This article in the Daily Mail picks up some very interesting points from David Cameron’s speech about the NHS last week. Of course there was the inevitable waffle about NHS spending, that did not tell us very much at all, but for me the crucial sentence was:
The Tories would allow “any willing provider” – including more private firms – to supply quality care to NHS patients.
Regular readers of this blog will know that I do not think this goes nearly far enough. As I have written here, I believe that all NHS hospitals and care facilities must be put in to the independent sector and that the NHS should become a funder of care and a minimum standard setting institution.
However, as we get closer to the next general election I will look forward to what else Mr Cameron has to say about the use of the independent sector in UK healthcare. I know that he has a copy of the Institute of Economic Affairs book ‘Towards a Liberal Utopia’, in which I co-wrote the chapter on health, so maybe he does consider that NFR has some good ideas!
This article in the Daily Mail announces that David Cameron will make a speech today stating that the Tories are the best party to look after the NHS and that they do have plans for its improvement. Well I hope that this is true because the UK’s healthcare provision is in need of not only some ‘big plans’ but some action too, to ensure that it really does become an ‘envy of the world’.
To begin with my suggestion would be that all NHS institutions and facilities must be removed from the state sector, whether it be through management buy outs, sales to for-profit or not-for-profit organisations or the setting up of independent charities to run them. In the future, all hospitals, clinics and community services etc., must be independently owned and run.
Then then next action can be to de-nationalise the staff. All doctors, nurses, therapists and other health professionals should no longer be employed by the state or be paid according to national collective bargaining processes. Instead, these decisions should be decided by a diverse, competitive and consumer-led market.
It is the belief of NFR that only when these basic actions have been implemented we will start to witness the benefits of a dynamic health market that can then be more substantively reformed on the funding side. By allowing nurses, doctors, hospitals and clinics etc., to openly advertise their wares patients will start to benefit from a flourishing range of brands that they can trust. It is in this world that finally state regulation can give way to market-borne, bottom-up, reputation.
