I had never had a surgeon fall on my mat before. Domino’s discounts, yes. Leaflets about the gutter, naturally. But this is the first time that private hospitals are asking again and again if the gentleman wants a scalpel somewhere familiar. And opening the flyer from Circle, I find plenty of promise. “Eliminate the wait,” urges the UK’s biggest private hospital group, while “treatment is more affordable than you think” tops the price list: knee replacements start at £13,250, hysterectomies cost almost £9,000 and opt-out your child’s tonsils cost ‘from £3,276’. If those amounts sound excessive, the brochure advises, I can split the cost with a whole series of loans. Get this titanium hip 12 months interest free! And shopping is easy too. Because, in the middle of the above paragraph, another flyer arrived, from a rival hospital chain. If you want to see how our NHS is being privatised, now is the time to study your spam. You may be among the more than 1 in 10 English people waiting for routine hospital care. You may have read about the massive cuts to cancer care and GP appointments and wondered about the misery to come. But there are a few for whom this purgatory of pain is a big deal. For those who own and operate private hospitals, it means millions in extra profits. Because when patients can no longer bear the years and uncertainty of hoping they can get a hernia repair or a colonoscopy, they end up paying out of pocket or going into debt to see a private company. Look no further for an example than the letters pages of this newspaper. There, two weeks ago, Philip Wood from Kidlington told his own story. “I was on an 18 month waiting list for laser surgery on my prostate. Having been told there was little hope of surgery in the medium term, I opted for private treatment, saw a urologist within a fortnight and had surgery shortly afterwards.’ He describes himself as a “desperate retiree”, out of options. There are so many like him, a whole army of unwilling ones. A whole new customer base is forming, more provincial and poorer than traditional – and defined by their desperation. London has always been the center of private medicine, but according to the latest figures, Wales has seen the number of people going private in the first three months of this year more than double compared to the same period in 2019, while in Scotland it has shot up by 72%. Contrary to private medicine stereotypes, they don’t aspire to bigger breasts or bald spots. In 2022, the number of patients has tripled after hip replacements, while the number one procedure is cataract removal. This country prides itself on its public healthcare, yet in the first three months of this year, more than 12,000 Britons each scraped together thousands of pounds just to be able to see. For private healthcare companies, this means boom time. The UK’s largest listed private hospital group is Spire Healthcare, which was developed from the Bupa group. In the first six months of 2022, £174 million was taken from out-of-pocket patients – almost as much as in the whole of 2019. Private companies followed the Tory PM after the Tory PM starved the NHS of funds. They are getting ready. As David Rowland of the Center for Health and the Public Interest says, “Multinational investors have bet against the NHS for years, knowing that this time would come.” All of this fits a pattern that repeats itself over and over in these years of austerity. Something vital in the public sector is almost shut out of existence – and then its ad hoc, improvised, inadequate replacement becomes the new norm. Within a decade, food banks have become part of the welfare state. People in the charity sector have told me to expect the same to happen with ‘warm hubs’, community centers and churches opening this winter to ensure locals don’t freeze to death. they will be permanent until 2030. This will be done by paying for your own elective procedures. “Attitudes are changing,” says Spire boss Justin Ash. This is a “fundamental change”. Entire departments of the NHS are restricting patients to having cataracts removed in just one eye, not both, the Foundation for Health’s Anita Charlesworth told me. Which leaves no alternative to those who want to see, other than to go private. Spire’s own analysis shows that demand has increased by 54% among households earning less than £40,000 a year. For a family already close, a knee operation means financial disaster. Where do they go to collect such sums? One answer is to follow the example of poor Americans or Indians and beg strangers on the Internet. Crowdfunding site GoFundMe told me they’ve seen a big increase this year in the number of medical fundraisers in the UK, with a 31% increase since 2019 in those reporting MRIs and a 127% jump in those seeking cash for hip replacements. Take a young man named Aidan, who has had a bone deformity since childhood. She is now in “unbelievable pain” and has tried everything from physiotherapy to massage and medicine (“I’m completely exhausted from all the drugs,” she says). He needs surgery – but the doctor says there’s a long wait. In the middle of the consultation, he elaborates: “I can’t wait 12 months, doctor, I have no quality of life now.” Here, then, “out of ideas and tight with straw.” At the root of all this misery is an irony. All those extra thousands of pounds people now have to spend is just to jump the queue because private hospitals don’t train doctors and employ almost no consultants of their own. As Philip Wood writes in his letter, the urologist he paid so much to see gained his experience in the NHS. And these private hospitals are only functioning because of the subsidy they have received for decades from the taxpayers. During the pandemic, the sector was bailed out by the then health secretary, Matt Hancock, to the tune of at least £2bn – in return for which it dealt with a total of eight cases of coronavirus a day. Here in miniature is the story of the UK since 1979: the public sector hacked while private companies are handed over taxpayers’ money to replace it. Pensioners and ordinary workers are forced to pay for their care even as incomes shrink and their costs soar. And so the social contract that holds the NHS and so much else together breaks down. This is the system you and I have to endure, and pay the bill for. However, I don’t recall seeing it advertised in a brochure.
