Northerner
Admin (Retired)
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 1
Calls to solve the NHS cash crisis by charging patients have mounted this week, with the NHS Confederation calling for £75 a night ‘hotel fees’ for hospital stays, or much longer waiting lists.
But there is one pot of money that sits curiously unexamined, glistening and untouched.
It’s the cost of the NHS ‘market’ itself. Administering the hugely expensive artificial ‘marketplace’ created by successive governments to allow both NHS and private ‘providers’ to compete with each other to offer services to NHS and other ‘purchasers’.
No-one knows the exact cost of this bureaucratic ‘marketplace’. A recent estimate by rebel Lib Dems put the figure as high as £30billion a year. Dr Jacky Davis and other doctors and campaigners including the National Health Action Party have put it at £10billion a year. The Centre of Health & the Public Interest put it at a ‘conservative’ £4.5billion a year.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/ournh...ons-of-wasted-nhs-cash-noone-wants-to-mention
But there is one pot of money that sits curiously unexamined, glistening and untouched.
It’s the cost of the NHS ‘market’ itself. Administering the hugely expensive artificial ‘marketplace’ created by successive governments to allow both NHS and private ‘providers’ to compete with each other to offer services to NHS and other ‘purchasers’.
No-one knows the exact cost of this bureaucratic ‘marketplace’. A recent estimate by rebel Lib Dems put the figure as high as £30billion a year. Dr Jacky Davis and other doctors and campaigners including the National Health Action Party have put it at £10billion a year. The Centre of Health & the Public Interest put it at a ‘conservative’ £4.5billion a year.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/ournh...ons-of-wasted-nhs-cash-noone-wants-to-mention