Report comment

Report this comment

Fill in the form to report an unsuitable comment. Please state why the comment is of concern. Your feedback will be reviewed by the HSJ team.

Comment

Clare Gerada is right to be worried about the drive towards a mixed funding system.
The reforms will clearly lead to this situation.
The bill aims to maximise the number of purchasers and providers in the system to generate market competition (Lansley's words, not mine). This is clearly a major problem for a single payer system, especially in the context of the QIPP agenda.
Thus, the NHS needs to cut services and get extra capital.

Services will be rationed by the CCGs and waiting lists will go up. NHS 'core services' will diminish over time. This is why Lansley needs to absolve his duty to provide a comprehensive service and place it in the hands of the NHSCB and CCGs.
This all drives the healthcare insurance market. There is clear evidence that when waiting lists go up and services decline, there is increasing uptake of private medical insurance. The other insurance driver is patient held budgets, which will result in a top up insurance market. In the next parliament, patient charges will also come in - another reason to take out insurance.
The abolition on the Private Patient income cap for FTs is crucial for FTs to survive in a new market with many CCGs in deep financial trouble. They will need to ramp up their PP operations and will need to advertise these services.

We are clearly heading towards a mixed funding system. The NHS ie the state, will continue to fund core services, but these will decline over time because of the huge costs of creative destruction of the market. The delivery of NHS care will increasingly be delivered by private sector organisations. FTs will become social enterprises (denationalisation by mutualisation) and all new employees are likely to have "private" contracts, rather than NHS T+Cs.

Meanwhile the pro market think-tanks funded by the private healthcare coroporations and financial institutions keep blowing the reform trumpet.

Tragic, but true.

Your details

Cancel