
People in England should be forced to pay a £10-a-month NHS "membership charge" if we want to save the service from ruin, according to a new report by the think tank Reform.
Solving the NHS care and cash crisis also recommends that people staying
overnight in hospital should pay ‘hotel charges’.
Reform, which has long advocated free-market reforms to the NHS, is funded by
companies which would benefit greatly from the introduction of changes to
the way we pay for healthcare. These have included General Healthcare
Group, the UK’s largest private hospital firm, but more significantly
a large number of corporations in the private health insurance
industry.
In recent years Reform has been funded by: Prudential, Legal &
General, Scottish Widows, Aviva, Benenden insurance, Gen Re (reinsurer of
health products) and US health insurance giant UnitedHealth, which
has faced accusations of overcharging and malpractice. The industry’s
trade body, the Association of British Insurers, is also a donor.
Prudential was Reform’s most generous funder in 2012, handing over £67,500.
What it received in return is not known. Reform describes itself as
determinedly independent and states that none of its research is funded by
either companies or individuals.
However, in the mid-noughties, a lobbyist for Standard Life Healthcare, which
is now part of PruHealth, grumbled about the communication challenge
facing the private healthcare industry (page 6 of pdf). When money for
health services is tight, how to get more British people to buy private
health insurance, without being seen to undermine the NHS, was proving difficult.
'The problem we will always have is that we’ll get accused of “Well you
would say that, wouldn’t you?”’ he told an industry roundtable on the
Future of Healthcare.
His proposed way of getting around this challenge was to use third parties:
‘It’s actually not us who needs to be saying it; we need other people to
do so.’ The lobbyist confirmed that the private health insurance industry
was working to ‘get some of the think tanks to say it, so it’s not just us
calling for reform, it’s professionals, it’s outside commentators . . . it
does need others to help us take the debate forward’.
Reform has led much of the debate on how the NHS should be funded in future.
For years it has called on government to ‘grasp the nettle’ and introduce
radical changes, such as user charges for health services and a bigger
role for private health insurance. In 2009, for example, as the
country prepared for a general election, it produced a report on the
‘Future of Health’. This advocated a greater use of ‘insurance-based
private funding’ in Britain’s health service. It was co-sponsored
by PruHealth.
According to today's report by the think tank: “There is an urgent need to open
up a public debate on the way we provide and pay for health and social
care.” It calls for a “Big Conversation” with the public, which it says
needs to be conducted “in a grown-up way without beating up politicians
who raise [the issues] in public”.
A public debate on the NHS is one that we should all be demanding. If there is
not enough money to support the service – the desperate crisis in funding
is disputed, although the cost to the NHS of introducing some free-market
reforms, such as PFI, is not in dispute – we need to have a discussion on
how we are to fund and access healthcare. Politicians are inclined to avoid
leading this debate. But, in their absence, it look as though it is being
led by the private health industry.
So, let us begin by being up front about who is speaking and why. If the
insurers are putting their words in the mouths of seemingly independent
bodies like think tanks, who have both political influence and can command
significant media attention, this is not a good place to start.
A Quiet Word: Lobbying, Crony Capitalism and Broken Politics in Britain by Tamasin Cave and Andy Rowell is published by Random House.
This article is cross-posted from Spinwatch with thanks.
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