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NHS waiting lists drive more Britons to pay for medical treatment | NHS | The Guardian

NHS waiting lists drive more Britons to pay for medical treatment

Private hospital operators expect boom in self-pay to continue for at least next three to five years

the Guardian

This is how NHS privatisation happens. It’s not one fell swoop, the Tories don’t wake up tomorrow and say “we’re abolishing the NHS”.

There’s a slow chip at services, meaning more people pay to go private. Failing services get sold off to private enterprise. Decisions are made ever more on cost, not quality of care, so more people go private. The NHS is underfunded, so waiting lists grow longer and longer - so people who couldn’t afford it before scrape together what they have, take out loans, go private. People hear about this and take out private health insurance because they’re scared.

Slowly, it might become a bit like dentists, where actually you can’t see an NHS one for love nor money, and if you can’t go private you can only access emergency treatment.

Except accessing that treatment becomes difficult and slow and maybe that gets contracted out to private providers. Maybe then, the NHS dies a final death, or maybe they don’t bother.

The point is, if the government get their way, the NHS will face a slow death of a thousand cuts over the next 10 years or so. And some people will become very rich indeed off the back of it.

And don’t think labour will save you. Starmer is also in the pocket of private healthcare.

If you want the NHS to survive, if you want things to get better, not worse, now is the time to start fighting.