And if it’s cheaper to do it private than NHS, shows how inefficient the NHS is. Paraphrasing the words of Margaret Thatcher, “What I cat’s stand is specific targeted quoting designed to deceive”
Simply, if a private business can make money and provide a service cheaper than the NHS, it’s because their business structure is more efficient. Not surprising really. Doubt they could (or would) provide A&E services though and that’s one of the reasons why we need to keep the NHS.
NHS, that’s why we keep it. Hence the asterisks.
There’s no question that people are going to be in very deeply serious shit in the next few months. Anybody thought about the cost to schools, hospitals, doctors, dentists etc? Prices are going to rise to compensate, they have to.
Provide a service or a single operation? That is a vastly different thing.
Single operation with the NHS acting as back-stop.
Not in my experience. But then who cares about that?
Saw a story on the BBC this morning of a nursery which will be asking parents to pack extra layers for the kids because they won’t be able to afford to heat the premises all day like they would previously. Imagine being the fifth biggest economy in the world and the places we’re forced to send our kids aren’t going to be able to afford to heat their premises to a suitable level.
Hospitality sector is going to get doubly fucked. People will tighten belts and not go out as much so they’ve less revenue coming in and yet the cost to run pubs and restaurants will go through the roof as the caps only apply to residential tariffs and not commercial ones. Most of those that only just made it through the pandemic are paying off loans to cover that disruption.
I was reading a story that suggested this will kill huge swathes of the fish and chip industry. Fish prices up, oil prices up, cost to heat the fryers way up. And people will only stand for the cost of fish and chips to rise so far before a relatively inexpensive treat becomes something you’d previously pay for a restaurant meal.
Everyone can keep putting prices up but at some point people will stop being able to afford/justify a basic treat like that and those businesses will go under. Pubs will go for sure, starting with the local independent ones. And that will happen across everything. You think people will go to their six monthly check up at the dentist if prices sky rocket? Will people send their kids to private nurseries or childminders if their prices go up significantly?
The knock on effect is going to be huge unless there is a significant intervention to support the population, not just those who are at most risk. And all this is basically because private energy is a business model that is failing.
My main business is in the entertainment business, you can guess I’m jumping for joy right now.
I’m in marketing. When times are tough it’s the first thing most companies pull back on. But now we’ve got the Government running campaigns to encourage businesses to reduce their marketing spend so they can lower prices for customers.
Aside from insolvency companies I don’t see many sectors that aren’t about to get another serious shafting, barely two years after the last one.
Well, no. First of all I think @Noo_Noo 's point is that it isn’t actually cheaper, its just that much of the costs are borne by the NHS rather than the private company delivering the end point service. For example, the testing during covid was contracted out to private companies for large sums of money but something like 80% of the work was still being done by the public sector who could have delivered the whole service for a lot less than was paid out.
Secondly, the NHS’s inefficiency is largely being driven by lack of proper funding for social care - so you end up with people staying in hospital longer as they have nowhere else to move into. This reduces the capacity to deliver the services the NHS is expected to. It also hasn’t had the capacity to update its IT systems and has had to waste resources going through restructurings that another poster alluded to earlier.
Didn’t they blow hundreds of millions on a new IT system that was then scrapped? Ah, governmental procurement, NHS is no better than NASA.
Is there not a possibility that people will go to cafés and pubs to be warm? Won’t help the industry much if they’re spending an hour over a cup of tea though.
As I said, we’re moving to the pub. Not sure which one as all our locals are full of racists 
Yes, these have been mentioned in a number threads on twitter but not on the scale of households. It has been highlighted as one of the major issues with the Labour proposal with their £30bn costing not covering businesses which would likely double or triple the actual cost.
Ordinarilly that would be a possibility, but with a supposed minimum pay rate set to jump to £15p/h I doubt people will be able to afford to go to cafes/pubs/restaurants as they will be putting prices up to cover staff/heating/rent/electricity/council rates/bog roll/water/beathing so welcome McDonalds, that 1 kids meal will be £84.99
It isn’t cheaper, that is my point. Add in all the factors I’ve described above and it isn’t cheaper but all you will see is the unit cost per operation. The contract overheads etc. will not be visible.
You feed this “system” into the NHS having to manage lots of these contracts across a very wide spectrum and all of a sudden you get a nice fat chunk of the NHS budget used up simply managing these contract rather than actually undertaking actual health work and treatment. Then you feed in resource problems and BOOM you have a crisis. The answer, the top dogs will say is more privatisation, more contracts or add ons to existing contracts.
oh and lets not get into items of work not covered by contract rates. License to print money right there. Sometimes necessary but expensive.
For someone who runs a business that works with the education system I’m honestly surprised you dont know this.
Potholes?? Frustrated at your local councils performance on highway maintenance? This is because most councils have outsourced all there highway maintenance activities. Why? because the only way a council can reduce cost is by shedding staff. Why do they need to reduce costs? Austerity is one reason.
By outsourcing they pay a consultant to produce and manage tender for Blue and White collar services for highway work. This work is often mandatory by law by the way. They then pay Consultant an Contractor to deliver these services under contract rates and by fees for works not covered. Inside all of that there will be overheads and profit.
The council pays all of this from their Highways budget. So instead of simply paying people to deliver a service they use their budget to pay someone else to do it. The books say costs have been reduced but the reality is they have used their highway budget to pay private companies to deliver their highway work. The result is a year on year reduction on work that is achieved.
I know this because I was that consultant for over 12 years. I saw it, I managed the budget, I saw what we were delivering and I saw how much we pulled out of the system.
You don’t want to hear my story of recently watching a team of 3 council workers (from 8am) cut a 10m hedge, badly clear up and leave at 1pm after their hour lunch. And I don’t just work in schools, I served as chair of finance for 6 years in jnr’s school, my wife was a head teacher. I’ve worked for years with government money in my old job. Throw as much away as possible, then you get more.
You’re comparing apples with oranges. Patient X needs operation Y doing. It can be provided by private company Z for NHS cost less 20%. Aside from the doctor’s appointment to set it up, there are no additional charges to the NHS. Unless the private hospital fuck up (which they didn’t). Like it or not, privatisation in some instances is better than management by the government’s poisonous claws.