Apart from it being part of Conservative ideology to minimise state involvement in running the infrastructure of the country and subject it to market forces instead? Why, reduced accountability of course. Health care simply stops being their problem to worry about. Instead the country is privatised and state assets stripped to generate business opportunities and profit for the benefit of its stakeholders --which tend to be Conservatives and their friends (not that New Labour hasn't got its own stake).
Money, lots of MPs and standing Lords have their fingers in private health care firms, although it's not a source I would entirely trust The Mirror lists some of the connections, another site breaks down some of the numbers involved, and a quick Google search for something like "MP private health" turns up plenty more results.
You're basically talking about corporatism here which is in full swing at the moment but I cant agree with the term conservatism, since that means conserve, nothing is being conserved here. But hey, they seem to reverse most things these days so..
So the Conservatives are now all evil geniuses! I'm not sure that's quite what you've portrayed them as previously.
It's kinda odd that you would pick out the Conservatives, after going over what Nexxo posted I can't see where he mentioned a particular party. Lets not kid ourselves, they're all just as bad as one another. EDIT: Shouldn't being the 24th richest country in the world yet being unable to provide food, health care, and all those other things we apparently can't afford at least be raising some questions.
I can only go by anecdotal evidence, but in my experience the accountability and quality of service delivery has improved immeasurably as things like MRIs etc have started to be farmed out. Dealing with a private company on tight margins doing routine diagnostics has been so much easier. Problem with an appointment and the provider is private? No big deal, they pick up the phone because they want to make sure your appointment isn't wasted as they have targets to meet and a real threat if they don't meet them. Problem with a NHS appointment? They ring you back 4 days after you leaving a voicemail after their phone line ringing out 14 times in a row, say they'll send you a letter and then it arrives after the appointment occurs. I cannot tell you how many times that has happened to me. I can only assume that NHS administration don't care because there isn't much that can be done about issues. If you start to look at nursing staff, and accountability when it comes to malpractice, it's even worse. Most departments will just ship a bad nurse out than bother with stopping them practice. A few nurse friends of mine have all experienced a bad egg at one point or another on their wards, and not once have they seen a dodgy nurse truly get called out. There are some pretty horrific stories too. Don't even get me started on consultant malpractice in gynaecology. My SO has had a torrid time trying to get endometriosis dealt with for years now. Now sure this could all be about underfunding - but in general and overall, my experience with the NHS is better now than it has ever been. The 90s were bloody awful.
YMMV. One consultant who was done for malpractice (and it was a doozy) was working both in an NHS Trust and private hospital at the time. The Trust was late in tackling the issue but when it did, it went all out with an enquiry and a regional consultation on how to follow up and treat the patients who were under his care. The private hospital did... nothing. Not their problem, he was accountable for his own clinical practice etc. Similar situations have occurred with the PIP breast implant scandal, where private hospitals disavowed accountability (arguing that they had fulfilled their contract by fitting the implants and that they were not accountable for any quality issues with the product) or simply disbanded and reformed under a different company name to avoid lawsuits. Of course the NHS picked up the mess. But this is how it works: the NHS has a duty of care; private companies don't. The NHS is inundated with targets and demands while funding is cut, so that when systems start to struggle people go: "Well this sucks, that private company does things so much better!". Well, yeah, because they can cherry pick, they can do things their own way and they can choose which patients to take on. But it's when things go wrong that you find it's not all sunshine and light.
On the NHS, they have never been anything but b***dy useless for me. I've had 3 fractured wrists which have ended up requiring surgery, when I was told by the NHS every time there was nothing wrong and I was fine. Told I needed a CT scan, a 6 week wait on an injury which is meant to be immobilised if even suspected, and they didn't even do that properly. Told me knee was fine the other month when I got hit by a car, nope. Ripped ligament and fracture. And the cherry on top? The 10 YEARS of chronic misdiagnosis over a fairly common stomach issue which could have been fixed when I was 13 and ended up affecting me until I was 21... Which was spotted in the first 10 mins of a private consultation and surgically fixed 2 weeks later. I'm not saying that everyone else has the same issues with the NHS that I have had, but every time I now go there and I get a 'umm err we think' rather than a confident diagnosis I run as fast as I can for a second opinion. On the other hand, the private care I've had has always been amazing. For some things, like endoscopes, sure they treat you like cattle, hotbed, and do it in 20 mins, rather than a doctor and bevvy of nurses mothering you for 2 hours. But I'd rather not have my hand held and be fixed in 2 weeks than have to suffer through for 2 months. Back on topic, I know how important the NHS is and how lucky we are to have it, but it is woefully woefully inefficient. It cannot be a bottomless pit which people continue to throw money at because 'its the NHS'. It needs to be fast, efficient and accountable. It needs to streamline itself - I'm not saying privitasiation is the key, but it needs reforms and some form of belt tightening because it leaks money.
It's simply government in breach of trust. If the people who employed them are suffering and are in scarcity that's a breach of trust, government not doing what it was employed to do, It's not holding up its end of the bargain. Ninja edit. If the agreement is that government should be responsible for healthcare and public roads, you have a trust agreement with the understanding that that's what it will do. If the healthcare then fails and the roads fall apart, you're faced with a government in breach of trust. If they privatize healthcare and road maintenance you have a problem, because you have no trust agreement with private corporations, you have not employed them or signed a contract with them either, so now you cant hold them accountable as you could with government. To clarify, not that I think it's needed. I'm very much in favor of private businesses, but we're not talking about the local mom and pop stores here.
Perhaps if it was left to get on with it, and not subjected to a major top-down reorganisation while at the same time it has to find 20% in efficiency savings (effectively: the people who are supposed to find these efficiency savings are the ones being laid off), it might actually have a chance.
I think that's down to the Government/Civil Service's general inability [or unwillingness] to think long-term... They see [think] that changes need to be made, so they meddle expecting instant results. Those results don't come [because they needed to time to materialise], so they dismiss scheme A as crap and/or not working and implement scheme B, because that'll get them the results they think they want, *that* doesn't yield a miracle either so they meddle with Scheme C. And so on and so on... Add to that the NHS itself knows changes to be made, so it's trying to steady the boat whilst mitigating the damage caused from the government rocking the boat... Ultimately, everyone's pulling in different directions for different reasons oblivious to the cracks that are forming... And again, anecdotally, the local NHS services I've had dealings with have been utterly useless... I actively avoid Hospitals and my GP... full of bloody sick people...
How long would you have to leave the NHS to "get on with it" before they discovered that injury and illness doesn't take the weekend off and that some consultants' golf schedules might have to change?
Its not some kind of sentient being. It doesn't have the power of self thought or self determination. Someone has to step up and sort it out.
About as long as it takes for people to discover that their uninformed stereotypes about doctors bear little relevance to reality. Pro tip: don't radically change management and organisational structures right at the time you need them to make radical efficiency savings. It's hard to 'step up and sort it out' when one has been handed their pink slip and someone else has to get to grips with a role they have never performed before. It's common sense that you would do one or the other, but not both at the same time.
