Introducing the Market into the NHS
Health Secretary Andrew Lansley has announced a two fold attack on the core values of the NHS. He has abolished targets for waiting times and is poised to remove the cap on how much a hospital can earn from private patients who are paying for care. The core issue is believing that introducing the values of market based economics into our National Health Service is inherently a good thing. Not many British people have had the experience of having their identity and insurance status checked before they were allowed to receive emergency care or had second thoughts about going to hospital or a doctor because they lacked insurance and the bill could ruin their life. These are the realities of a market based system within a state that does not regulate health care or see it as a basic need that a State provides for citizens. On the one hand, there is a large popular belief that there is a regular arrival of ’health tourists'who come from abroad and take advantage of the UK’s wonderful system. Lifting the cap would mean a systemic way that foreigner nationals could use the state of the art facilities and staff and contribute to the system as well. This could be a good thing if it allowed the trusts to grow, train and employ more doctors, nurses, and staff and not overload the existing resources. The most important issue then is an ethical one, would these new patients be exploited for profit and pay rates that would be equivalent to the overpriced US hospitals? US hospitals are expensive for a variety of reasons: a whole system that is centred around profiting from health care, rather than providing it, and inflated rates that take into account the number of people who will receive treatment but will declare insolvency instead of paying their bill. The result for all of us will be a system where our identity will be checked before we are treated and at the most vulnerable moment of our lives'do we want profit to play a part?
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