By Professor John Robertson:
The Guardian today has:
Private healthcare boom fuelled by NHS waiting lists. UK market rose to all-time high of £12.4bn last year, with NHS paying for nearly £3.5bn of procedures to ease backlog. More patients went private last year as the NHS waiting list peaked at 7.77 million in September, up sharply from 4.57 million at the end of 2019.1
There’s no mention of Scotland in the report so we can be sure ‘UK’, as often before, means ‘England’.
In 2022/23, the total amount spent by NHS health boards in Scotland on private healthcare was £115,599,000.2
All things being equal with 10 times the population, NHS England might have been expected to spend around £1.15bn but spent £3.5bn, more than 3 times more.
On waiting lists, helpfully provided by BBC Scotland:
NHS waiting lists in Scotland have reached a record high, the latest figures show. Public Health Scotland recorded more than 690,000 waits for appointments or treatment for non-urgent care as of 31 March.28 May 2024.3
Again, all things being equal with 10 times the population, NHS England might have been expected to have around 6.9 million on the waiting lists but has 7.77 million, 800 000 more. That’d be 80 000 more on the NHS Scotland waiting list if it was overseen by the UK Government.
Support Scots Independent, Scotland’s oldest pro-independence newspaper and host of the OBA (Oliver Brown Award) at: https://scotsindependent.scot/FWShop/shop/
The Oliver Brown Award for advancing the cause of Scotland’s self respect, previously awarded to Dr Philippa Whitford, Alex Salmond and Sean Connery: https://scotsindependent.scot/?page_id=116
About Oliver Brown, the first Scottish National Party candidate to save his deposit in a Parliamentary election: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Brown_(Scottish_activis
Sources:
- https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/oct/25/private-healthcare-boom-fuelled-by-nhs-waiting-lists
- https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cqlly95k5l0o#:~:text=NHS%20waiting%20lists%20in%20Scotland,care%20as%20of%2031%20March.
- https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cqlly95k5l0o#:~:text=NHS%20waiting%20lists%20in%20Scotland,care%20as%20of%2031%20March.
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
Private Health contracts from the UK NHS ( England ? ) will inevitably rise as Wes Streeting has pocketed mucho dineros from ”private health donors ”to his political career , as have so many of the ”socialists” in the Cabinet !
LikeLiked by 1 person