Peanut
05-14-2005, 08:03 AM
Letting the patient choose can only be healthy
(Filed: 14/05/2005)
Can it have been only last week that Labour was making our flesh creep about the "Tory plans to privatise the NHS"?
Now here is Patricia Hewitt, the new Health Secretary, privatising a chunk of the NHS. How else are we to define the provision of 1.7 million operations by private contractors for profit? And a good thing, too.
The patients who benefit from this expanded capacity will enjoy one huge advantage over those treated within the state sector, namely a contractual relationship with their health provider.
Instead of being supplicants, made to feel grateful for whatever they get, they will be customers, able to claim redress if they are unhappy with the service.
Step by slow step, Britain is joining the modern world. Elsewhere, patients take for granted the ability to choose between state-run and independent hospitals. A third of French and half of German hospitals are operated privately.
Over the past decade, the Soviet bloc has moved from NHS-style monopoly provision to insurance-based systems. When Fidel Castro dies, Britain will be left with the last Marxist healthcare model in the world.
Although they are good news for patients, Labour's reforms must be maddening for the Conservatives. At every election, Labour conjures the gruesome spectre of a "two-tier health system", in which the rich go private while the rest must make do with what they can get. http://www.opinion.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2005/05/14/dl1401.xml&sSheet=/opinion/2005/05/14/ixopinion.html (article continues...)
Do you agree or disagree with this column's statements?
Please do not bash my sources. If the source is unacceptable or drivel to you, post debateable topics from more "reputable" sources, IYHO. Play nice, in other words!
(Filed: 14/05/2005)
Can it have been only last week that Labour was making our flesh creep about the "Tory plans to privatise the NHS"?
Now here is Patricia Hewitt, the new Health Secretary, privatising a chunk of the NHS. How else are we to define the provision of 1.7 million operations by private contractors for profit? And a good thing, too.
The patients who benefit from this expanded capacity will enjoy one huge advantage over those treated within the state sector, namely a contractual relationship with their health provider.
Instead of being supplicants, made to feel grateful for whatever they get, they will be customers, able to claim redress if they are unhappy with the service.
Step by slow step, Britain is joining the modern world. Elsewhere, patients take for granted the ability to choose between state-run and independent hospitals. A third of French and half of German hospitals are operated privately.
Over the past decade, the Soviet bloc has moved from NHS-style monopoly provision to insurance-based systems. When Fidel Castro dies, Britain will be left with the last Marxist healthcare model in the world.
Although they are good news for patients, Labour's reforms must be maddening for the Conservatives. At every election, Labour conjures the gruesome spectre of a "two-tier health system", in which the rich go private while the rest must make do with what they can get. http://www.opinion.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2005/05/14/dl1401.xml&sSheet=/opinion/2005/05/14/ixopinion.html (article continues...)
Do you agree or disagree with this column's statements?
Please do not bash my sources. If the source is unacceptable or drivel to you, post debateable topics from more "reputable" sources, IYHO. Play nice, in other words!