But the purpose of CCGs is to bring in maximum competition. NHS services will find themselves bidding against the likes of Virgin Care or the American giant United Healthcare, which are likely to cherry-pick easy and profitable services – diagnostics, routine pre-planned surgery and simple treatments – leaving behind A&E, the frail, the old and anything that is unpredictably expensive.If they're easy, they're not particularly profitable, because if they're easy, lots of people can compete for them. Really, supply and demand economics, do you speak it, Polly?
As it happens, this is exactly what we want. Plenty of people can remove ingrowing toenails, so let there be a market in them. For the tasks like building bionic arms that a couple of people are working on, and will form a monopoly, keep them in the NHS (and once we've got lots of people doing bionic arms, create a market).
