February 6, 2026

"Private equity firms are making vast profits from investing in ADHD clinics which provide assessment and treatment for tens of thousands of NHS patients."

"The NHS has become dependent on privately-run services to diagnose ADHD and autism, leading to an 'exponential' growth in ADHD spending which is 'blowing NHS budgets.' More than half a million people in England are on NHS waiting lists for ADHD assessments. Under an initiative called Right to Choose, they have a legal right to get assessed privately and the NHS will pick up the bill. This has led to a proliferation of private providers, several of which have attracted private equity investors looking to generate quick profit."

From "How ADHD became a multimillion-pound industry for private equity/NHS has become dependent on privately run services to diagnose ADHD and autism as patients given legal right to assessments under Right to Choose initiative" (London Times).

63 comments:

Wilbur said...

Incentives. The mother of unforeseen consequences.
Will Leftists never learn they are merely creating opportunities for graft and waste?

Bob Boyd said...

@ Wilbur
That's the whole idea.

R C Belaire said...

I always wonder how many of the current ADHD and autism patients are truly afflicted, and not someone who -- for whatever reason -- has been labelled as such. Never really heard much about these things 40 years ago when raising the family... The number of people in the UK with some form of disability is really amazing given the population of the country.

Bob Boyd said...

I wonder how many ADHD assessment centers are run by Somalis?

Chris said...

in the future everyone will have ADHD and Autism. Diagnosis that USED to mean something. Now they hand out those diagnosis like candy.

Iman said...

Too early for humor, Wilbur!

The Vault Dweller said...

Probably related to things like this. 40% of Stanford Undergrads Receive Disability Accommodations Stop giving people special treatment. If they can't hack it, for whatever reason, they can't hack it.

Iman said...

Just claim ADHD, go on the dole, hit the pub and Bob’s yer uncle, mate.

gilbar said...

i USED TO wonder about the Skyrocketing numbers of autism
in the US, and thought it might be vaccines or something..
THEN, i realized, that it was ALL (mostly) just a scam.
I really think we could balance the budget if we Stopped paying for fraud.
Sounds like England is the same way.

gilbar said...

same with sex reassingment surgeries and treatments.
almost Nonexistant..
then the government required insurance to pay for it;
now MOST children are gender dysphoric

Dave Begley said...

Charlie Munger (Omaha guy) had the following to say about incentives.

“Never, ever, think about something else when you should be thinking about the power of incentives.”
— Charlie Munger

“Well, I think I’ve been in the top 5% of my age cohort all my life in understanding the power of incentives, and all my life I’ve underestimated it. And never a year passes but I get some surprise that pushes my limit a little farther.”

Big Mike said...

A lot of teachers were trained to insist that anyone guilty of being a boy in a classroom had ADHD back when my sons were in elementary school. Is that still the case?

Wilbur said...

Bob Boyd said...
@ Wilbur
That's the whole idea.

Yes, the question should have stated "When will voters learn ..."

Bob Boyd said...

John Adams had ADHD?

https://x.com/Indian_Bronson/status/2019481053577052181

RideSpaceMountain said...

@Boyd, Quality Treetment Centers.

Bob Boyd said...

When the voters learn, leftists import new voters, rig elections and devise censorship schemes to prevent voters from learning going forward.

Quaestor said...

Inevitably, freebie-dispensing governments run out of other people's money.

Beasts of England said...

’…private equity investors looking to generate quick profit.’

Quick profit sounds even more evil than windfall profit. Has their country considered a quick profit tax? Perhaps the equity firms could keep one and then send nineteen to the government? Should that appear too small, be thankful they don’t take it all…

Leland said...

I realize this is NHS, meaning the UK, but I think this type of journalism needs the redundant accuracy of writing, "reports to" provide to tens of thousands of patients. Whether there are actually tens of thousands of such patients should be auditable and likely is not.

Bob Boyd said...

They were going to do something about this problem, but then there was this squirrel...

Wince said...

Iman said...
Too early for humor, Wilbur!

That reminds me of a fun fact: Mr. Ed was ADHD!

Jamie said...

