Liz Truss has succumbed to the latest panic about our beloved National Health Service, the Wonder of the World that it is. She thinks the Americans want to buy it.
Seriously? No one wants to buy the NHS, Love. It’s not just that it’s not for sale, it’s that there are no buyers. Even the idea of buying it doesn’t make sense:
[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]NHS will not be put up for sale, Liz Truss to warn US[/perfectpullquote]1.3 million chippy public sector union members? Yer ‘avin’ a giraffe, aintcha?
[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””] The NHS “will not be put up for sale” Liz Truss, the new International Trade Secretary, will say as she prepares to fly to America to start talks on a free trade deal with senior Trump aides. Ms Truss made clear that privatising parts of the NHS was a “red line” for the Government in any trade talks as she seeks to persuade the US to agree outline terms of a deal before the UK leaves the EU on Oct 31. [/perfectpullquote]The Americans also aren’t interested in picking up any bits that are privatised. Yes, I know, I know, the idiots over on the left do keep saying that if we stray even one femtometre from Stalinist central planning then the NHS will immediately become like the US health care system where tens of millions die in screaming agony each day for lack of a credit card.
It won’t even be part of any trade talks. Because health care never is part of trade talks. We might get to things like labelling on pharma products but so what? Trade talks don’t and won’t get involved in who does granny’s hip replacement.
The only thing that trade does have to do with it is that if – if – you subcontract out something then the foreigners should be allowed to compete for that contract the same way as the domestics. And that’s it.
That is, it’s not just that no one is thinking of selling the NHS there’s no one out there trying to buy it either. That first, the selling part, being rather because there’s no bugger stupid enough to try to buy it.
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Potential buyer: So, this NHS thing
Evil Tory [™] NHS seller: Yes
Potential buyer: How much money does it make
ETNS: It's set to lose £134bn this year
PB: Is that a one-off?
ETNS: Oh no, it's made a loss every year for the last 70 years, and the loss has increased year-on-year every year for the last 25 years.
PB: Is there any part of it which is profitable?
ETNS: The parking charges are hilarious and the amount they can charge for sandwiches that would only be of interest to an archeologist make airports look like good value. We've also got a fantastic scam where we've given ourselves a monopoly on the sale of medicine so we can charge £9 for a pack of pills that costs 20p. But only to people who have already paid for them several times over already; everyone else gets them for nothing. How much will you give us for the NHS?
PB: You've got something that's losing hundreds of billions a year, gives away expensive medical services for free, has no prospect of ever turning a profit and you want us to _pay_ for it?
ETNS: Yes?
PB: Don't waste my time again, imbecile
More to the point the NHS already has been privatised in lots of different ways (GP surgeries always were, hip replacements already outsourced to private sector, Physio and OT services provided by Virgin etc). So I'm really not sure what new US health firms would actually want.
I was hoping that US interests would take over the UK's appalling oncology services, then Brits would have a chance of being like the USA, where cancer survival rates are so much higher than in the UK. Oh well.