Private equity’s shift into these services is a symptom of one of the most extraordinary economic experiments in modern history. In the low-interest environment of the past decade, as the returns on investments such as government bonds dwindled, investors poured more money into private markets in search of higher returns, leading to an explosion in private equity deals. When high-octane finance starts moving into hospitals and nurseries, it’s a morbid sign that other opportunities for productive investment have been exhausted. Rather than financing new ideas, investors are capitalising on the basic necessities of life.
If private capital is also providing medical care, as well as that tax financed stuff, then there’s more medical care to be had, right? And if getting more medical care is a good thing then that’s good, right?
And food isn’t one of “the basic necessities of life.>/em>” ?
God forbid we are reduced to a National Food Service.
The private sector can deliver, better cheaper, and stil make a profit.
Profit!!!! Arghhhhh…..fake outrage!!!!!
Just think of all those doctors, surgeons, nurses, cleaners, janitors, ambulance drivers, all making their living from other people’s ill health. How dare they!
It would be too much, I suppose, to assume Guardian writers are aware of current demographics and demographic trends.
The writer displays a Guardianesque (I almost said Murphyist but he isn’t usually *quite* that bad) anti-logic when accusing Wes Streeting of having “little intention of reducing the decline in our public health service” because he proposes a means to make an improvement.
Private equity has its sights on the NHS – and with it our faith in public services altogether
I have zero faith in ‘public services’.
The only public services that work in this country with any degree of urgency and effectiveness involve fining motorists.
The Graun complains about the large profits made by private health providers in the UK. Those profits are NHS waste made visible.
private equity has a bad name in the care home sector where many viable firms have been asset stripped and saddled with debt.
who is to say that the same will not happen with general health care ?
Far canal. If as Tim the Coder says food is a basic necessity of life, surely to the young a phone is as necessary as food oxygen and water. Therefore there should be government-pattern phones issued free, which could only be an improvement on Apple and Android. Is anyone else here old enough to remember teletext?