When my daughter started college in 2020, she was given a standard 2-person dorm room but no roommate. We waited and waited for a roommate assignment but none ever came. We called the housing office, where we were told that she had received a special accommodation because of her disability.

Now, my daughter's only disability was that although she fakes it really well, she's kind of a misanthrope; she prevailed on me not to argue with the housing people, and she ended up having that room to herself for her freshman year. To this day we have no idea how she was adjudged to be "disabled."

Also, to this day we have no idea what kind of "disability" would required a person to have her own room. I mean, excessive flatulence? Rampant Tourette's?

Howard said...

ADHD is a male superpower like dyslexia. Admittedly, these mindsets make standard education more difficult, but that struggle makes you stronger. Trying to medicalized and drug these features away is not to dissimilar to the gender dysmorgification clinics. All because women teachers can't control us easily and beta males whom love grammar and double entry bookkeeping are jealous.

Cappy said...

That's nuts.

Gilligan said...

One of the big MN frauds involved a similar statutory scheme.

Beasts of England said...

’Now, my daughter's only disability was that although she fakes it really well, she's kind of a misanthrope…’

I’m headed to the courthouse in thirty minutes to get my driver’s license renewed and will ask if I qualify for a handicap placard, since I often feel the same way. :)

Howard said...

Executive function is overrated. That's what secretaries are for.

boatbuilder said...

The lefties will claim that this is evil capitalists taking unfair advantage of their socialist system. As if it wasn't the inevitable result of the socialist system itself.

Wince said...

Jamie, see the following link at Instapundit about rampant ADHD disability claims at Stanford.

https://instapundit.com/774335/

Bob Boyd said...

They should have misanthrope parking spaces.

Bob Boyd said...

And we should also have our own stalls in public restrooms.

Jamie said...

@Wince, that's what made me remember it! But it's a puzzlement that she didn't seek it.

Robert Marshall said...

When will people learn that there is nothing more expensive than government-provided "free stuff"?

Bob Boyd said...

We're going to need a universal symbol for Misanthrope to put on our parking passes.

Robert Marshall said...

PS - That's a good reason to require that EVERYONE pay something in income taxes. Sudden enlightenment.

boatbuilder said...

Maybe they should let private equity firms run the NHS. On a for-profit basis. They are obviously a lot smarter and a lot more efficient than the government.

Aggie said...

Private Equity firms don't care if it's fraudulent. Before this, it was gender reassignment clinics, and before that, it was ESG issues, green energy, so on. They're just more nimble an efficient than corrupt government agencies are, when it comes to indulging fraud. We've made Free Handouts a cultural norm now, a popular voting option. It should be no surprise that industrial-level fraud has followed industrial-level handouts.

Howard said...

Let's see: super high energy, ability to hyperfocus and solve problems quickly in real time, natural calmness in a stressful situation, entrepreneurial, athletic, creative...

boatbuilder said...

That's easy, Bob Boyd--a raised middle finger.

Bob Boyd said...

My ADHD helps mitigate the worst symptoms of my misanthropy.

Bob Boyd said...

a raised middle finger

HaHa! Perfect.

Ambrose said...

Large investment in something we need more of - let’s paint that as a negative.

FredSays said...

An overactive (ha!) system getting more of what they pay for. Huh, who would have thought?

Bob Boyd said...

Ambrose makes a good point. I guess we're all pretty knee-jerk cynical these days.

n.n said...

Socialized leverage with benefits is like a pride parade without cubs in gay play on the African plains devouring black lives' matter Another baby Planned. And so on, and so forth, as a milestone of progressive liberalism or monotonic divergence aped with political consensus.

john mosby said...

Did they get Thomas Dolby treated in time? His hyperactivity was so bad he wanted to drop some bombs on Maggie Thatcher and Ronald Reagan:

https://youtu.be/rmGxh1FhtxE

https://youtu.be/gVPamd7UC5s

CC, JSM

Aggie said...

