Our NHS is being run for profit while those who can’t pay have operations cancelled
MPs fear that many hospitals are close to breaking point [Image: Frances Roberts/Alamy].
So now we have a two-tier National Health Service, with people receiving operations on the private side that they wouldn’t get on the publicly-funded side.
Doesn’t this prove that Conservatives simply do not understand, or accept, the premise of a national health service – that all services must be provided, equally, to everybody who needs them?
What happens when somebody dies because they couldn’t pay up?
The number of NHS patients in England who had urgent operations cancelled hit record numbers in November, soaring to almost double the level a year ago, according to government data.
Opposition parties seized on the figures from NHS England as fresh evidence that ministers have failed to address underlying problems, particularly the underfunding of social care.
The number of urgent operations cancelled in November climbed to 446, from 357 in October. In November last year there were 243 such operations cancelled.
NHS England confirmed that the November 2016 figure was the highest since such records began to be kept six years ago.
Source: Number of urgent operations cancelled in England hits record high | Society | The Guardian
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“Correct me if I’m wrong, but the Tories have ensured – with their legislation to allow 49 per cent of NHS services to be run privately – that, if you pay for your operations, you’ll still get them.”
Yes, that’s a little bit wrong: They are services that are charged for, by NHS trusts.
It’s that ***Trusts can make up to 49.99999 […]% (just under half by definition) of their INCOME by charging patients***.
At the same time as the government restricts their public funding, and they are forced to “manage their own finances” like businesses since Trusts were invented under Blair, and they can therefore be “in debt” like businesses, and they have “debt” piled on them among others by the forced use of PFI which is itself just another form of privatisation. (there’s more but this is part of the wholesale transformation from NHS to US system).
Then you also have the separate phenomenon of “NHS” services that are actually run by private companies hiding behind the logo, and who receive a budget from public funding, and provide whatever they provide free at point of need.
Combine both of those, and what do you have left? Just the logo no?
Nicholas.
Second part:
“Doesn’t this prove that Conservatives simply do not understand, or accept, the premise of a national health service – that all services must be provided, equally, to everybody who needs them?”
You have put your finger on the right button!!
It’s that they are GETTING RID OF the premise of an NHS that provides all the healthcare needed by all, to all: Universal, comprehensive healthcare, (regardless of economic status, ethnic origin, body mass, smoking status, etc.etc)
That is what we must know, that is what we must fight for, that is what we must save and recover, and establish for good.
Nicholas.
Right from its inception in the late 1940s Tories have always hated the idea of the NHS.
What happens when somebody dies because they couldn’t pay up? o be blunt they are buried or thrown in an oven, we have had nothing but anti poor pro rich governance from the time Thatcher took over, nu labour was just tory lite so we have had 36 years of the NHS slowly but surely getting more and more privatised. The tory mantra of the last 6 years “for hardworking people”, and BS programmes like benefit street have created a hatred of the most vulnerable in this country. I added up the begging for money adverts on tele and for every £50 asked for by charities for overseas aid we get £2 for those in need in the UK Apparently our children starving to death or freezing on the street are not as valuable. The current idea seems to be that as the LD hospitals being closed and care in the community not working, then the MI hospitals being closed and care in the community not working, they would now go for physical hospital and hope it is third time lucky for care in the community.
LD and MI hospitals?
Believe me: Better to have an employment, housing, education and health policy as we have had than the “let charities try and look after people the state has abandoned” (neoliberal) system that the rich countries have long forced onto the ‘Third World’ and that they’re now bringing in here in Europe.
More charity is not a good sign. We all -all of us humans all around the world, even if we all have fights to wage in different countries- deserve a state that provides the full public services that everyone contributes to as a society. Via taxation if nothing else.
The difference is that in many cases where those charities are asking for donations to help those overseas it is in countries that aren’t wealthy and don’t have a mature state infrastructure that should be able to step in and provide support to its people.
Whereas the UK is one of the richest countries in history and at least in theory has a government capable of providing essential aid to the most vulnerable. It just chooses to withhold it. Charities don’t seek as many contributions for people here at least in part because theoretically they shouldn’t need to. People’s basic needs should be *guaranteed* to be met, not subject to the whim of whether the better off voluntarily donate to charity.
Agreed.
I’d add that the reason many 3rd World countries who have tried don’t have this infrastructure, is that the IMF and World Bank policies of the last few decades are the same policies we are getting now here in Europe, and have done everything to prevent states from providing for their populations, thus benefitting multinational corporations that deal in essential services, which is precisely the same reason the NHS and the rest of the welfare state is being dismantled here.