Commodifying health care: the UK's National Health Service and the Independent Sector Treatment Centre Programme

Since the year 2000 successive British governments have pushed ahead with the transformation of the National Health Service into a health care market with a strong component of for-profit provision. Focusing on the crucial first step in the privatisation of clinical services, this article examines how the four key requirements for the commodification of a public service were fulfilled — first, breaking up health care into standardised units that could be priced; second, inducing the public to use the new commodified services; third, inducing the workforce to work for shareholders; and fourth, getting the state to underwrite the risk involved. What emerges is a story of the deep penetration of the UK state by the private health care industry, including major players with a serious history of fraud.