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Peter English's avatar

The NHS is and had always been incredibly efficient. Some misguided attempts to make it more efficient have backfired badly, but it still remains very efficient, although its quality has deteriorated as a result of decades of underfunding. Introducing a private insurance system would mean vast amounts of money being diverted away from healthcare, and into bureaucracy and the pockets of investors. Has Rosindell seen any US healthcare bills? Or even German ones, come to that? Taxpayers may see lower tax increases if universal healthcare is no longer covered; but their outgoings will increase massively as they'll have to pay many times more on insurance. I assume Rosindell either stands to gain directly, or via donors who are paying him to increase their profits.

Jacky Smith's avatar

Looks like the tide's going out on RefUK, doesn't it?

Watching the polls with interest.

Jacky Smith's avatar

If you really wanted to make the NHS more efficient, what you'd do is bring all the private services back in-house, and then you don't need to have such a massive bureaucracy managing the payments between & across units.

Before Thatcher imposed privatisation on the home care service in local authorities, the one I worked for didn't charge people for home care. As the legislation came in enforcing a charging scheme, the overheads went up way more than any income we got, and when we added in the cost of working out how much we had to pay each provider, they skyrocketed - even without the additional costs of commissioning, inspection & regulation.

If we didn't have a mixed economy in the NHS, of course, we wouldn't need Palantir's help to gather & analyse the data. Imagine the savings!

Steve's avatar

In 2010 our health service with the envy of the world. 15 years of Tori destruction has pushed it into the state it now is. It has been done deliberately by members of Parliament with interests in the private health sector among them Farage.

And his brain dead scheme of giving 20% tax relief on private health insurance would soon be wiped out by the increasing premiums which the insurance companies would slap on almost immediately if nobody had any choice.

Plus try getting insurance for pre-existing conditions and see how you get on. And try being able to afford insurance premiums even if you already have it when you get a new condition because you won't be able to swap to a different company as you will lose cover for that condition.

Anyone even remotely considering this has to be totally insane just look at what happens in the US. It is literally your money or your life.

Steve's avatar

Sorry about a couple of typos in that but obviously you can't edit it on this platform. I have very poor eyesight so I can't check until after it's on the page

Rick Jones's avatar

Farage seems to like the US system of privately insured healthcare, which is the most costly and dysfunctional healthcare system on the planet. I don't suppose his enthusiasm for an insurance based system would have anything to do with his rich mate Aaron Banks being an insurance tycoon, would it? Surely not. 😡

Graham Hewitt's avatar

Somebody mentioned possible donations to this MP from Healthcare companies and associated entities and individuals. Well the winners in that legalised bribery are Labour MP’s, including the English Health Secretary, Streeting. EveryDoctor and others have the details online.

So Labour is also a potential threat to the English NHS, which has already been considerably privatised. Scotland’s NHS not so much.

One thing politicians could do is to stop interfering, stop redisorganising, stop giving arbitrary targets, allow more devolution and listen to some of the “experts” n the field, like the people who work there, or the academics who research the running of the NHS, instead of applying political dogma unmoored to any reality.

It’s a myth that privatisation is more efficient, as the privatisations since 1979 have shown. They are very efficient at transferring money from ordinary people into the pockets of executives and shareholders. And don’t forget the great wheeze of Brown’s PFI.

Oh, and provide more money for the NHS. Money spent on Health and Care is an investment and has one of the highest multiplier effects of all government expenditure. (And Government money doesn’t come from taxpayers, it comes from the BoE)

Victoria Gwilliam's avatar

Trump's greedy, hideously cruel authoritarian regime should be setting the alarms ringing for British people - if they are paying attention.

His masked goons are executing US citizens, deporting hard working immigrants, including children, without due process and America has just left the WHO.