(See the National Insurance booklet here: )

 

At that time Britain's debt was proportionately far greater than the current deficit the Government is using as its justification to introduce privatisation and 'the market' into our health services.

The government in 1948 realised that in order to achieve growth and prosperity, everyone should chip in a fair, proportionate amount to ensure individuals and families could be assured optimum health, education, support, social care, housing and all the things necessary to provide a healthy, productive population that was happy to work hard.

Since then - and recently with frightening speed - the will to share the cost of national prosperity has faded, particularly among those whose lives HAVE been made easier and more comfortable because of that very political but humane system of 'fair shares'.

Those who have never known what it was like to be without a free health service, supportive welfare state, decent housing and employment are happily voting for an end to those basic human rights. This is partly because they are being fed lies and half truths by the main political parties, aided and abetted by a right wing media. And they do not have the imagination to envisage or understand the consequences of turning back the clock.

Everyone loves Downton Abbey. But the attractiveness of a TV period serial does not show the reality of the dire poverty, basic wants and heartbreak suffered by the 'downstairs' classes of the day, struggling for an existence outside the big house where the wealth was concentrated.

Because of the global banking crisis - caused in greater part by greed and lack of regulation and uncontained wealth creation for the few - the public has been lured into a perceived need to reverse that system of mutual support, exemplified by the National Health Service.

In a devious move, the Tory led coalition brought in the Health and Social Care Act 2012 with its market philosophy while banning publication of a risk register warning what chaos could follow from extending privatisation of the NHS's services.
 

Some people believe that it doesn't really matter WHO provides services as long as they are competent and 'free at the point of delivery'. But the NHS network is interdependent - orthopaedic departments rely on MRI scans and radiography, pathology labs for blood tests and so on. If private orthopaedic operations go wrong or an emergency happens - perhaps the patient goes into cardiac arrest or a haemorrhage occurs - who picks up the pieces? The NHS which has been weakened by the loss of one or more of its major services... Rescue facilities for private providers may no longer even exist.

The laws on competition mean a company offering to do, for example, radiography, can't just be 'contracted in'. The contract must be advertised widely. Bids must be accepted from as many companies/organisations that qualify for the job.

What makes turning the NHS into an impossibly expensive 'market' is the cost of all the people necessary for these administrative processes - the management consultants, the legal advisors, the competition lawyers and the legions of managers and staff who deal with the paperwork. This cost is estimated at between £4.5bn - £10bn a year.

Companies require profits; shareholders of companies will only buy into a company to get a return through dividends. If a profit can be made on our orthopaedic service, should not the NHS take that profit? It has trained most of the doctors, specialists and nurses, and has paid for most of the operating theatres, equipment and hospitals.

Just like the electricity sell-off and all the other precious utilities, big companies are poised to come in and skim off the profits. Because these services are established, successful, necessary (no need to attract customers!) and have been set up using other people's money. That is your taxes, your parents' taxes/NI contributions and your grandparents' contributions - not to mention their belief that they were building a land in which their familes would be safe.

 

The NHA says:

Health and health care are basic human rights, not marketable commodities. The NHS is the world’s best example of the principle of social solidarity, remarkable for having had the support of people from all political persuasions since its creation.

 

THE NHS

Restoring the NHS - Publicly Funded, Publicly Provided and Publicly Accountable.
Only a publicly funded, provided and accountable NHS can sustain the founding principles of a comprehensive, universal, equitable, accessible service. These principles have been severly undermined by a process of marketisation and privatisation started by the Major Government in 1991, expanded by New Labour and turned into a fully functioning external market by the Coalition's Health and Social CAre Act 2012.

Privatisation and marketisation increases inefficienty and cost. The frontline workforce is reduced to save money and becomes de-professionalised. The cost of administration takes money away from healthcare and private company profits transfer public money to shareholders and corporations.

This often drains money from the domestic economy as the companies are often based in offshire tax havens.

 

We would

 

• Restore the NHS to public ownership: publicly funded, publicly provided and publicly accountable

• Restore the duties and responsibilities of the Secretary of State for Health to provide universal and comprehensive healthcare in England, but with less political interference in the day-to-day running of the NHS

• Halt and reverse privatisation

• Abolish competition and the market in health provision with its associated huge and unnecessary costs and bureaucracy

• Reinstate the NHS as the preferred provider of healthcare and remove the requirement to tender out contracts to the private sector

• Replace the market with a system based on resource allocation, not commissioning. This system would enable effective planning of healthcare according to the needs of the population at local, regional and national level

• Implement the Pollock and Roderick NHS Reinstatement Bill as the best way to achieve this, as it not only repeals the Coalition’s 2012 Act, but also corrects the previous legislation which created the market.