Re: Pipe Dream
There is plenty wrong with it, because private healthcare firms need to turn a profit in order for shareholders to get their investment back. WIth healthcare how do you turn a profit? Something has to go, something has to give.
There is absolutely no reason on earth why private enterprises, competing to supply the NHS with services should not be able to deliver better service, cheaper, while still paying for the capital required to do this (in reality, that is what "profit" is). Nationalised industries have to provide capital, and pay for it - generally in a poorly managed way. However, in a nationalised industry, all high level decision making is by politicians, and provision of capital becomes a political football, leading to fiascos like WindowsXP still being widely used now.
Actually, Nationalisation has mostly been shown to be horrifically inefficient - because you cannot ever be your own quality controller. I am not saying that it is GUARANTEED that privatised systems would be better, but neither is it necessarily worse. You might not be old enough to remember GPO telephones and the Gas Board.
Public/private ownership of capital is not the same argument as open source vs closed source infrastructure software.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
