WHAT IS HAPPENING TO OUR NHS?
International comparisons in 2010 showed our NHS to be among the most efficient, cost-effective and well-regarded health services in the world, with among the best clinical outcomes. The UK spends less on healthcare than comparable countries like German and France and far, far less than on the highly privatised healthcare in the US.
No one doubts that improvements are needed to bring some poor services up to best NHS standards. NHS staff know what's needed and they should be supported to do this. But our government is bent on denigrating our world class NHS while ignoring countless examples of appalling standards and practices in the private sector, as well as fraud and tax avoidance.
Meanwhile despite denials, our government is tearing the NHS apart through funding cuts and privatisation, putting profits ahead of patients. 30-year PFI deals (many secured under the last Labour government), that are unbelievably profitable for investors, are bankrupting many NHS trusts. There has been a massive real-terms reduction in NHS funding and the NHS has been forced to hand back £20bn in 'efficiency savings' (cuts to you and me) to the treasury since 2010. This has led to huge cuts in staff and services since this government came to power.
The Health and Social Care Act (2012), together with new EU Procurement Regulations and a new EU-US TransAtlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), due to be ratified by the UK this year, will subject the NHS to the full force of the open market, with private healthcare giants able to cherry pick the profitable services. This will leave a rump NHS to manage complex and long-term care on a diminishing and disproportionately small share of the budget while private and insurance-based healthcare will flourish.
Parliament is stacked with MPs and Lords (in all three main parties) with direct financial interests in NHS privatisation (77 MPs and 142 Lords at the last count). Influential 'independent' health think tanks forecasting doom and promoting privatisation and payment are nothing less than fronts for healthcare corporations. There's also a huge traffic in lucrative jobs-for-the-boys (and girls) promoting the private healthcare industry awaiting when former MPs and health ministers leave parliament.
MPs and Lords are lining their own pockets by selling off our NHS. Most of us would view these direct financial links between politicians and healthcare corporations as scandalous, corrupt and sickening. Non-the-less (as the song goes) it is perfectly legal.
Unless we stop them very soon, we are headed for US-style fully-privatised, insurance-based show-us-your-wallet healthcare. We hope you will join the campaign.
More information
What's happening now?
Over the last few years, the NHS has been plunged into crisis:
COMPLAIN TO THE BBC / ITV / CHANNEL 4
BBC
http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/
No one doubts that improvements are needed to bring some poor services up to best NHS standards. NHS staff know what's needed and they should be supported to do this. But our government is bent on denigrating our world class NHS while ignoring countless examples of appalling standards and practices in the private sector, as well as fraud and tax avoidance.
Meanwhile despite denials, our government is tearing the NHS apart through funding cuts and privatisation, putting profits ahead of patients. 30-year PFI deals (many secured under the last Labour government), that are unbelievably profitable for investors, are bankrupting many NHS trusts. There has been a massive real-terms reduction in NHS funding and the NHS has been forced to hand back £20bn in 'efficiency savings' (cuts to you and me) to the treasury since 2010. This has led to huge cuts in staff and services since this government came to power.
The Health and Social Care Act (2012), together with new EU Procurement Regulations and a new EU-US TransAtlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), due to be ratified by the UK this year, will subject the NHS to the full force of the open market, with private healthcare giants able to cherry pick the profitable services. This will leave a rump NHS to manage complex and long-term care on a diminishing and disproportionately small share of the budget while private and insurance-based healthcare will flourish.
Parliament is stacked with MPs and Lords (in all three main parties) with direct financial interests in NHS privatisation (77 MPs and 142 Lords at the last count). Influential 'independent' health think tanks forecasting doom and promoting privatisation and payment are nothing less than fronts for healthcare corporations. There's also a huge traffic in lucrative jobs-for-the-boys (and girls) promoting the private healthcare industry awaiting when former MPs and health ministers leave parliament.
MPs and Lords are lining their own pockets by selling off our NHS. Most of us would view these direct financial links between politicians and healthcare corporations as scandalous, corrupt and sickening. Non-the-less (as the song goes) it is perfectly legal.
Unless we stop them very soon, we are headed for US-style fully-privatised, insurance-based show-us-your-wallet healthcare. We hope you will join the campaign.
More information
What's happening now?
Over the last few years, the NHS has been plunged into crisis:
- Private Finance Initiative (PFI) debts have bankrupted some NHS Trusts and the costs of PFI repayments will rise dramatically over the next fifteen years.
- the Health & Social Care Act 2012 means more and more NHS services put out to tender, fragmenting the NHS. Services that used to co-operate now have to compete, making patient-centred care much harder to achieve.
- Marketisation (tendering services) means that money which should be spent on providing care is spent on bureaucracy and transaction and legal costs of contracting.
- a huge chunk of public money is siphoned off into private profits for the giant healthcare corporations who win NHS contracts
- The proposed EU-US Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) - which Cameron hopes to sign in 2014 - will make this marketisation irreversible.
- The Government is making huge real cuts in NHS budgets and plans to reduce spending on the NHS by 25% by 2021 (a reduction from 8% to 6% of GDP) – well below EU average.
- Waiting times for GP and hospital appointments are rising sharply; waiting lists for beds rose 14% in the year to December 2013.
- Complaints about quality of care are rising with Government claims of 'uncaring staff' masking major reductions in staffing levels.
- Many areas are reducing access to procedures that used to be available on the NHS.
- GP services, NHS hospitals, A&E Departments and community services are being cut back or closing; wards go dangerously understaffed and staff are working intolerably long shifts. The UK has amongst the lowest number of hospital beds in Europe, but faces calls for more 'care at home'.
COMPLAIN TO THE BBC / ITV / CHANNEL 4
BBC
http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/
- Phone: 03700 100 222*
03700 100 212* (textphone)
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