As doctors, we see the cancer that eats away at the NHS

[Briar]

The NHS is being privatised bit by bit, and patients are already suffering

Jacky Davis

Ill-equipped to compete in the increasingly cut-throat healthcare market, the NHS is now £140m in the red. A government that has done everything it can to expand the role of the private sector in the NHS is unlikely to bail hospitals out this time, and so this deficit will translate into hundreds of lost beds, and ward closures up and down the country.

This desperate situation forms the backdrop to the British Medical Association's annual meeting, which begins in earnest in Manchester today. This year's agenda contains dozens of motions critical of the government's health policies, and one of the first topics up for debate will be privatisation. The government will be watching the outcome closely. The Association of Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland has already come out strongly against private-sector involvement in the NHS. If the BMA votes against it too, a majority of medical opinion will have taken a stand against the main health policy of Blair's third term.

The government has sought to present greater private sector involvement in the health service as a means of creating additional capacity, but already it is apparent that this is not the real agenda. The private sector will not support the NHS but compete with it, and NHS units and hospitals that cannot compete will close. Independent sector treatment centres (ISTCs) will be introduced whether patients want them or not. Thus, when South Oxfordshire, Southampton and Greater Manchester primary care trusts declined to place any contracts with the private sector, they were ordered to do so, even though they had no waiting lists in the specialties the private sector wanted to service. And when too few patients agreed to be treated at ISTCs in Trent and South Yorkshire, the PCT paid for "care advisers" to persuade them to change their minds. Patient choice comes a poor second to government policy.

...

In 1997 the Labour party denounced PFI as creeping privatisation. They asked senior doctors to sign a letter in which they described the internal market as a cancer eating away at the NHS. Doctors agreed and voted for them, and now we feel betrayed. We see hospitals closing wards and operating theatres. We see huge profits already going to PFI companies. We are not deceived by the rhetoric about patient choice and predict that patients may lose the one choice that is important - a good comprehensive local hospital...


More at:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1515335,00.html

[oscar111]

1. US longevity 25th, was 20th..drops 5 under GOP misrule

also...
speaking of

LOCAL HOSPITALS as mentioned at the end of OP,

in one city i have a penpal in, she tells me

"We had two small local hospitals in our large side of the city. Both private. One private owner bought the other hospital.

Then he realized it was hurting profits to have two hospitals seven miles apart, when he could close one and force us all to travel to his one original hospital. Now that bought-up hospital, two blocks from me, has been closed for years. Empty.

More efficient and profitable for him, but more travel time for us elderly having heart attacks... when every second counts.. and naturally no doctor on any ambulance.. the standard setup in america.. "

Consider seven miles , heart attack, rush hour. Amb. goes 20mph to get to you.. twenty minutes, ditto to hosp. .. 40 minutes vs. the old closed hosp., took two minutes round trip. 40 vs. 2.
But profits are BETTER now for Mr. owner.

{I might add, no doc on the ambulance is unlike Germany, where a doctor is on every ambulance, as logic would dictate.} Nationalized docs in eng and germany also do housecalls. Amazing! Would you like house calls? Hmmmh? Would you?

LESSON: Private healthcare kills.

Nationalize ALL 4 corners of healthcare.

drs
hosps/n.homes
insurance
Big Pill

All other 35 industrailized nations have. Germany has had it for over a century. We are a century behind.

[Briar]

2. Under Bliar

we are racing to catch up with you...