Tebbit: Public funds should not subsidise private hospitals

Conservative party grandee Norman Tebbit wrote in the Daily Mirror criticising the government’s health overhaul:
“What worries me about the reforms however is the difficulty of organising fair competition between the state-owned hospitals and those in the private sector.
“In my time I have seen many efforts to create competition between state-owned airlines, car factories and steel makers. They all came unstuck. The unfairnesses were not all one way and they spring from the fact that state-owned and financed businesses and private sector ones are different animals.
“I believe there is nothing wrong with people choosing to spend their own money, or pay outs from health insurance companies, on health care in private hospitals. It simply eases the load on the NHS.
“But it is different when the NHS or the taxpayer (you and me) pays for NHS patients to be treated in private hospitals on anything more than a very small scale in special circumstances.
“The inefficient NHS is a long way from perfect. There is much it could learn from the private sector, but there is a lot of good in it that should not be put at risk.”