The privatisation and commercialisation of human rights

Those of you who know me will know my stance on private healthcare and education.

On a forum I frequent (again, those of you who know me will know which one), there was a discussion on private healthcare vs the NHS. The basic premise for the discussion was these two questions:

1. Is private healthcare providing a quality service to those who can afford it and simultaneously taking the strain off the NHS, or is it another example of the growing rich/poor divide?
2. If you have/had the money to go private, would you?
   

Here are my musings:

The thing I always wonder (this is a genuine question, I honestly don't know the answer and if someone does, I'd love to know!) is...if there was no private option...if all the hospital space in the country was NHS, all the surgeons, doctors, nurses, physiotherapists, radiographers, etc etc etc only did NHS work, would there be such an issue with bed shortages, waiting lists, staff shortages etc?

I'm not sure going private is snobbery, as many have said, but it is certainly disgustingly unfair that it's possible for some people to buy their health while others can't. I had 7 years of NHS orthodontic treatment and an operation that would have cost £50,000 not including the two weeks of aftercare on the NHS too, despite my parents offering to re-mortgage the house and pay for it for me. The main reason for making the decision to stay with the NHS for the latter was that it would have been in the same hospital, with the same surgeon...just sooner. At the time I made the decision I wasn't in that much pain...it ended up that by the time I went into hospital (11 months after my GP first referred me to a specialist) I was in a lot of pain, so maybe I should have gone private. But I'm still proud that I chose to go with the NHS...maybe that's reverse snobbery!


Someone also said that they thought it was interesting that the majority of the people saying they disagreed with private healthcare were young, and that they felt their standpoint on the issue had altered with age and experience. Fair play, I'm young, and probably naive, and maybe my feelings will change in time, if I have children etc. But I don't actually think that the crux of the matter is whether or not you would go private if you had the money. Say you have an illness that only gives you 3 weeks to live, untreated. The treatment is available and will cure you and, complications aside, you will live. You have enough money to pay for it. The NHS waiting list is 5 weeks. The private waiting list is a week. I don't know of many people who would choose death, if they could choose life instead.

But as I said, I do not think that this is the important question. The question is, should you be able to have this option? Should you be able to buy your health when others can't?

The answer, in my mind at least, is ridiculously simple. No. They say you can't put a price on life, but clearly you can, and you can price people out of a basic human right, a service that we are privileged enough to have in the UK, and, to reach the dramatic end point, you can price someone out of life itself.