Bargain-basement healthcare will hurt

Published: 19 May, 2011

• AS a former hospital porter who attended the Keep Our NHS Public event at Camden Town Hall, I’d like to stress that opposition to stealth privatisation of health services is not strictly a party political issue. 

All three main parties share some blame for the present situation, and Andrew Lansley’s plans are opposed by leading figures from all parties too – even including Tory GP and MP Sarah Wollaston and Lord Tebbit.  

The Tories are to blame for the MRSA deaths caused by privatisation of hospital cleaning contracts. 

Labour are to blame for the red tape caused by the “internal market”. 

Lib Dems are to blame for acquiescing to Mr Lansley’s White Paper (and their betrayal of pre-election promises casts serious doubt on the integrity of the Coalition’s current “listening” exercise). 

The Independent of April 3 said: “the Tory manifesto spoke of giving GPs the power to commission care, rather than requiring them to do so”, so the Lib Dems aren’t the only party who betrayed pre-election promises. 

GPs will not be “invited” to fund “any willing provider,” however. Under European competition law GPs will be forced to fund bargain-basement providers and forced to offer patients the cheapest (poorest quality) healthcare products. So the emphasis should now be on what people of all beliefs (or none) can do to protect healthcare entitlements that we have already paid for. 

JOE BANKS, WC1

WAKE UP!

• It is quite clear the overall intention of the government’s proposals is to move the NHS significantly to what can really only be described as a free-market model of healthcare provision.

This is so dangerous because it risks patient care with providers able to cherry-pick the most profitable patients with the corollary of undercutting the NHS on price.

It’s no use rehearsing political battles of years gone by. What the Tories are doing represents one of the biggest threats to the NHS since its inception; we’ve got to fight it.

Labour’s opposition in parliament and in Camden has been effective and is welcome but, understandably, it can only get us so far. 

If it’s going to halted, we need the Lib Dems to use their new found “muscular” might within the government and reverse their support for this terrible bill. 

Wake up Lib Dems, and stick up for our NHS.

ROB HIGSON, NW2

Questions

• ON May 11 the Parliament Hill GP surgery’s Patient Participation Group – normally casting around for members – was full to standing to hear Dr Claire Chalmers-Watson talk about changes to the NHS.

Worried patients asked questions as penetrating as any think-tank’s. How would doctors feel if they had to deny expensive drugs to patients? Would they have to choose between hi-tech surgery for a few, and simpler interventions for the many? What about mental health care? Would expensive patients be kicked off the list?

Patients wanted to know if their doctors thought the PCT was wasteful and overstaffed, as the government has claimed. But without it, how would GP commissioners deal with the knock-on from over-spending by neighbouring areas? Did they have any training in these matters? And, most pressing of all, how could they find the time to deal with them, when still seeing us patients?

People in Parliament Hill are well informed and keen to debate these complex questions about healthcare (most of which would still have to be faced if the legislation were scrapped tomorrow). That willingness must be a source of hope for the future. A patient participation group is a very limited forum. But our commitment as citizens to debate fairness and equality may help us hang on to the values of the NHS.

MARTIN BOULD, NW5