After talk of fees, Rishi vows: I’ll keep NHS free

RISHI Sunak has promised to keep the NHS ‘free at the point of use’ after leaked minutes showed health service bosses mooted the idea of making the rich pay for treatment.

Senior NHS Scotland officials discussed ‘a two-tier system’ where the wealthy pay for private healthcare.

They were speaking in a meeting in September in which they were given the ‘green light’ by NHS Scotland chief executive Caroline Lamb to discuss reform of a service which finds itself in crisis.

The officials asked ‘what can be done with the financial constraints that we have?’ and pointed out that some patients ‘are already making the choice to pay privately’ while the NHS is ‘ picking up the cost for life enhancing not life- saving treatments’, the BBC reported.

It came as it emerged the PM is registered with a private GP practice that guarantees all patients with urgent concerns will be seen ‘on the day’.

The west London clinic charges £250 for a half-hour consultation and, unlike most NHS GPs across the country, offers appointments in the evenings and at weekends, as well as consultations by email or phone that cost up to £150, The Guardian reported.

But Mr Sunak yesterday sought to assure the public there were no plans to abandon the founding principles of the NHS.

He told a Confederation of British Industry conference: ‘I grew up in an NHS family – it’s in my blood. And as your Prime Minister, I will always protect an NHS free at the point of use.’

He added: ‘We also need to radically innovate how we do things. That’s how we’ll really improve the quality and speed of care, and make the money we invest in the NHS go further.’

The PM said he was willing to rethink the job description of doctors and nurses to make the NHS more efficient as he demanded ‘a culture of innovation in our public services’.

Mr Sunak also promised that encouraging patients to shop around for the hospitals with the shortest waits will improve the NHS

‘Two-tier system where wealthy pay’

through ‘radical transparency’. A health insider told the Mail that there have been ‘serious’ conversations about NHS charges for some time, including Mr Sunak’s abandoned plan to fine patients £10 for missing a GP appointment.

Another said it was inevitable that the public would start to question ‘whether there is a better way of doing things’ but a two-tier system would go against the ‘core founding principle of the NHS, which is backed extraordinarily by the public’.

It is often suggested that the NHS could adopt a social insurance model, as in Germany, where employees and employers contribute money to fund their healthcare.

But experts have long emphasised that there is no evidence to suggest there is a link between the funding model itself and health outcomes.

Tim Gardner, senior policy fellow at the Health Foundation, told the Mail there is ‘always a purpose to make international comparisons but that doesn’t mean we can cut and paste something from one country and put it into our setting’.

A hybrid NHS system already exists as some parts – prescriptions, physiotherapy, dental care and eye care – have charges.

Scotland’s Health Secretary Humza Yousaf insisted the NHS ‘must always’ be based on individual patient need and ‘any suggestion’ that it should be about the ability to pay was ‘abhorrent’.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said the principle of the NHS being free for all was ‘not up for discussion’ .