Private health is profit-hungry, but won't take risks

The private sector has never shown any ambition to take over the whole of the NHS, in the way private capital once coveted British Telecom, British Gas, and other utilities.

The reason for this is simple: .. the private sector is profit-hungry but largely risk-averse. Most of the NHS is high risk, and not profitable in its current form.

It can only be made attractive to the private sector by paying over the odds for services which the NHS currently provides at lower cost [1] – and thus inflating costs – or by excluding risk, for example by refusing to cover more complex and costly cases.

Private companies want only the sectors of the NHS which they (sometimes wrongly) believe offer the prospects of delivering simple, uncomplicated services for guaranteed profits. But their narrow focus of interest means that their perhaps surprisingly small total share of the cake has become far more significant than it might appear.

Davis, Jacky; Lister, John; Wrigley, David. NHS for Sale: Myths, Lies & Deception (Kindle Locations 3992-3999). Merlin Press. Kindle Edition.

[1] Take for example the patient wishing to jump the NHS queue for a hip replacement operation. Using his insurance plan, the insurance company would approve the procedure at a higher cost than the NHS tariff and since it's a high-turnover 'standard low-risk' procedure the company minimise any risks and at the same time make a profit. The problem of course is the NHS do not receive the work or profit and losing patients and income to the private sector destablises core NHS services such as A&E. Ultimately, the NHS will only provide the high-risk costly procedures unwanted by the private sector or when they hand patients back to the NHS when something goes wrong.