Is the NHS safe in this government's hands?

Amid the congratulations to the NHS on its 70th Birthday and Jeremy Hunt's assurance that the NHS is safe under Tory 'stewardship', I can't help thinking that the NHS is already being privatised by stealth. Although the Kings Fund reports only a gradual increase in the amount NHS clinical commissioners have paid to private providers over the past 15 years, I've been aware that private health providers have been gradually coming on to my radar in ever increasing waves ...

• Three private hospitals have appeared in very prominent positions in my area in the past few years.
• Southend's Private BMI Hospital which declares itself as simply 'Southend Hospital'  stands a very short distance from the Southend University NHS Hospital.  It was to 'Southend Hospital' that I had to accompany a friend for a 'fitness for work' assessment for the DWP. In 2016 it was reported that two private firms made £500m from fitness-for -work assessments of disability benefit claimants.
• I am no longer able to have my glaucoma monitored by the NHS but have to go to a local opticians
• It's not always easy to find an NHS dentist - many only treat patients with private health insurance
• The Patients4NHS website https://bit.ly/2NrR705 gives a pretty impressive list of steps which have been taken under the previous coalition and current Conservative governments to move the NHS along the road to privatisation.

My opposition to private health care isn't simply based on some vague political/ideological notion, but it comes from ...

1. The knowledge that any private provider puts shareholder profits above all else.  Must be tempting to do an operation perhaps before it's really necessary.  No need either to invest in intensive care cos the patient can be shipped off to the local NHS hospital if things go wrong
2. The belief that if we are to consider ourselves as a civilised country we shouldn't leave poor people who can't afford private health insurance to suffer and even die as they do in the US.