On this you are sooo wrong. Data protection and Accountability although not perfect in the public NHS is much much worse in the private sector. Where your medical information is used to sell you treatment:
E.g. if something goes wrong with your data in the private sector you have no remedy of an FOI request to find out what happened and who did it! You are at the mercy of the courts as information re private insurance companies and private health care providers fall under commercial confidentiality. Try getting access on the information held on you by your Life Insurance provider and then revisit what you think about the NHS. You are routinely excluded from the exchange between your Doctor and a private insurer.
It is also worth noting that this change comes hand in hand with a cynical move to reduce the budget and capacity of the ONS (Office of National Statistics) which has a very important role in the independent analysis of public health data! Public health statistics could cease to be published amid wave of budget cuts | NHS | The Guardian
So although it would be nice to think that the move to make care data accessible for research was motivated by the desire for scientific progress, the evidence suggests otherwise.
