At the outset of the pandemic, the British government struck a remarkable deal with the private hospital sector. Twenty-six private companies were enlisted to provide beds, staff and equipment to assist with England’s COVID response.
The multi-billion-pound plan was for private hospitals to provide “vital buffer capacity” to the National Health Service (NHS). The taxpayer would cover 100% of the operating costs of the mainly foreign-owned private healthcare multinationals, which would in return supposedly treat COVID patients, provide care when the NHS could not and redeploy staff to COVID hotspots.
In reality, the private hospitals provided almost nothing tangible in return for their money – and, a year-and-a-half on, the UK government has still neither disclosed how much this deal actually cost.
