Unfit To Govern

As Health Secretary Andrew Lansley announces his plans for the NHS as “one of the biggest shake-ups in its history” under the guise of cost reduction and patient care is it simply privatisation by the back door?

 Some of the relevant parts taken from speech in the House of Commons are;

•  we will allow any willing provider to deliver services to NHS patients
• we will phase out the top-down management hierarchy, including both Strategic Health Authorities and Primary Care Trusts (by 2014).
• all NHS trusts will become Foundation Trusts – freed from the constraints of top-down control, with power increasingly placed in the hands of their employees
• …by giving local authorities the power to agree local strategies to bring the NHS, public health and social care together. Local authorities will also be given control over local health improvement budgets.
• We will give General Practices, working together in local consortia, the responsibility for commissioning NHS services, so that they are able to respond to the wishes and needs of their patients…….. With commissioning support, GPs collectively will lead a bottom-up design of services.

The full transcript of the speech can be found at http://bit.ly/bvsUq8

So what does this mean in practice;

• Foundation Trusts can raise capitol from both the public and private sector.  It is understood that the cap on the amount of revenue which can be obtained from the private sector is being removed.    So this means that an ‘NHS’ hospital can devote more of its resources to private healthcare especially if the budgets are squeezed to ‘save costs’. As the physical resources are finite this must reduce the overall resources available to NHS patients. (More info on what a Foundation Trust is can be found at http://bit.ly/bRiTPY )
• The idea of putting  GPs in charge of a large proportion of the existing NHS Trust budget is somewhat bizarre. It is stretching the meaning  ‘General’ to the extreme.  As if GPs haven’t got enough on their plate.  In practice they will sub-contract to private companies.  It’s been suggested that there is a hidden agenda – to allow private companies to buy out GP Practices.

So, is this not actuality part of the overall hidden agenda to privatise the NHS thus ensuring our taxes help to bolster the profits of private companies?