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Private equity has its sights on the NHS – and with it our faith in public services altogether
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2023
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
Last month, it was reported that one such firm acquired a staffing agency that employs NHS doctors and nurses, betting that the painful backlog of rescheduled appointments will be good for business.
The private equity firms of today were born on Wall Street in the 1980s era of the “leveraged buyout”, a technique that involved buying up companies, often loading them with debt and then selling them on at a profit.
The German healthcare system, which is often praised by rightwing thinktanks in Britain as a model to emulate, has seen numerous private equity deals in recent years.
Eye doctors have described how they face pressure to make “as much money as possible” by selling patients additional services, such as special examinations and cataract operations.
“Private equity firms are just the latest in a long line of investors that have seized this opportunity,” Vivek Kotecha, a chartered accountant who runs an independent consultancy, told me.
When asked how he would deal with the NHS crisis, shadow health secretary Wes Streeting echoed his Conservative counterparts and pledged to use private companies to reduce waiting lists.
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