We’re aware that Hunt means something a little different here:

The NHS is moving towards an “Uberisation” of GP services, with patients forced to see a different doctor every time they book an appointment, Jeremy Hunt has warned.

He’s muttering about the cab rank rule being applied to GPs in the same way it is to lawyers or, ahaha, taxis.

But let’s widen the point a little and think about what Uberisation of the NHS would mean, if the effects were the same as those of Uber itself:

First, platform users gain 72 cents per dollar spent on these platforms. Second, welfare gains are disproportionately higher in locations and times that have been underserved by taxis and public transit. Third, we estimate that 64% of welfare gains come from dynamic pricing used by these platforms.

Gosh :

…we estimate that in 2015 the UberX service generated about $2.9 billion in consumer surplus in the four U.S. cities included in our analysis. For each dollar spent by consumers, about $1.60 of consumer surplus is generated. Back-of-the envelope calculations suggest that the overall consumer surplus generated by the UberX service in the United States in 2015 was $6.8 billion.

That is good:

It first argues that Uber's success stems not (just) from regulatory arbitrage or other malfeasance, but from having created a far more efficient market for car-hire services. It then argues that Uber's rise is cause for both optimism and pessimism. In addition to its obvious positive effects on consumer welfare,

The effect of all of this being that:

Chicago's business school asked its panel of 43 eminent economists if "letting car services such as Uber or Lyft compete with taxi firms on equal footing regarding genuine safety and insurance requirements, but without restrictions on prices or routes, raises consumer welfare," all 40 who replied said yes

That is nice, isn’t it?

Allowing competition free of regulatory constraint makes consumers - that’s you and us out here - better off. So, we should do that then, shouldn’t we? Uberise the National Health Service immediately.

Sometimes economics is easy.