Polly Toynbee has written this morning:
For the first time the entire NHS has been put under competition law. The financial and clinical safety of NHS foundation trusts used to be the responsibility of the regulator, Monitor. Now its website proclaims: "The first of Monitor's three core functions is to promote competition." That means "enforcing competition law" and "removing anti-competitive behaviour". Few yet understand the nuclear nature of this. It compels every NHS activity to be privately tendered. If the NHS is the preferred provider, that can be challenged in the courts or referred to the Competition Commission. Red-in-tooth-and-claw commercial competition breaks all partnerships.
Europhobic Tory MPs take note: this makes NHS contracts subject to EU competition law. The NHS was exempt as an essentially state-run service, but GP consortiums will no longer be allowed to use a trusted local hospital without tendering first, for fear that a private company could take them to court. Some global companies will happily run loss-leader services for a while, driving NHS services to close, and no doubt raising their own prices later.
This may not be a slow and stealthy change, but an immediate and radical explosion.
She is write. This is the cancer at the core of the new NHS.
The fear of litigation means that commissioning consortia will have to put the private sector on their list of considered alternatives for all bids - however unsuitable they are and however unable to provide the service they might be.
This is the end of three things. The first is of any concept of this being a national institution. It will be a private service. Second, it is the end of the service: a service is an integrated supply with as few boundaries as possible so that the patient is the centre of attention. This will not be the case now. I hear already of doctors not talking to doctors and the breakdown of trust between GPs and hospitals and yet that is core to the whole ethos of our health service - and the reason why it is so much cheaper than health care elsewhere. Third, this is the end of the focus on health. Now the focus will be on profit.
This is the cancer at the core of the NHS.
And it will change all our lives, and very much for the worse.
You have reason to be worried.
And so should the ConDems be worried - this will be their nemesis.
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I’m so upset.
I want my GP, my doctors to treat me, not to navigate contract law.
I do not live in America. If I wanted to I would have stayed there. The reason I didn’t was their health system. I was lucky enough not to have to use it, but I had friends who did, and friends who worked in their private health system. Utterly shocking.
I do not live in Africa where I’ve seen children suffer the nightmare of malaria because their parents simply can not afford the protection of nets and they can not afford the money for malarial treatments.
This is yet another step towards a life of misery, of suffering for too many people in the UK. It simply has to stop, and reverse back to it’s natural place as our wonderful healthcare system.
All neoliberal parties should never again receive a single vote in any election in this country. Shame on them all and their inhumane, undemocratic, ideological WTO ways.
Polly Toynbee is absolutely right about the consequences of all this. There is no doubt that this is at the behest of the neoliberal agenda and will ultimately lead to the privatisation of the NHS. There was no electoral mandate and the LibDems should be ashamed that they are allowing this to happen. Lansley is extremely arrogant and is not prepared to even allow any pilots for this nonsense. Of course the PCTs etc are busy dealing with the restructuring consequences and we have not been informed about the full financial effects of severance payments etc. It would be good if government could focus on consolidation of those services which are working well instead of feeling compelled to alter everything. But then of course politicians would have little opportunity to make ‘a name for themselves’ and leave a ‘legacy’. Unfortunately we the public will suffer as a result but I expect millionaires can cushion themselves from it.
@Teresa Harding
I have yet to see any suggestion that anyone is interested in privatising the NHS. Regardless on whether there is merit in this or not, it would be electoral suicide.
Actually the idea is that competition in supply to the NHS will be beneficial. After all there is nothing more transparent than a free market.
@alastair
You don’t need to say it to do it
And not a single medic I’ve spoken to thinks competition will help
It will mean the patient will wait on the trolley and die whilst it is argued who will pay
Is that what you want?
And since when were large companies transparent? You may have noticed the total opacity of offshore and the extensive use made of them by multinational corporations. Hence our reason for requesting country-by-country reporting.
Your argument fails to stack at any level
Re: Competition – all academic, non-sponsored studies show that introducing competiton into healthcare reduces patients’ quality of care. Even American studies show this. The only studies showing any positive effects are those undertaken by groups with vested interests.
I work in the NHS and have alredy seen changes brought in to reduce cost in treatment, although reducing the quality. This done in order to prepare departments for competitive bidding. In the NHS we undertake treatment with long-term results in mind. In private health, share-holders do not wait years for their dividends.