title: “An Nhs In Crisis And Boom Time For Private Health That S The Bleak Prognosis Now Aditya Chakraborty " ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-16” author: “Roxanne Lewis”
I had never had a surgeon fall on my mat before. Domino’s discounts, yes. Leaflets about the gutter, naturally. But this is the first time that private hospitals are asking again and again if the gentleman wants a scalpel somewhere familiar. And opening the flyer from Circle, I find plenty of promise. “Eliminate the wait,” urges the UK’s biggest private hospital group, while “treatment is more affordable than you think” tops the price list: knee replacements start at £13,250, hysterectomies cost almost £9,000 and opt-out your child’s tonsils cost ‘from £3,276’. If those amounts sound excessive, the brochure advises, I can split the cost with a whole series of loans. Get this titanium hip 12 months interest free! And shopping is easy too. Because, in the middle of the above paragraph, another flyer arrived, from a rival hospital chain. If you want to see how our NHS is being privatised, now is the time to study your spam. You may be among the more than 1 in 10 English people waiting for routine hospital care. You may have read about the massive cuts to cancer care and GP appointments and wondered about the misery to come. But there are a few for whom this purgatory of pain is a big deal. For those who own and operate private hospitals, it means millions in extra profits. Because when patients can no longer bear the years and uncertainty of hoping they can get a hernia repair or a colonoscopy, they end up paying out of pocket or going into debt to see a private company. Look no further for an example than the letters pages of this newspaper. There, two weeks ago, Philip Wood from Kidlington told his own story. “I was on an 18 month waiting list for laser surgery on my prostate. Having been told there was little hope of surgery in the medium term, I opted for private treatment, saw a urologist within a fortnight and had surgery shortly afterwards.’ He describes himself as a “desperate retiree”, out of options. There are so many like him, a whole army of unwilling ones. A whole new customer base is forming, more provincial and poorer than traditional – and defined by their desperation. London has always been the center of private medicine, but according to the latest figures, Wales has seen the number of people going private in the first three months of this year more than double compared to the same period in 2019, while in Scotland it has shot up by 72%. Contrary to private medicine stereotypes, they don’t aspire to bigger breasts or bald spots. In 2022, the number of patients has tripled after hip replacements, while the number one procedure is cataract removal. This country prides itself on its public healthcare, yet in the first three months of this year, more than 12,000 Britons each scraped together thousands of pounds just to be able to see. For private healthcare companies, this means boom time. The UK’s largest listed private hospital group is Spire Healthcare, which was developed from the Bupa group. In the first six months of 2022, £174 million was taken from out-of-pocket patients – almost as much as in the whole of 2019. Private companies followed the Tory PM after the Tory PM starved the NHS of funds. They are getting ready. As David Rowland of the Center for Health and the Public Interest says, “Multinational investors have bet against the NHS for years, knowing that this time would come.” All of this fits a pattern that repeats itself over and over in these years of austerity. Something vital in the public sector is almost shut out of existence – and then its ad hoc, improvised, inadequate replacement becomes the new norm. Within a decade, food banks have become part of the welfare state. People in the charity sector have told me to expect the same to happen with ‘warm hubs’, community centers and churches opening this winter to ensure locals don’t freeze to death. they will be permanent until 2030. This will be done by paying for your own elective procedures. “Attitudes are changing,” says Spire boss Justin Ash. This is a “fundamental change”. Entire departments of the NHS are restricting patients to having cataracts removed in just one eye, not both, the Foundation for Health’s Anita Charlesworth told me. Which leaves no alternative to those who want to see, other than to go private. Spire’s own analysis shows that demand has increased by 54% among households earning less than £40,000 a year. For a family already close, a knee operation means financial disaster. Where do they go to collect such sums? One answer is to follow the example of poor Americans or Indians and beg strangers on the Internet. Crowdfunding site GoFundMe told me they’ve seen a big increase this year in the number of medical fundraisers in the UK, with a 31% increase since 2019 in those reporting MRIs and a 127% jump in those seeking cash for hip replacements. Take a young man named Aidan, who has had a bone deformity since childhood. She is now in “unbelievable pain” and has tried everything from physiotherapy to massage and medicine (“I’m completely exhausted from all the drugs,” she says). He needs surgery – but the doctor says there’s a long wait. In the middle of the consultation, he elaborates: “I can’t wait 12 months, doctor, I have no quality of life now.” Here, then, “out of ideas and tight with straw.” At the root of all this misery is an irony. All those extra thousands of pounds people now have to spend is just to jump the queue because private hospitals don’t train doctors and employ almost no consultants of their own. As Philip Wood writes in his letter, the urologist he paid so much to see gained his experience in the NHS. And these private hospitals are only functioning because of the subsidy they have received for decades from the taxpayers. During the pandemic, the sector was bailed out by the then health secretary, Matt Hancock, to the tune of at least £2bn – in return for which it dealt with a total of eight cases of coronavirus a day. Here in miniature is the story of the UK since 1979: the public sector hacked while private companies are handed over taxpayers’ money to replace it. Pensioners and ordinary workers are forced to pay for their care even as incomes shrink and their costs soar. And so the social contract that holds the NHS and so much else together breaks down. This is the system you and I have to endure, and pay the bill for. However, I don’t recall seeing it advertised in a brochure.
