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Streeting defends NHS use of private sector but says it must ‘pull its weight’
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2025
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UK Politics
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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.