Despite government denial of a health care market, the Department of Health is to release a code of conduct on the use of advertising by individual hospitals to attract patients.
Just what the NHS doesn't need is more conflict and competition. The health care market eats away at the very fabric of our NHS and this market must be stopped if we are to have a health care service that puts people first. If cash strapped hospitals are forced to advertise to keep their incomes, and therefore to stay open, we have surely hit rock bottom in the marketised world of NHS Inc.
The use of demand and supply economics focuses services towards demands rather than needs. Advertising will increase demands for cures, moving health care away from care and health improvement. It will increase costs and push the growing NHS deficits higher. Advertising is an immoral, wasteful and inequitable addition to an already perverse health care market.
Health care should be about care and health, not profits and loss. Health care is not a commodity that should be bought and sold.
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