Mixing Private and Public Treatment in the UK’s National Health Service: A Challenge to Core Constitutional Principles?

Abstract:

The question of whether those patients who privately purchase treatments which are not available on the National Health Service should, as a consequence, lose entitlement to free care for their condition has proved highly controversial in the United Kingdom.

This article considers the debate upon this issue. It focuses in particular upon the degree to which the solution adopted conflicts with the foundational principles of the National Health Service which have recently been enshrined in the NHS Constitution.