Another person is being killed by NHS “principles”. (“NHS bars woman after she saw private doctor”, Sunday Times, 18th April 2010.)

It is official Department of Health policy that patients who pay for any private treatment whatsoever for a disease, lose all their NHS treatment whatsoever for that disease. This is madness. This is evil. This is killing people. And for what? For nothing.

I was pleased to see that the Conservatives go some way towards fixing this in their new manifesto:

“We understand the pressures the NHS faces, so we will increase health spending in real terms every year. But on its own this will not be enough to deliver the rising standards of care that people expect. We need to allow patients to choose the best care available, giving healthcare providers the incentives they need to drive up quality. So we will give every patient the power to choose any healthcare provider that meets NHS standards, within NHS prices. This includes independent, voluntary and community sector providers.”

The NHS should allow anyone to go private, and pay them the cost of the treatment on the NHS tariff. But top-ups should be allowed. None of this “within NHS prices”. Obviously the NHS shouldn’t pay more than the NHS tariff, but patients should be allowed to pay extra. It would even be a good start if the NHS would pay patients 90% of the NHS tariff. That way, patients would only be willing to pay the extra to go private if they thought they were going to get better treatment and it was worth paying the extra (if indeed private healthcare was more expensive). And in doing so they would save the NHS money. Value is created: everybody wins.

And what’s this “that meets NHS standards” for? Why should the Department of Health employ people to decide whether private hospitals meet NHS standards? This is unnecessary: patients will only go private if they think the treatment is better. It should be up to the patient to decide which hospital they prefer. “In a truly post-bureaucratic age, the Secretary of State for Health should no longer have any say over when or where hospitals are built, opened or closed, and nor should local politicians.”

It’s a good start. But we need to go further.

Tags: NHS

This entry was posted by Hugo Hadlow on Sunday, April 18th, 2010 at 9:05 pm and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.