The government is indeed putting extra money into the NHS – but it is being used to fund decline...
Profit, greed and change in the NHS
WORKERS, MAY 2007 ISSUE
Change is constant as they say, and just like the seasons and the rotation of the planets, change is vital to human life. Change within the National Health Service is a good thing. It is not new. It has been going on since its formation in 1948. Improved hospitals, better trained doctors, better trained nurses, modern medicines and continuous research all for the one aim of improving the quality of life for the British people.
The adage "from the cradle to the grave" meant something in the past and everyone knew its meaning. Whole families grew up and felt confident and safe in the knowledge the NHS was there if they fell ill or were injured. The NHS would look after you as a baby, a youth, a grown up, and eventually as an old age pensioner. You'd be seen by health service GPs, transported by health service ambulances, treated by health service nurses, moved around health service hospitals by health service porters, served by health service domestic staff, fed by health service chefs and sent home to be visited by health service district nurses. The NHS was a collective, state-run healthcare system that people contributed towards through their wages and those contributions were used for, and stayed within the service to preserve and improve it for future generations.
What happened? The present government has poured more money into the NHS than any previous administration ever. That is a fact. A fact, of course, they never miss a chance to remind us.
But facts don't always tell the whole story. It is not the money going into the NHS that has brought it into crisis, but where that money has ended up. By rights the money that has gone into the NHS should make it the best in the world. But it hasn't. Hospitals are closing down and staff are being made redundant. (Redundant! When the last known illness, in the last known person, in the last known part of the world is eradicated, that is the time when the terms health worker and redundancy should sit side by side.)
Jobs are being axed, services are being cut or "outsourced", and private health companies are taking a bigger and bigger share of resources. All this in the name of change, progress and modernisation. The view in government is that collectivism is old fashioned and 'choice' is the new way forward in health. Public is bad, private is good. Profit has been allowed to enter through the front window as professionalism, dedication and loyalty has been flung out the back.
Privatisation
The scourge of privatisation is creeping to every area within the NHS as the government continues down the American road of health provision. Health ministers persist with the sleight of hand deception of promising treatment "free at the point of delivery" while selling off the services, the buildings and the staff to the highest bidder.
This "free at the point of delivery" mantra is at best a false argument and at worst a disgraceful deception. As there are no false arguments in capitalism it must be a deception. Because you don't pay every time you go in or out of your front door doesn't mean you live in your house for free!
Private companies from around the world now run and own large sections of our health service and are creaming off massive profits. They are treating workers as surplus to requirements as they outsource jobs and skills: medical typing outsourced to India, Pakistan and South Africa, for instance. This makes no sense and is putting patients' lives at risk. £25 billion has gone straight through the NHS and into their hands along with accountants, management consultants, lawyers, finance companies and shareholders – money that could and should have been used for patient care and for proper change, proper progress and real modernisation.
People are not fooled by this deception or by the notion of 'choice' in healthcare. Choice works both ways. The NHS Together day of action on 3 March, supported by all of the NHS trade unions, showed exactly what choice people want. Thousands came out on the streets all over the UK to campaign against the cuts, closures and privatisation of their NHS. Their choice was local public services, local hospitals, local clinics, and local healthcare run by public workers. They want the public ethos back and the private greed out.
Thousands attended rallies, including friends and families of health workers, friends and families of patients, patients and ex-patients, patient groups and all interested bodies who have a stake in the future of our health service and our country.
That is real choice. Most people in our country perceive the NHS as local: our hospital, our clinic, our ambulance station, our GP practice, etc. We all have a stake in it; it should belong to us all.
How many times have we seen Members of Parliament scurry back to their constituency to get on the front page of the local paper 'defending' the local hospital after voting through the health budget and all its implications? Even Ministers who the day before have voted, supported or been privy to a decision in Cabinet on reforming the NHS, soon make haste to stand on a picket line against the closure of a hospital local to them! Not just sleight of hand in theory but sleight of hand in practice! Whose NHS did they think they were voting on? A virtual NHS?
There is nothing wrong with the NHS being reformed and modernised. British health workers have the intelligence, dedication and skill to do both. But health, people and love of life are the building blocks for a new cradle to the grave health service – not wealth, profit and greed.