Well.....OK, but 'exponential growth' in a government-funded, privately-run service is not something one should accept without first applying some investigative oversight. The track records of government-administered health systems is, as we've seen recently, something that should immediately inspire a closer look and a deep dive into the books. What has been revealed in the past few months has been outrageous: state-sanctioned fraud, likely involving elected officials in high office.

Caroline said...

I read yesterday somewhere that 40% of Stanford students are classified as “disabled”. Apparently that’s the ticket to a better dorm room, VIP parking, and bespoke meal plan.

Deep State Reformer said...

Any government-run program, no matter how benign and well intentioned will eventually draw together an army of "for profit" parasites that will feed off it and eventually build a comfortable and profitable niche for their shareholders. And it doesn't matter if it's daycare centers in Minneapolis or luxury taxes on tires or telephones (GIFY) from 1915 either.

Jersey Fled said...

“ Incentives. The mother of unforeseen consequences.”

Actually the consequences are usually very foreseeable. The are just ignored.

Fred Drinkwater said...

Boatbuilder, you remind me of the contest for World Trade Center rebuild ideas. My favorite was a four-tower arrangement, with the third tower much taller than the rest.

Sydney said...

Who came up with the idea of making ADHD assessment a right? It's so easy to persuade yourself you have it, and easy to convince someone else you do, too. Life is full of distractions and we are all easily distracted, especially in the age of the internet. True ADHD is not so prevalent. Those are the kids who never sit still, who can't hold a thought for more than a few seconds or complete a sentence. I've met adults like this, too, but they are a small fraction of people, nowhere near the amount of people who are currently on amphetamines for ADHD. Let's be honest, who doesn't think faster, more clearly and more focused while taking uppers?

tommyesq said...

Are these private equity firms run by Somalis? Asking for a friend.

Iman said...

I’m okay, you’re so-so…

Temujin said...

Western Civilization is drugging itself into extinction. We drug our boys, our girls, our adult men and women. At the same time we're no longer getting married or having babies. But at least we did spend a few years deciding that gender was whatever you wanted it to be.

A lot of bad decisions by a lot of bad leaders is taking its toll. People need to quit looking at doctors as God and start doing more of their own homework. Then talk to your doctor. If he or she talks down at you, not with you, find a new doc.
If you live in the UK and have to go through the NHS, you're screwed.

boatbuilder said...

Multiply the model of sharp operators making bank off a gigantic pool of government spending for arguably beneficial services by the amount of such spending everywhere. Welfare, Medicare, defense, etc. The scope of the problem is mind-boggling. The only solution is to radically cut the spending (sure--exposing and prosecuting will help, but only on the edges). How to get political support for such radical cuts is the crux of the problem.

Peachy said...

The corrupt State ushering in radical Islamic males would depress me.

Dude1394 said...

Somalis showing the way.

Dude1394 said...

Charlie Munger was greatness. I attended the Omaha sharholders meetings in large part to hear Charlie laying down truth.

Wince said...

It's like they said in the old west, "There's gold up in them 'thar' ills."

boatbuilder said...

Also: "Follow the money."

stunned said...

All of this is happening because they refuse to call these people what they really are - mentally ill retards. People who have no ability to genuinely act pro-socially, only to pretend for a short while, until their true face gets find out.
The notion that the drugs will improve their behaviors to make them more acceptable for marriage and work, suppress their disinhibited sexual urges, lack of remorse and a slew of antisocial compulsions and appetites, is flawed. Psychopathy is not treatable, period. We must accept that there are disturbing predators among us (I am talking about everyday life, not the epsteins/billgates/andrews/fergusons) and learn how to protect ourselves from them, teach our children how to surround themselves with good people. More prisons are needed, not more adhd clinics. People who act like autism is just another way of being have no clue what a person with an oversized amygdala and undersized prefrontal cortex is capable of in terms of antisocial behavior. General population has no idea about autism because they are being fed lies by misguided and/or evil people who want to normalize psychopathy.

Craig Mc said...

Rebranding the old scam. Same here in Australia. We set up a national disability insurance scheme 15 odd years ago, and predictably it's turned into a grifter's gold mine and fiscal disaster. So much so, that they've now split off the ADHD part into a dedicated scam.

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