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Anyone who's worked for the NHS knows that it's an incredibly wasteful organisation.
I work for the NHS and would argue the complete opposite. Delivering an acceptable service while under-resourced and under-staffed is the norm. I wouldn't call that wasteful, unless you call it a waste of potential.
Procurement is usually cited when talking about waste in the NHS, which is true, it's often arbitrarily exorbitant, and that's what you see in the media along with poorly run Trusts, but the service level cost is very low across the board and still delivers far more comprehensive healthcare than any single private provider ever will.
neu
This is the difference between pragmatism and ideology / idealism imo. I'm with you - I can see the value in public ownership, private enterprise, and public private partnership, they're just different tools which should be used in different situations. But I think many people make a fetish of public services in the same way the tories do for private enterprise, when the reality is that each has its own strengths. Anyone who's worked for the NHS knows that it's an incredibly wasteful organisation. Anyone who's worked in private enterprise knows that the efficiencies often come at the expense of the workforce. Done right, public-private partnerships might be the best of both worlds; done badly it can be the worst of both.