Friday, August 13, 2010

NHS facing £65bn 'mortgage' bill for PFI - Telegraph





Figures obtained by the BBC show that some NHS trusts are spending more than 10 percent of their turnover on the annual ''mortgage'' repayments.
Under PFI, private companies win contracts to build and maintain new hospitals and mental health units and the NHS pays off the ''mortgage'' over around 30 years.
The 103 schemes were valued at a total of £11.3bn when they were built.
But when rising fees and additional costs such as maintenance, cleaning and catering are taken into account, the NHS will have to pay back £65.1bn over the lifetime of the schemes. Some contracts are reportedly so restrictive that trusts are forced to pay hundreds of pounds just to get half a dozen pictures put up.
According to the data, the NHS currently pays back a total of £1.25bn each year but this figure is expected to increase until 2030 when it will hit £2.3bn, the BBC reported.
The final payment will not be made until 2048.
Professor John Appleby, chief economist at the King's Fund health think-tank, said: ''It is a bit like taking out a pretty big mortgage in the expectation your income is going to rise, but the NHS is facing a period where that is not going to happen.''
Dr Mark Porter, of the British Medical Association, added: ''Locking the NHS into long-term contracts with the private sector has made entire local health economies more vulnerable to changing conditions.
''Now the financial crisis has changed conditions beyond recognition, so trusts tied into PFI deals have even less freedom to make business decisions that protect services, making cuts and closures more likely.''
Nigel Edwards, director of policy at the NHS Confederation, which represents trusts, told the BBC: ''They were planned for a different world. I'm sure that in some cases people feel their hands are tied.''

NHS facing £65bn 'mortgage' bill for PFI - Telegraph

They are all to blame for this, they all supported it, so Liberal Labour and Tory should be strung up in equal number and manner.


We will be bled white for decades for this.

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Listen to me Sweary Mary, I get to decide what passes for good taste, what counts as poor taste, and what is just a Load of Bollocks. I'm not interested in multicultral clap-trap, liberal pleading for felons, or the status of Islam really being the "Religion of Peace(TM)".

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