Forging ahead

At least on one front, the right wing of our governing Tory party appears to be forging ahead. That is to say partially dismantling our health and social services so that their friends can make lots of money out of providing similar services at twice the price, more or less following the US insurance model. Smooth words about providing choice and getting out from under the dead hand of government. A wheeze that our voters may fall for, having been trained by successive generations of politicians, of all persuasions, to think and expect that something can be had for nothing.

So you starve the health services and the associated social services of money at a time when demand is increasing with the age of the population. Services inevitably decline. The richer half of the population is tempted to take out private insurance, possibly helped along with a bit of loss leading. Add a few pretty receptionists with flowers on their desks and boiled sweets in bowls, rather in the way of mid-market hotels. And all helped along by lots of the employers of the richer people offering them various private health benefits.

Resources drained out of the public system in favour of the private system. Gets harder and harder to turn the clock back. End up with a two tier system with rich people going private and poor people taking what is left. Total amount of money spent on health goes up and total amount of health goes down. Goes up by more, that is, than might be needed to cope with the increasing demand.

All this prompted by receipt of a fat promotional offer through the post from Bluecrest, complete with my personal offer code, inviting me to a special introductory health check to be delivered at the Woodlands Park Hotel, the fancy hotel which is handy for our local crematorium. A place originally built for a chap who made lots of money out of Bryant & May matches. A personal offer code that was so personal that they did not bother to include my name on the address on the envelope. But book now to avoid disappointment.

Which I took to be a harbinger of things to come. Think proliferation of dodgy energy companies under the flag 'liberalising the market'. Hopefully I am wrong and a returning Labour government will manage to staunch the breach in the dyke. We shall see.

PS 1: I remember reading that the Swedes are much more relaxed about running a mixed economy on the health front, with a fair bit of private provision for public health. Which is not quite what is on offer above. 

PS 2: an interesting message from the NHS is snapped above. In their defence, there has been a great deal of change on their IT front over the last couple of years. Bound to be a few typos here and there.

PS 3: regarding the hedge fund below, as far as I can make out from Wikipedia, they are nothing much to do with hedging bets. Just a term for an investment fund which bets on the market as well as making investments of the more ordinary sort.

References

Reference 1: https://www.bluecrestwellness.com/. Not obviously anything to do with the hedge fund of nearly the same name. Not to be confused either with Blue Crest (pets), Blue Cross (pets) or Blue Cross (blue shield). The source of the cuddly snap at the top of this post.

Reference 2: https://www.handpickedhotels.co.uk/woodlandspark.