From my article in The Sunday Times today:
“Before 2013, Labour never said anything about privatising public hospitals, a socialist anathema. Socialists are averse to privatising anything, let alone the national health service, the levelling equaliser for a fair society. Privatised hospitals providing free public healthcare cost public funds one and a half times more than they used to cost in full public ownership.
“Patients say they have perceived no improvement in the quality of the service given. Rather the opposite, they are confronted by a hospital management whose primary consideration is increasing profit, and they can only do that by cutting costs, since they can’t hike their fees.
“The increased public expenditure spent in lining the pockets of the new hospital owners means the government is tight with approving new treatments for public health provision.
“I am not talking about experimental cures here. Cancer patients are being referred by their doctors to the Malta Community Chest Fund. Taxpayers are getting their treatment paid for by charity because the State cannot afford to pay for it. And charity is not keeping up.”