Is it time to privatise the ever failing NHS...

The NHS has been an ideological football on both left and right, and in consequence has been repeatedly reorganised to death by successive governments, with reforms informed more by ideological assumptions rather than pragmatism. The right automatically assumes that any increase in marketisation and private sector involvement will automatically make things better and cost less. The left automatically assumes it will make things worse and cost more and that the way to make things work better is to bring as much in house as possible to remove the private sector as much as possible.

Both standpoints are at heart driven by ideology rather than pragmatism, one side taking for granted that private is good and public bad, whilst the other takes the exact opposite for granted. Most of us, including me, have tended to do this.

I think we all need to move away from ideological assumptions of this kind and figure out exactly what we want from our NHS which for most of us is surely a health service that is free at the point of use, where public health and saving lives and making injured or sick people better is the primary aim, and we want this to be done effectively and within a reasonable time frame, as cost effectively as possible.

We need to determine what exactly is wrong with the NHS and it is likely to be many things, and how to fix them and what resources are likely to be necessary and how this is to be paid for. And the fixing that needs to be done to have any hope of working needs to be free of ideological assumptions that private is always better or private is always worse.

We also need to carry public support for any necessary reforms, which means we need to take account of what the public will accept and what it won't. Public opinion for example is largely opposed to any compulsory insurance based funding model, familiar as we all are with the tendency of insurers to seek to avoid paying out by resorting to dodgy clauses in the small print. And we would all be just one progressive condition diagnosis away from insurance costs going through the roof.

What works and what the public wants from it is more important than using it as a testing ground for public versus private ideological experiments.

and if anyone expects the NHS to improve under Labour - Labour have run the NHS in Wales for the past 25 years..

I agrre that sometimes some parts of it seem willing to spend money on some stupid things, which we do need to stop.

Apparently by the year 2040 and without significant reform, the NHS will cost the entire government budget. Quite clearly that wont be allowed to happen, some form of privatisation is inevitable. There are other models that work, not necessarily full privatisation but the government should be exploring other options now.

And here's a prediction, in a future NHS and that includes GP services, lifestyle will become a factor. If you smoke, drink alcohol, eat unhealthy food or are overweight, you will be penalised in some way. Trust me it's comming.

Could they not do sponsorship tattoos?

Like

"New hip provided in Association with Bristol Street Motors"?

Yes this puzzled me. In past years, if a parent was unable to look after the health and welfare of their child that child was taken into care - now Labour are proposing that it is an issue for the school to sort out...

Personally I'd rather the Schools stick to Education and Social Services stick to child welfare