Privatisation and the NHS

It is rarely mentioned that the pharmaceutical products used in the NHS are supplied (and most were created) by private enterprise. Nor that the same can be said for the technology used to diagnose and treat its patients - and for the ambulances, the IT systems etc etc. 

Indeed, it is hard to think of any element which is completely dependent on the public sector, apart from the people who work there. 

And they are not (as they are so often portrayed) members of some religious order altruistically devoting their lives to the benefit of others. They are employees - in just the same way as those working for Tesco, save that their employer is the state.

So when we remember that the NHS is, and always been, closely bound up with private commercial interests, why is the word 'privatisation' tabou for certain people?

One often hears the simplistic argument that profit means money being taken from the NHS, but a moments thought reminds one that such profit is greatly exceeded by other economies and improvements. Were this not to be the case, private interest would have been banished years ago and certainly would not be being proposed in times of austerity, not even by what its opponents would characterise as a wicked, blood sucking Conservative coalition.

Compare that other central need of citizens - food. It is clear to anyone that the  arrival of supermarkets have made a wider range of products available to a wider range of people and at a lower price than any state organisation could ever have managed. If there are those who cannot afford to shop at Aldi or Lidl, it is not because their prices are inflated but because of other social issues - which are generally matters of wider government responsibility .

The supermarket sector also illustrates how capitalism performs the magic trick of benefiting the consumer while taking a profit. External competition demands constant attention to innovation and improvement, and woe betide even giant corporations like Tesco, should they forget this. Contrast this with the public sector monopolies focused entirely on internal dynamics, which seem so often to favour the immobility of the status quo.

If the paramount aim of the NHS is to provide the best possible treatment for the largest number of people, the debate should be fixed solely on how best this can be achieved, and the extent to which provision is public or private determined by this criterion alone.

Unfortunately, there remain too many ideologues, too many cynical politicians and too many who work in the system ready to sacrifice the interest of others to that their own. 

This is the very antithesis of what we expect from the NHS and those who run it.