Many people in England are unaware that the NHS in Scotland (and in Wales and Northern Ireland) has always been a separate organisation. The Scottish National Health Service was set up by the NHS Scotland Act in 1947 and today in 2014 is a very different NHS compared to that in England.

The Scottish NHS abolished the internal market in 2004 and brought back area health authorities. Nowadays the NHS in Scotland is again about co-operation, not competition. There are no trusts, no secretive commercial confidentiality considerations, no fragmentation of services, no wasteful and costly commercial transaction costs for tendering services.

Given the cuts and privatisation that are now afflicting the English NHS as a result of the Health and Social Care Act, it’s worth looking at how NHS Scotland works, since this offers a good model for restoring the English NHS.

This would give us something to tell the politicians, who are all now busily gearing up for the 2015 General Election. Continue reading →