Salisbury is right to despair at the recent inept comments by Labour’s Wes Streeting castigating GPs while indicating no clear plan to rebuild the NHS,1 now faced with the worst staffing crisis in its history.2 Although lack of knowledge and poor advice may explain his position, other concerns have surfaced around his taking of funds from a source with large interests in a US healthcare corporation.3David Rowland from the Centre for Health and the Public Interest strongly contests Streeting’s idea4 that the NHS should ask the private sector to come to its rescue.5 Rowland pointed out the parasitic and risky nature of independent hospitals, with doctors trained by the NHS (effectively a subsidy to them of £8bn), poor safety record, lack of intensive care facilities, frequent transfer of patients back to the NHS (6600 in one year, costing the NHS around £80m), and poor governance arrangements. Rowland’s article effectively demolished…
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