NHS: Fully fit-for-purpose?

model whose funding involves citizen payments into a scheme selected from an approved list of insurers, or yet again to the much criticised American free-markets model funded primarily via private insurance. Funding would be via compulsory payments into the scheme at a pre-identified percentage rate of income by employees, self-employed, employers, other income earners and pensioners. The state would contribute an amount roughly comparable to that paid in by the individual employee. Patients would be entirely free to choose their preferred health care delivery provider.

And so, at long last, the new NHS will be phased in from June 1, 2019, with the final phase starting June 1, 2020.

However, apparently, the new funding system covers patient usage only and not capital costs - for example, the building of a new hospital or expansion or modernisation of an existing one, the purchase of state-of-the-art body scanners, or the human resource costs of a major expansion of medical staff. These capital costs will have to continue to be paid for out of Health Ministry budgets funded by general taxation, and therefore represent the biggest stumbling block to meeting the criteria for a proper NHS cited above. In addition, in presenting patients with an absolute freedom to choose a provider, there appears to be no credible national standards-and-performance monitoring system for informing such choices.