You have to wonder if anyone in Whitehall wants the NHS to survive. Are efforts to save it a charade? It is dying either way, and good riddance, because the public should not be forced to pay through taxes for a sub-standard service when there are other options.
Public satisfaction with the NHS overall was 57% in 2017, a 6% drop from 2016. Dissatisfaction increased 7% to 29% – its highest level since 2007. The main reasons were staff shortages, long waiting times, lack of funding, and government reforms.
A market free from government interference would solve these problems. Satisfaction with friendly societies was high before Lloyd George killed them off with National Health Insurance in 1911. To go back to that the NHS must first collapse, and this is tacitly being allowed to happen.
The people running the NHS don’t care like a business owner cares because it’s not their money. They are comfortable with the fact that a monopoly fosters inefficiencies, particularly one as sprawling as the world’s fifth largest employer.
Inefficiencies in decision making explain why the NHS began the current financial year on course for an overspend of £5.9bn, while its portfolio of 217 vacant buildings (which cost £10m a year to maintain) could fetch £400m.
As the American economist Thomas Sowell puts it:
It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.
He also remarks that
people who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything
which many clinicians would agree with. Last week one of the UK’s leading stroke consultants, Dr Sreeman Andole, described a consultation into health changes in Essex as so complicated PhD graduates wouldn’t understand it, let alone the public.
Here are the latest reasons why you should ditch NHS dentistry courtesy of Eddie Crouch, vice chair of the BDA Principal Executive Committee:
- 330 practices are being paid less per UDA than the patient charge
- clawback jumped from £55m to £81m in one year in England, while in Wales it doubled to £6.6m
- a practice with a £1.4m contract chose to give it up in Northumberland recently
- GPs are fearing medical and financial collapse and are handing contracts back
- in orthodontic procurement, the contractor is seeking bidders at values lower than those paid 12 years ago
- the Doctors and Dentists Review Body (DDRB) is creating delays and ignoring the BDA’s evidence on the recruitment crisis
Fine Company will be joint hosts of a seminar designed to give NHS practice owners everything they need for the jump to private this autumn. Stay subscribed for more information.
Zac
