SEVERAL BIG corporations have just signed up their workforce to BUPA health schemes, including the BBC, Natwest and HSBC.
The private health business is growing, in spite of the gathering recession, and BUPA's reported losses on its health insurance department, leaving it reliant on its hospitals to generate a profit.
The effect of increased private cover is in theory to remove whole sectors of the workforce from the need to use the NHS except for emergency and GP care. In practice, of course, people of working age very seldom need to make use of medical insurance cover - which is why the private insurers are so keen to take them on. For most working age adults, the NHS, as the sole provider of emergency services, remains more important, no matter what their illusions to the contrary. For many years, BUPA provided health care to the upper classes who could afford to pay to jump the queue and get superior accommodation.
However, in the 1980s, the market grew rapidly as waiting lists for NHS operations increased, and the scandalous state of hospitals came to light.
Several new competitors joined the scene, PPP (Private Patients' Plan) being the best known. An increasing number of corporations began to sign up their employees en masse, joining the number of companies that offer private cover at a discount.
But twenty years of Tory cash limits on the NHS and propaganda for private care have still left less than one in ten of the population with private health cover. Good evening, Mr Platt. Im from BUpA I
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