A couple of suggestions were made regarding prescription
charge reform and these were shot down. Presumably, every
country in the world with a (quasi) Nationalised Health
Service is trying to find the solution.
Well here *is* the solution:
Run down whatever health service is presently operating.
Do this by cutting services. If possible, cut services
while giving the illusion of improving them.
Make the service bad, dirty, unwelcoming and inefficient.
Staff it with utterly demoralised personnel. Make the
necessary changes so that happy staff become demoralised.
Introduce incentives of all kinds to persuade people of
means to buy private health insurance.
Eventually, most of the people who *matter* (voters,
workers, decision-makers, journalists, politicians,
business people, etc, etc, - fill in your own group)
will be using private healthcare.
Ensure that a safety-net nationalised health service
remains so that poor people can still obtain some
kind of care, but this will be staffed by people who
are incredibly altruistic/stupid and who can't get
a job elsewhere, or maybe (as in the old, pre-NHS days)
by doctors "doing their bit" and working a few hours
a week for the poor.
Then, even though the expectations of patients who
are *paying* for their healthcare will be unbelievable,
the doctors will be able to hike up their charges to
make the situation bearable.
AFAIK, a pilot study of this solution is going on
at the moment in the UK (*all* of the UK) and a fully
working example can be seen in the US.
Now that NHS Trusts, supermarkets and petrol stations
are to be allowed to compete with GPs to provide
GMS, the whole process may well be accelerated.
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