Nestling quietly on the front page of the last edition of the Sunday Times was a story which got shockingly little media attention elsewhere. According to the newspaper, a major Central London hospital has been transplanting organs donated by Brits to the NHS into foreign, fee-paying patients. The motive behind the policy was purely a financial one, as the hospital was utilising an arrangement that has been in place since the creation of the NHS in 1948: as a sop to doctors worried about losing financial independence under a nationalised system, virtually all establishments have been free to treat private patients alongside the plebs.
Proponents say that it is a harmless measure which keeps doctors happy whist subsidising services for other patients. Opponents say that it is an intolerable practice that extends privilege for the few at the expense of the public service ethic, and ultimately, us. Some have described the practice as “queuejumping”, and the Labour government of 1974-9 seriously considered banning it.
The indisputable logic is that, for people to want to pay for a service available for free, there has to be something better about the premium service. And for that to be possible, those of us who are paying for our treatment as taxpayers must be receiving lower quality healthcare than others. This is a problem, but it is a hundred times worse if organs donated by the dying on the understanding that they would help somebody else live, regardless of ability to pay, are now being sold in a direct betrayal of trust. There are thousands of people languishing on the organ transplant list. Are they really only worth helping if they can pay? If rich individuals wish to use their wealth to their advantage in obtaining an organ, then the organ should have been sold by the donor on that understanding.
In this country, we are supposed to be incredibly fortunate to have achieved a highly advanced mentality when it comes to delivery of healthcare. Unlike the US, or even the Scandinavian countries, every single citizen is entitled to entirely free healthcare. We don’t donate blood because we need a little cash, we do so without payment because we’d want others to do the same if we needed blood. We have moved beyond the divisive ideology so prevalent elsewhere that healthcare is a commodity, and this is hugely inspiring (ok, we’re hardly in a socialist utopia, but the idealism that has been converted into real change is quite something). I would venture that the existence of the NHS makes many proud to be British.
But if we are to keep it that way, we must resist the harmful marketisation that is taking place. Outsourcing, queuejumping, and internal competition are all means to a particular end. An end which will only lead to more scandals such as the sale of donated high-profit organs to the highest bidder.
