Research funded by health science charity and published in world’s oldest medical journal says increased privatisation in the NHS goes hand in hand with avoidable mortality

A new study published in the Lancet, the world’s oldest medical journal, has concluded that increased NHS privatisation is associated with an increase in avoidable (‘treatable’) death in the UK’s health service – and that their findings disprove claims by advocates of government policies (who sit on the Labour front bench as well as the Tory benches) that privatisation has not increased.
The study’s authors raise the question whether the increase that they observed is driven by the greater cost-cutting and therefore profit-taking of private ‘providers’ compared to genuine, public NHS provision, and to the tendency for privateers to cherry-pick the easiest and more profitable patients, leaving the not-for-profit NHS under greater pressure. The study concludes that every 1% of greater privatisation corresponds with an increase of 0.38% in the deaths that could have been avoided through treatment:
We found that an annual increase of one percentage point of outsourcing to the private for-profit sector corresponded with an annual increase in treatable mortality of 0·38% (95% CI 0·22–0·55; p=0·0016) or 0·29 (95% CI 0·09–0·49; p=0·0041) deaths per 100 000 population in the following year.
The study’s authors concluded:
The privatisation of the NHS in England, through the outsourcing of services to for-profit companies, consistently increased in 2013–20. Private sector outsourcing corresponded with significantly increased rates of treatable mortality, potentially as a result of a decline in the quality of health-care services.
Emphasis added
The study was funded by the Wellcome Trust, a health research charity not known for any ideological opposition to health privatisation – in fact the charity has been criticised for its private healthcare investments.
The Tories’ ideological commitment to privatisation is well known. Shamefully, the current Labour front bench shares the view, with Keir Starmer refusing to commit to the renationalisations he promised during his leadership campaign and his senior shadow health spokesman Wes Streeting publicly saying that Labour would increase privatisation in the health service. The Tories’ new health bill has reduced scrutiny and NHS activists say that, as in the US system on which it is based, it incentivises providers to withhold care and cut costs.
Skwawkbox view:
The increased privatisation and the lack of political honesty about it has long provided cover for the Tories to claim they are putting more money into the NHS while in fact enriching the health privateers who donate to the Conservative party. The current Labour regime’s collusion in the fiction is an equal scandal.
SKWAWKBOX needs your help. The site is provided free of charge but depends on the support of its readers to be viable. If you’d like to help it keep revealing the news as it is and not what the Establishment wants you to hear – and can afford to without hardship – please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal or here to set up a monthly donation via GoCardless (SKWAWKBOX will contact you to confirm the GoCardless amount). Thanks for your solidarity so SKWAWKBOX can keep doing its job.
If you wish to republish this post for non-commercial use, you are welcome to do so – see here for more.
Newsflash:
Bears shit in woods…Pope outed as Carholic…Keef backs tories.
Here’s the article at The Lancet. Scroll down a little and an icon appears enabling you to download the page as a pdf:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2667(22)00133-5/fulltext
I think by now we all realise that the uk parliament are united in dismantling the Health and welfare system and people still vote without using a grain of common sense or reason…..The working class are entering a long dark tunnel and it’s probably going to take a lot of punishment before they hit the streets and fightback…..Theres no solution for this corrupt system only destroy it.
Joseph, Starmer is financed by Hollick, Chinn and Taylor. Three of the biggest Private Health Investors in the world. The NHS will be further sold off under Labour. In fact I doubt it is now salvageable at this stage.
Private medicine has more interest in filling forms (to claim funding) than looking after patients, it is a problem America has had for years.
When Bill Gates, Big Pharma & WHO announces the next “BIG” pandimec’s vaccine is ready, when we don’t even know what the next viral or bacterial pandemic cause will/may be, The USA already bought in millions of vaxxines and Jeff Bezos comes back from a space trip and announces that in the future earth will be an exclusive luxury resort where only a select few will be allowed to live, while the rest of us will be sent to “The Great Amazons in the Sky”, you should start being aware that humanity must get ready to fight for it’s survival or be well and truly fucked by the “Elites”!
I don’t think that the British Medical Journal’s Big Pharma FOI request for vaccine data has ever been granted. Basically we are to date on a trial vaccine that has changed contents several times, without any data or updates. Rest assured the next pandemic, whatever concocted designer virus that may be is covered. They already developed a new vaccine and there is also the ‘re’modified-cv19-vaccines to pick from.
Big Pharma wants your children this time, under 5s are prime targets! People have no idea what these things contain or any short/long-term side effects, neither do Pharma, but are ever so happy to line themselves and their children up like lambs to the slaughter!
The NHS is a war and the NHS is losing, nobody to fight for it just as there is nobody to fight Big Pharma, The Elites, etc, I remember looking at death rates, before the govt vanished them and interestingly more cv19 death were patients who were vaccinated and boosted than unvaccinated. The cv19 pandemic already showed signs of military involvement, next time around I reckon more people will refuse the vaccine and they will send the military in to zap us with force.
This is just my own opinions and I will never discourage anyone from vaccinations it is your own responsibility to know what it is and what it is not, not all vaccines are equal. Cold and Flu for example i don’t believe for one moment that there is no cure, but imagine the £ bilioions Big Pharma would lose in just those two viruses alone! Other Cash Cows Depression, Cancer, Arthritis, etc, etc, etc
All will eventually come out in the wash. What a herd humanity has become!
“What a herd humanity has become”
Mostly, this is the result of
i) an uncritical press which doesn’t need to prostitute itself to a highest bidder because it’s owned and run at a loss by the billionaires solely
ii) to control the political, economic and scientific environments,
iii) the ferociously neoliberalsing effect of Mama Thatcher and all her children (Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May and Johnson), (‘We’re all in it together’)
iv) an ineffective only-nominal-representative democracy system with its FPTP rigging and
v) a BBC turns its own Charter into a remit for controlling the plebs with misinformation and outright lies.
I’m sure there are other – more profound causes of people becoming un-thinking, uncritical and obsequious, but the above 5 seem to me to be the main causes nellykskelly.
There is some serrious old world order dodging and education to be done young and old. They have people locked into their void. Gratefully, I am old and the moons are few, I dread imagining a child learning its way into this ugly mess. Why the hell do people still have children are near 8 billion humans not frighteningly alarmingly enough, not to mention the Shithole the governments have created for them to come into!? JFC!
Biggest question now is who supports the Labour party and for Why
Pass the shovel its time to put it out of it’s misery
GP Surgeries are selling out en masse
It is looking grim, the saddest thing is no matter how low we think we are there are always people with more suffering than our own, what about them!? The child who “steals” a ketchup sachet from the school canteen to make a soup for his tea! Who is looking out for him!? It is fucking heartbreaking! Especially to think that we could touch an end of 43y of Tory hell twice. Now what does that child have? THIS TORY or THAT TORY Equally Rotten and Equally Corrupt.
The NHS needs to have a settlement akin to defence’s 2% and foreign aid’s .7%. Politicians need to hand over the money and let the professionals determine the remit. I’ve been aghast as Cameron and Corbyn have sought to wield the NHS as a weapon.
Why do so many Tories have such serious sexual hang-ups?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-62002088
Tory deputy chief whip Chris Pincher has resigned from the government, as a newspaper alleged he groped two men at a private members’ club.
In his resignation letter, he told the PM he “drank far too much” and “embarrassed myself and other people”.
Hehe, maybe for the same reason they relate to ‘acquiring capital’ wrongly as well.
Feature of capitalism or a mental health problem, could be either 😋
Drunken Tory groper Chris Pincher has at last had the Tory whip suspended.