Costly reality of Ukip NHS plans

As the beleaguered NHS creaks this winter under the weight of a Tory-led reorganisation gone terribly wrong, Ukip leader Nigel Farage, the self-styled “man of the people”, admits to wanting to get rid of the health service completely.

 
On Tuesday (January 20), Farage said that he favoured an insurance-based healthcare system, adding that, because of an ageing population, “[how we fund healthcare] will be a debate we are all going to have to return to.”

 
His latest comments come after being asked on the BBC about a 2012 video which emerged last year of Farage resoundingly embracing a US-style system.

 
In the video, he was recorded as saying:

 
“Frankly, I would feel more comfortable that my money would return value if I was able to do that through the marketplace of an insurance company than just us trustingly giving ÂŁ100bn a year to central government and expecting them to organise the healthcare service from cradle to grave for us.”

 
Although the ex-City trader noted that his party rejected his vision of a privatised NHS, with Ukip’s health spokesperson Louise Bours MEP confirming, documents leaked on Tuesday (January 20) from a party meeting reveal a completely different story.

 
Minutes from the meeting show the extent to which Ukip is ideologically opposed to a public health service that’s been the cornerstone of the UK’s welfare state for more than half a century.

 
In the leaked documents, a Ukip National Executive Committee member “feels that the NHS will either be bureaucratic or business-orientated. We can focus on stopping health tourism; we do not have to commit ourselves much further. In the longer term we want a radical approach but we cannot do that in this time frame.”

 
Another member notes, “We cannot change [the NHS] wholesale because the public love it. When the sky does not fall in from the current changes, we will be able to come up with a radical policy.”

 
Other comments from the meeting minutes support an undeniable truth – that, if Ukip’s top brass has its way, the very idea of a public health service will be challenged, and the party will lie, even to its own members, about its true intentions.

 
Ukip unravelling

 
The future of the NHS is not the only thorn in the side of Ukip, a party that’s beginning to fall apart months before the election.

 
Another document leaked to the Mirror reveals Farage telling Ukip’s leadership that they “are not passing the credibility test as a party” and that the party’s problem is “promising the earth to everybody.”

 
“We can say anything at the doorstep,” the document notes, in a shameless admission that Ukip, far from being the party of the people, is not even the party representing its own people in good faith.

 
Unite political director Jennie Formby said that the evidence against Ukip being a credible party at all continues to mount.
“The latest revelations prove yet again that Ukip cannot be trusted,” said Formby. “Their disingenuousness knows no bounds – behind closed doors, they brazenly admit to attempting to fleece their own supporters.

 
“For Ukip’s top brass, the upcoming election is a power grab that, if successful, would allow them to dismantle all that we hold dear with the only beneficiaries being big business and the financiers who bankroll their party.”

 
“For regular voters like our members , the stakes this May couldn’t be higher – the future of the NHS, public services and the welfare state all hang in the balance,” she added.

 
Formby went on to say that the so-called party of working people is anything but.

 
“Ukip’s got workers’ rights firmly in their sights too,” she said. “What working people see as protection, they see as ‘red tape’ to be abolished as soon as possible.”

 
Wildly inefficient

 
But what about Farage’s suggestion that an insurance-based model is needed to replace an NHS in crisis?

 
Although the Ukip leader’s libertarian ideology holds market forces to be the pinnacle of “efficiency”, insurance-based healthcare systems are often the most inefficient and costly of all.

 
In the US, the only country almost entirely dependent on a for-profit, private insurance-based healthcare system, health spending per person is through the roof. The latest figures show that, annually, the US is poised to spend roughly $10,000 (ÂŁ6,700) per person.

 
And this incredibly costly system often does not translate into better health outcomes, with the infant mortality rate, for example, being surprisingly high.

 
In comparison, the UK spends roughly ÂŁ2,000 per person, but scores high on various measures of quality in care.
“Farage needs to have a better understanding of the health service in the UK and health services in the US,” said Unite national officer for health Barrie Browne.

 
“Last year the Commonwealth Institute, which is a highly regarded research body based in Washington DC, published a report on health services around the world,” Brown added. “The NHS in the UK came top and the USA was 11 places below. QED Nigel!”