Coalition wants 'National Wealth Service' not NHS

The story of 12-year-old Chloe McGarry in Harwich, East Anglia shows the harsh realities that many face when they seek health care.

Chloe spent five hours in agony with inflamed gums while her mother Heidi desperately searched for an NHS dentist after finding her usual clinic closed.

Heidi was told by NHS Direct to drive 32 miles to Ipswich or to be seen at another surgery in Manningtree, which is 13 miles from their home.

Such tales of woe will be shared by countless others over the coming months as the Coalition government’s health cuts begin to bite. So, as we join many others today in celebrating the 63rd anniversary of the National Health Service it’s clear that its future is at stake.

The health service unions and the Trades Union Congress are warning of “the potential dismantling of the NHS in the form of Andrew Lansley's Health and Social Care Bill”.

The TUC has uncovered well over 50,000 job cuts, the figures only prised out by using Freedom of Information laws. And, the undermining and destruction of the principle of free health care is also being exposed by the independent Bureau of Investigative Journalism. It shows that popular walk-in care centres around the country are already being closed or their hours and services being reduced

Then there is the scandal of the £2.5bn cost to the NHS over five years of the GP surgeries. An investigation has shown that the amount by which the taxpayer is subsidising some GP surgeries’ rentals has risen to £630m per year (an increase of more than 70%) since 2004.

At present doctors are paid rent by the NHS for a surgery, but also keep the profits from any sale of the surgery. At least half of the board members of some GP consortia who commission health care have links with the private company Assura Medical, which is part of Richard Branson’s Virgin Group. (At present Primary Care Trusts spend around 80% of NHS funds, but in future the GP consortia will be responsible for 40%.)

The essence of the Coalition’s changes to the health service are described by the TUC as leading to an “unaccountable super-quango at the heart of NHS reforms”.

Writer Richard Blogger says: “The free market model that [Secretary of State for Health] Lansley had planned could more accurately be described as the government liberated from the NHS rather than the NHS liberated from the government. Lansley did not want (and still does not want) to run the NHS – he is the first Secretary of State for Health whose primary objective is to legislate away his job … The Secretary of State has been liberated from his duties.”

The proposed National Commissioning Board has aptly been renamed “National Wealth Service”. The GP consortia who will run it could benefit personally from the private companies working in the NHS.

Blogger notes, the thrust of the Coalition strategy for the NHS, in line with years of New Labour rule, “is stripping a huge amount of power from Parliament and handing it to an unaccountable quango . . .The Bill will specifically make it illegal for the Secretary of State – representing the elected government – from changing NHS policy.”

The NHS will truly lose any democratic scrutiny or control as a result of these changes. The TUC’s milk and water call for people to write to and lobby the House of Lords “to stop or alter” the Health and Social Care Bill disguises the real issues about the NHS and other services under attack. Democracy is being wound down and the global crisis of capitalism is driving massive cuts and changes disguised as “reforms”.

Corinna Lotz

A World to Win secretary

Sick plan for the NHS

So Gordon Brown has come up with a novel plan to cut health spending – let the sick treat themselves and also decline to help those who are deemed not to have looked after themselves properly. Welcome to the 60th anniversary of the National Heath Service, New Labour style.

After pouring endless amounts of money into the pockets of management consultants, senior managers, the pharmaceutical corporations, private clinics and contractors, the NHS is in a worse state than ever. MRSA and other infection rates remain high, increasing the chances of coming out of hospital in a worse state that when patients go in. Seven years after the government announced that mixed wards would be abolished, 25% still share a ward or bay with members of the opposite sex. Cancer survival rates in Britain are among the lowest in Europe and a postcode lottery means you need luck on your side to be near the right sort of health care.

As usual, the government’s new plans for self-care are presented as an “opportunity” for patients. Brown hinted at the new policy in a message to NHS staff yesterday, promising a service that "gives all of those with long-term or chronic conditions the choice of greater support, information and advice, allowing them to play a far more active role in managing their own condition". But the real story behind the notion of “personalised service” is that the Department of Health is struggling to meet Treasury targets to cut spending by £8.2 billion over the next three years. The department's "Value for Money Delivery Agreement" – details of which were leaked to the Daily Telegraph - sets out how the NHS could meet the “efficiency savings” target.

In a bid to reduce costs, NHS patients could be expected to administer their own medication and new guidelines could mean people with chronic conditions:
• monitoring their own heart activity, blood pressure and lung capacity using equipment installed in the home
• reporting medical information to doctors remotely by telephone or computer
• administering their own drugs and other treatment to "manage pain" and assessing the significance of changes in their condition
• using relaxation techniques to relieve stress and avoid "panic" visits to emergency wards.

The plans have gone down like a lead balloon among patient groups. The Arthritis Research Campaign said it risked providing health managers with "an excuse for neglecting elderly patients", with a spokeswoman adding: “"Some GPs don't take arthritis seriously enough, and the result of this could be to give them another excuse to tell arthritis patients just to go away and take their tablets." The Patients' Association said it was concerned that “financial pressures will take precedence over clinical needs" while Peter Weissberg, the medical director of the British Heart Foundation, said: "People affected by heart disease need specialist care. Whilst we support changes that empower people to look after their own health, we would be very concerned if they led to any reduction in the availability or quality of expert care for those who need it."

The best way to mark the 60th anniversary of the one of the great achievements by working people is to take action to defend and extend the principles of the NHS as a health service free at every level and totally in the public sector. That would involve, for example, a campaign for social ownership of the drugs corporations and the elimination of the vast bureaucracy that dominates the sector. None of this is possible while the capitalist New Labour government is in power and would certainly be unachievable under the rule of its ugly sister, the Tories. We should take Brown at his word when it comes to self-treatment and act to get rid of his government, working towards a fairer, more democratic society when people not profit come first.


Paul Feldman
AWTW communications editor