Bupa boss: ‘The NHS needs fine-tuning but its soul will remain’
The boss of Bupa in the UK has rejected calls for the NHS to move to an insurance model and said that while it needs “fine-tuning”, its “soul will remain” intact.
Speaking on the latest episode of City PM‘s Boardroom Uncovered show, Carlos Jaureguizar said the NHS changing to an insurance model would be “too disruptive”.
His comments come after former health secretary Sajid Javid joined calls for a major overhaul of the NHS that would see it replaced by a universal social insurance-based model.
In July, Javid said a “serious conversation with taxpayers” about how to fund the institution was “long overdue,” throwing his weight behind a paper by Policy Exchange which warned the NHS was “structured in a way that guarantees permanent crisis.”
The Labour government has pumped extra cash into the NHS as part of a ten-year strategy to reform the system, as the budget for the Department for Health and Social Care will increase by 2.8 per cent in real terms in the next three years.
But leading academics and researchers have called for the entire healthcare system to be re-designed, with the Netherlands providing a model to emulate based on “regulated competition” among providers and insurers.
Bupa CEO: ‘Key elements of the NHS will remain’
Asked whether he thinks the NHS will still be around in its current form in ten years, the UK chief executive of Bupa said: “I think evolution is going to happen. Okay. Evolution is going to happen. Change is going to happen.
“But I do think that the big things of the NHS, which is basically the NHS for everyone who lives in the UK, the NHS that you can use it if you want, because there’s availability – I mean, those key elements I think will remain.
“I think you can do some fine-tuning, but I think the soul of the NHS will remain. I think you need to tweak the things around to make it more efficient.”
On calls to move the NHS to an insurance model, Bupa’s CEO added: “So in Bupa we are a health company, we have insurance and we have provision.
“So we have the view of both legs. It is true that it works well. It brings the incentives of insurance provision together.
“So bringing the insights of insurance is a good idea, but I think just changing the NHS to insurance is a little bit too disruptive.”