@ChrisMayLA6 I'm not opposed to private involvement in the NHS in theory, but I doubt that it will be done efficiently.

Since moving to France, my mother has been impressed by their healthcare system. It's effectively a privately provided monopsony. The government sets the prices that healthcare providers can charge and runs an insurance scheme that covers 70% of the cost for most people (long-term treatments or low-income people can get 100% covered). Private companies offer top-up insurance that covers the remaining 30%, but the price of that is fixed, so you don't get the US situation of routine treatments costing thousands of dollars.

French healthcare spending per capita is a bit more than ours, but the outcomes seem better. Private providers are incentivised to be efficient (so they make more money from the fixed rates that they can charge) but if they do so at the expense of patient care then they can lose their license to operate at all.

For the NHS to adopt this kind of model, there would need to be a will for the government to:

• Set prices at what the NHS would cost. Don't negotiate. Can't provide the service at this cost? No contract.
• Put large penalty clauses in the contracts. If you can't provide the service at the required quality, you pay back 100% of the money paid to you. You are required to take out insurance that will cover this in case of insolvency (and you can bet the underwriters will take a very careful look at your ability to provide the care).
• Be willing to strip companies of the right to bid for NHS contracts and to operate as healthcare providers entirely in cases of poor care.
  

I don't see the ToryLite party being willing to do any of these things.