They’re killing our NHS

Published: 27 May 2011

• IT beggars belief that the Tory-led coalition government are adopting a US-style healthcare system – as the Americans themselves are rejecting theirs because it is simply a disaster for people. 

The government is sacrificing best value for taxpayers by espousing a more commercial system. 

The cost of administration in the NHS is about 12 per cent, compared with more than 30 per cent in the USA. Transaction costs in the NHS will rocket when competition between hospitals intensifies. GPs will require an army of clerks to keep track of the changing discounts and two-for-one deals. 

The government is heading towards taking the “National” out of the NHS. In future there will be no national body deciding which drugs and treatments should be available on the NHS. 

It will be up to GP consortia to impose rationing to avoid overspending an increasingly inadequate NHS budget. Instead of national decisions being taken transparently by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, different consortia will make different decisions. It will be a massive postcode lottery. Power will be given to consortia that are not elected, not transparent, answerable only to a national commissioning board that will apparently be outside political control.

The government is also looking at the privatisation of core parts of the NHS blood and transplant services such as the testing, processing and transport of blood products. These are an utter disaster.

The government plan to close a third of London’s hospital beds, move 55 per cent of London hospital work into “polysystems” and close 13 district London hospitals as part of their cuts. The effect of all these would mean that quality health service would be expensive to get because of competitive marketing by the health providers and people will be unable to afford to visit their doctors. 

The privatisation of the NHS would also mean that every household would need private healthcare insurance in order to receive better healthcare. 

The government are rapidly closing down PCT offices and making staff redundant and services which Westminster residents were receiving have now disappeared with no replacement.

Join our campaign and visit our link: www.tinyurl.com/6j7d6sn and sign the petition to oppose the privatisation of the NHS blood service.

Dorothy Edwin
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