What effects would the privatisation of the NHS have on me a working class person.

Very few people in the mainstream of politics are suggesting charging patients for services. Even if the NHS were to move to an insurance based system (which seems to be Nigel Farage's long term aim, though isn't current UKIP policy), it would probably still be susidised by the government. You as a working class person probably wouldn't have to pay for anything directly, although if profit-making private insurance companies were involved it would almost certainly cost a great deal more per person than the current system does.

The real worry about the system of outsourcing which the NHS is currently moving towards is that services would become fragmented, with certain things being unavailable, or available at a lower quality, in certain areas. The market system of offering contracts to competing companies should in theory ensure everyone has a choice of service providers and can choose whatever would give them the best care. However in practice most patients will have very little choice unless they are willing and able to travel around the country for different services, especially since smaller local health centres are usually less profitable than bigger regional ones, which causes services to become increasingly centralised in the major cities. Private providers will always focus on the things that make them the most profit, regardless of want the local people actually want or need, resulting in post code lotteries.

Compare with the way water services are run. The whole system is privatised, but customers have no choice of who they buy their water from, which allows some water companies to charge more than others for the same service. Also the railways, which apparently cost the taxpayer more than they would if they were nationalised due to inefficiencies caused by private profits and competing companies not working together across the network. The experience for passengers is bad too, with high and often confusing ticekt prices, and services to remote areas being less frequent and more expensive than they would be if the whole network was run by the government.

/r/unitedkingdom Thread