of course he defends it. he makes money off the private health industry

I need people to understand that a private healthcare sector cannot provide a ‘buffer service’ for a public one. The reason is very simple; both sectors hire from the same small pool of qualified personnel, so any capacity gained by one is capacity lost from the other. The only sense in which additional capacity can be added is in infrastructure; beds, rooms, and equipment. But in practice, a lot of private health infrastructure is effectively just timeshared public health infrastructure, and what remains would be more effectively utilised if simply made part of the public sector.

The current approach is effectively the most expensive possible approach to alleviating the pressure on the NHS, save for getting rid of it altogether. But I guess the better alternatives aren’t acceptable, especially not to ministers and MPs who are paid tens of thousands by the sector that would be under threat by such measures.

I’m not at all against using the private sector to help work through the current backlog.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d rather no private at all; but if the choice is between people dying/being in pain/being out of work/not being seen to for months or years, and people being cared for but some of it being private, then to me the answer is obvious. People’s wellbeing is more important than being 100% NHS handled.

But it should be just that, IMO. Using them to help in times of unprecedented increases in healthcare demand that the NHS cannot quickly ramp up to support.

Any proposals should also come with a longer-term plan for how the NHS can handle these treatments themselves in future. But I fear this won’t be the case, and this temporary solution could become a permanent one if there isn’t pressure from the public.