[zigzigzag]

The NHS is dripping with profit, everywhere.

The staff make profits. If they weren't making profits then someone would assess how much they needed to live and pay their bills and that'd be the amount they got paid. In practice they get paid, some of them like senior doctors get paid large sums of money that they can then spend as they see fit.

The unions make profits. They charge membership fees and then justify those fees by organising industrial actions in order to increase the profits of the staff.

The equipment manufacturers make profits. Often by charging wildly varying prices for the same goods to different hospitals.

The drug manufacturers make profits. They have to, otherwise they'd not be able to do the research they do. University research is really no substitute.

Without profit the NHS wouldn't exist anymore.

[gerbilly]

By profit I mean charging a patient for treatment.

Everyone should get paid of course, and even handsomely including doctors, but what I meant was that no private company should be able to bill a patient for treatment.

[zigzigzag]

You have a really weird set of arbitrary lines in the sand.

So it's totally OK for a single doctor to make huge profits off the NHS when they charge patients for treatment, but if those doctors form a company to share the load and amortise overheads, then suddenly it's a terrible evil that must be forbidden?

And don't get confused by simple word changes: when a doctor turns up at a hospital and does work in return for a large paycheque he is very much "charging a patient for treatment". The fact that the charges come in the form of taxes and take a long route to get to the patient's wallet doesn't alter the fact that the money comes out of the patient's pocket and ends up in the doctor's pocket!

[gerbilly]

>the money comes out of the patient's pocket and ends up in the doctor's pocket!

It comes out _partly_ from the patient's taxes, and the rest from everyone else's taxes.

The cost is spread. That makes a big difference.