Save Our NHS – The NHS was beneath assault by the Conservatives earlier than it was established in 1948 and has come beneath repeated assaults since by governments of each main events notably because the Nineties.
Offering common healthcare prices and the present monetary yr (2023/24) determine of £160.4 billion is round one seventh of complete authorities spending of round £1,200 billion. So it isn’t shocking that governments ought to want to see that the cash is being spent properly. However that isn’t was most adjustments in authorities well being coverage have been about.
Even with that enormous sum, the UK remains to be getting healthcare on a budget. In keeping with Statista the spending per particular person is lower than within the US, Switzerland, Germany, Norway, Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Australia, France, Sweden, Luxembourg, Canada, Denmark, New Zealand, Eire and Finland and roughly the identical as in Iceland and Japan.
It’s maybe not shocking given this that we regularly hear reviews which evaluate the outcomes of NHS care critically with these in different international locations. However these reviews on the BBC and within the papers seldom if ever point out the poorer funding the NHS receives than lots of these with higher well being outcomes.
The US spend per particular person is significantly greater than all different international locations and roughly two and 1 / 4 occasions that within the UK. However lots of the NHS reforms made this century have been primarily based on making our well being system extra just like the American mannequin, which might be a catastrophe. However it could imply an awesome alternative for personal healthcare corporations, notably a few of these US corporations, to make enormous income at our expense.
A shocking variety of our MPs have had some monetary curiosity in healthcare both by means of shareholdings or by sponsorships. The Every day Mirror in 2014 revealed a listing of 70 MPs with hyperlinks to personal healthcare companies which included nearly each main Tory and a few from different events. In addition to then Prime Minister David Cameron, they included Former Well being Secretary Andrew Lansley, accountable for the disastrous Well being and Social Care Act 2012, Well being Secretary Jeremy Hunt, former Well being Minister Simon Burns, the Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan-Smith, William Hague, Philip Hammond, Sajid Javid, Oliver Letwin, Chancellor George Osborne, Priti Patel, Jacob Rees-Mogg and lots of different main Tories, together with Lib-Dems then within the coalition authorities Vince Cable, Nick Clegg and Simon Hughes.
It’s these individuals who have launched insurance policies which have led to massive areas of NHS providers being supplied by personal corporations, although nonetheless retaining the NHS brand and nonetheless offering providers free to the general public. However usually these are the sort of easy, simple providers and the extra complicated areas are nonetheless left to the NHS.
There may be nonetheless enormous public assist for the NHS, regardless of its issues a few of which have been created presumably intentionally by authorities reforms to erode that assist, although extra clearly in a drive to make extra of its providers accessible to be taken over by personal corporations.
On Saturday March 4th 2017, 1000’s got here to Tavistock Sq., exterior the BMA headquarters to march to Parliament Sq. in protest towards the cuts and privatisation of the NHS which they stated was at breaking level.
Specifically they have been protesting the Sustainability and Transformation Plans for hospital closures and cuts in providers which had already precipitated many untimely deaths. Medical doctors and different healthcare employees clearly noticed these as part of a fast stealthy privatisation with medical providers more and more being run for personal revenue reasonably than public profit.
In 2017 the STPs mutated into Sustainability and Transformation Partnerships and in 2018 these have been instructed to remodel themselves into Built-in Care Techniques which have now changed Medical Commisioning Teams. These plan, purchase, and supply well being and care providers in there areas and are topic to inspection beneath 70 efficiency metrics and might be put into ‘particular measures’.
In keeping with the Wikipedia article “A report from the Nuffield Belief in December 2021 discovered that there was little or no proof that integration insurance policies throughout the UK – together with pooling budgets and creating new built-in boards and committees – had dramatically improved affected person expertise, high quality of providers or supported the supply of extra care exterior of hospitals.” However clearly they’d diverted a substantial quantity of experience, time, power and cash away from the actual enterprise of the well being service – and funding in direction of personal corporations.
Estimates for the quantity on the march diverse much more wildly than common, but it surely was clearly a big march. My guess was maybe 30,000 but it surely may effectively have been twice that if not the 250,000 the organisers claimed. All the photographs on this submit come from the march and the rally earlier than the beginning, and I used to be too drained by the point it reached Westminster to images the rally in Parliament Sq..
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Tags: back-door privatisation, low-cost healthcare, enormous public assist, Built-in Care Techniques, London, march, MPs pursuits, Nationwide Well being Service, NHS, peter Marshall, personal well being corporations, personal healthcare, personal revenue, privatisation, privatisation by stealth, protest, public well being, Save our NHS, STP, STPs, Sustainability and Transformation Plans, common healthcare
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