UK National Health Service faces wholesale privatization

[Hannah Bell]

The Conservative-Liberal Democrat government’s Health and Social Care Bill, introduced to Parliament last Wednesday, aims to dismantle the National Health Service (NHS) and hand over its profitable components to private corporations. It is the continuation of the process of backdoor privatization set in motion across the public sector under the previous Labour government.

For working people who rely on the NHS, it will cause untold suffering and premature death, as universal and comprehensive health care, free at the point of delivery, would ultimately end.

Under the bill, General Practitioner (GP) led consortia will be given responsibility for 80 percent of the £100 billion NHS budget, from which they will commission patient treatment from “any willing provider”. The 152 Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) and 10 Strategic Health Authorities (SHAs) that currently commission health care will be axed.

A new body, the NHS Commissioning Board, will be able to shut down underperforming consortia, bring in private providers to take over commissioning, and provide financial incentives to GPs and their management teams.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/jan2011/nhsp-j25.shtml


Gosh; that's precisely the same game plan as US ed deform.

We are being herded into preselected "choices" not only in the US, but globally.

[conspirator]

1. The UK is in a downward spiral anyways. This is just the bullet to finish it all nt

[Odin2005]

2. Fuck, Even Thatcher the Milk Snatcher never dared touch the NHS.

Poor Brits. :(

[Starry Messenger]

3. recommend.

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. Here's a good blog post by a GP:

Most GPs in our area can be divided into two categories; those who think the plans are bonkers and don’t want to waste any time on it, and then those who think the plans are bonkers but want to limit the damage.
...
There are a number of changes potentially damaging to the NHS, increased privatisation, destabilising hospitals, price competition, geographic variation in services and quality etc. However, there are more pressing problems that are happening now and are likely to accelerate.

Put bluntly, there is a developing meltdown in the administration of the NHS. As soon as the White Paper came out in July, the whistle was blown to start a period of nearly 3 years of instability and waste in the NHS. This has been made worse by recent policy adjustments. What is happening is that a crucial (and unseen) part of the NHS – the PCT commissioning and administration functions have been well and truly hamstrung.
...
This all leads me to conclude that a large part of the agenda of the government must be to literally destroy the managerial expertise and infrastructure of the NHS. This means that GPs will have no-one else to turn to but the private sector, who will have little local knowledge and an entirely different agenda. The alternative is that the Tories do not understand the importance of NHS managers, which may also be true.

http://liberalconspiracy.org/2011/01/25/how-the-tories-unleased-chaos-in-the-nhs/