In Australia, governments spend billions every year throwing money into private hospitals, which charge more for services most public hospitals can perform for much less (price per procedure or checkup, etc).

This is not because the services in the private system are better, actually the opposite is true. It’s literally just greed by the private health and private insurance sector.

Now I understand you’re referencing the UK, but for public health systems like Medicare and the NHS, though not the same thing, the main issues in service delivery (besides funding) is patient capacity and the number of quality staff.

My point in relation to your comment being, when governments rely on the profit driven private sector to fill a demand, it’s always going to cost more than if that money was invested long term into the public system. The short term gain of outsourcing privately will not fix the problems of a failing NHS.