PS ISTCs doing elective surgery (mostly hips and knees) had an initial
premium but now trade at national tariffs
Rudolf Klein wrote:
>
>
> I think that some semantic precision may help to clear up Jo's
> misapprehensions about the NHS. By privatisation I mean the transfer
> of the NHS provider function to private, for profit enterprises (
> which GPs have been ever since the inception of the nHS, incidentally
> ). This not happening, though in future more for profit providers may
> attempt to enter the market: but note that it took what was in effect
> bribery ( i.e. paying premium prices ) to attract the Independent
> Treatment Centres ISTCS introduced by Labour in order to cut waiting
> times. So I don't anticipate an explosion of private activity but only
> a modest increase from a very low baseline. What Cameron & co. do want
> - and are publicly committed to ( see the recent White Paper on the
> public sector ) - is to transform NHS producers ( and the school
> system ) into not for profit social enterprises.
>
> The process began under Labour with the introduction of Foundation
> Trusts and is to be accelerated. There are lots of governance problems
> about this transformation, but it is not privatisation. Indeed the odd
> thing is that the NHS has been the only health care system in the
> western world, since the collapse of the Communist Empire, where
> hospitals are owned by the State. Now it will be more in line with
> systems like the Netherlands or Spain where hospitals have a variety
> of legal forms but essentially are not for profit.
>
> Incidentally note that postcode prescriibing is not a function of how
> the NHS operates. Geographical variations in medical practice
> charaterise all health care systems : see Wennberg and the Dartmouth
> Atlas.
>
> Regards to all,
>
> Rudolf
>
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