Discussion of the NHS has repeatedly fizzed to the surface of the election, but debate has been clipped and often short on detail. A good example is the way the coalition parties have dismissed privatisation. “It’s a tiny fraction of the health budget” is the ministerial mantra.
However a new analysis of NHS contracts produced by the NHS Support Federation proves that the public are being denied the truth about the impact of the NHS changes.
We are often told the NHS only spends 6% on the private sector. But this figure actually relates to 2013/4 – and so it tells us very little about the impact of the Health & Social Care Act. The Act only came into force in April 2013, and the process of making the first round of decisions under it, typically took another year or more.
