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I agree that the article is well-balanced, and consequently readers' comments are measured and thoughtful. Unless Jim Easton tells HSJ why he has moved on from his NHSCB role we can only conjecture, and I think he will be chuckling at some of the theories put forward.
However all this ignores the real problem with the private sector, which is that public money (i.e. my taxes and yours) is diverted from funding public health care into the pockets of private shareholders. Irrespective of whether the pockets belong to GPs or to Bridgepoint Capital, the money is flowing out of healthcare into 'profits.'
The argument that it is the prospect of personal profit in the private sector that drives efficiencies is not a reason for privatisation. It merely describes avarice. The real argument for efficiency is to enable the 'savings' to be used for even more healthcare (or lower taxation,) and the private sector can never deliver this public benefit.
I fully accept that there are products used in the NHS that will rightly come from the private sector - ambulances for instance - but ultimately the more public money that is spent in the private sector, the more public money is bleeding out of the system and reducing public health care.
From now on, Jim Easton's salary will be devoted to him taking still more money out of public health care, not to increasing public health care; and there is a vast difference between the two.