Quote Originally Posted by jon1959 View Post
What do you mean by 'politicisation'? And how do you conclude that 'everyone wants the same outcomes'?

Pro or anti privatisation is a political question - and not just about efficiency/exploitation, management of costs and risks, and whether or not you are happy with public money going into private profit.

Choices about local or centralised priorities and decision making are political. So are questions about what is treated and what is not by the NHS (especially around fertility, gender realignment and 'lifestyle' diseases - which are often more about poverty). So are relationships with drug companies. Choices about recruitment into the NHS from other countries, and collaboration (or not) with other health services are also political. Maybe the objective (shared by all major parties according to their manifestos) of joining up of health and social care is more about management and administration - but it also includes clashes of priorities and cultures between public and private sector organisations and resolving that is a political issue - as are the choices about personal care funding.

I assume from your previous posts that the thing that annoys you most is the 'politicisation' of procurement practices - where the opposition have pointed out the greed, corruption and waste of the government handing out PPE contracts to their mates? Of course that should never be politicised! No that is 'deeply unhelpful'!
I used to work in the commercial sector of a pharmaceutical company and much of my time was spent with DoH/ NHS and procurement contracts. Without exception the procurement processes were always robust and in emergency situations, where there was no time to go out to tender, the unsuccessful companies always had the option of challenging the decision.
In my experience the weakness in the system was the failure to manage the market, particularly with specialist pharmaceuticals. It was common practice to go with the cheapest and before you know it all the business in the UK regions ended up with one company, the competition withdrew as they had minimal/no business...,so you can guess what happened next.