform is concerning. Does anyone have any more information on Streeting’s plans? Or general thoughts? Please note, I am NOT denying the Tories have eviscerated NHS services. This is not a comparison between the Tories and Labour. Tories will lose the GE so it’s a moot point. More, anyone have thoughts on Labour’s planned approach.

Whilst Blair’s Labour did invest in the NHS there were some disastrous policy decisions eg the PFI. NHS trusts now spend £2bn a year financing debt on private finance initiative (PFI) projects. That was a New Labour initiative.

IABU = Move along. Nothing to worry about here.
IANBU = Streeting’s reforms could be like New Labour’s shambolic PFI

There's a difference between privatisation and using private companies.

Tories are getting desparate.

🤣🤣🤣

You mean more than the Tories already have? You do know the private sector already have lots of contracts for NHS work?

Why would it be concern? Using capacity in the private sector to cut waiting lists for example is an excellent idea. Using companies in Australia to analyse x rays means you don’t have to wait for morning to check which bone is broken.

Let's hope they do! If so, they might actually be worth voting for..... Wes Streeting does show some common sense.

The NHS needs fixing.
Whoever gets in will need to tackle it.
I don't think Keir Starmer has the balls to do what's needed.

The private sector already have contracts for some NHS work.

My mum's cataracts were done on the nHS at a specialist private company that only did cataracts.

YABU.

Using the private sector in the short term is not ideal but it will be necessary thanks to the Tories' near destruction of the NHS.

You are also BU for not posting this in the GE forum!

FFS do you not know about the amount of involvement private companies have at the moment in the NHS under the current government. Do you also not realise how much the NHS has been run down by the Tories so we now have little alternative but to go towards private?

And it’s Labour’s fault? The Tories have presided over the increasingly failing NHS for a whole fourteen years. The failure is theirs.

Now, now, don't ruin the scaremongering,!

The aim is to bring waiting lists down by using private sector capacity. This is a pragmatic solution to the problems caused by the Tories. Hope that's clear enough.

You're not being unreasonable. It's a nonsense plan. Using private facilities (mostly staffed by NHS doctors) to reduce the pressure on NHS doctors, but paying that money to private companies is part of why it's buggered in the first place. It's basically a multibillion pound donation subsidy to private healthcare.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/dec/12/private-hospitals-nhs-labour-wes-streeting-healthcare

Just follow the money in the Tory-lite Labour Party and think about it.
https://labourheartlands.com/selling-out-the-nhs-the-shocking-links-between-labour-mps-and-private-healthcare-donations/

When Labour were meeting with the Trump supporting Heritage Foundation last week discussing a Trade Deal, what do you think the Americans were after?

Didn’t know that there was one!

Quite a few snarky responses. If you read the OP, I’ve already agreed that Tories have run the NHS into the ground. My focus is looking ahead to Labour’s plan, which merits discussion ahead of the GE.

So yes please do be assured that I know that privatisation is already deeply embedded in the NHS and has been for decades. Private companies drawn to a deep public purse paired underpinned by an unavoidable need health on the one hand, with successive govts (including new labour) assuring us that markets solve everything on the other.

But isn’t that part of the problem? Private health care creams off the easy - and highly lucrative - care leaving complicated tertiary care to the NHS simultaneously luring doctors and nurses away from the NHS to better pay and well resourced private hospitals.

How is Streeting’s plan going to address NHS shortages by doing more of the same? That’s why I’m doubtful it’s the magic pill he’s selling it as.

That’s why I’m doubtful it’s the magic pill he’s selling it as

I am not a Streeting fan, but I don't think he is selling it as a magic pill to fix the NHS. Any voter with half a brain knows that there is no such thing and that it will take years and years to undo the harm caused by the Tories.

Yeah but they won’t be criticised much because they are Labour. So long they can back it up blaming the evil tories. This should have been done ages ago in a bigger scale but there would have been riots so it is on Labour now.

Well who the hell else other than the Tories are to blame for the mess everything is in?

You are aware, are you not, that the Tories have been in power for the past 14 years and that this situation is therefore 100% on them? Labour don't need to 'blame the evil Tories' because the facts speak for themselves.

Some private sector companies offer an excellent service for patients. One obvious example would be the ability to order sexual health test kits online, and get rapid results via text. One region I worked in introduced this service and it transformed patience experience. It's not as simple as NHS=good, private=bad.

The NHS is way down the road of privatisation. The Tories have been building partner ships with American private equity firms and insurance companies for the last 5 years. There are daily meetings about structures, deals, costs. We have no idea exactly what has been signed off and actioned. I know because I taught someone who was very clever and who now works for the Civil Service- he attends many of the meetings. He says it's shocking what has been signed as contracts and already actioned. The American Insurance Companies are linked to big pharmaceutical companies who win all ways. NHS will be forced to prescribe certain brands/drugs which are then billed to the insurance companies and reflected in premiums as well as charges to the British government. Guess who owns shares in these companies? MPs and House of Lords members- mainly Tories but not only Tories.
NHS consultants double deal- they limit their NHS practice and offer the same referral and treatment routes privately.
Drs and Nurses work for private 'Banks' where they do shifts that pay more than the NHS and the NHS is charges extortionately for. No commitment required to a job, just to a shift.
I'm not sure it is saveable.
Like many places you can wait 1 year plus for an MRI scan on the NHS where we live. Yet you can log on to a private company who use our local NHS hospital MRI scanner at night and weekends, refer yourself, pay about £250, get the scan within days and the report 2 days later. The service is staffed by the people who do the NHS scans- they just swop their bade to the company badge for the private shifts.

It’s not a magic pill that going to make things wonderful, it will possibilty make things slightly less shite than now, or maybe we will continue and things will be just as shite as they are now, the alternative is things getting worse or even more worse

Again, the Tories are 100% to blame for 14 years of starving the NHS of funds not to mention it was the coalition govt who brought in the 2012 Health and Social care Act that significantly escalated the use of private health care providers. But doing more of the same is not going to be helpful.

What a load of nonsense. You have no idea how the NHS contracts for drugs and services. There is so much incorrect with all of the above I don't know where to start.

There will be an expansion of private sector contracts, whichever shade of government get in.

The electoral decision for me is which party is likely to deliver the best in terms of overall healthcare for the next 5 years. I've worked in healthcare for over 30 years. It needs investment desperately.

@KnittedCardi you don’t have to provide a treatise but something other than ‘nonsense’ would be helpful for clarification given that we know American health care companies eye up opportunities here in the uk.