As Channel 4 reports this morning:
The House of Commons public accounts committee has accused the Department of Health of "inventing rules and processes on the hoof" to deal with hospital trusts in financial difficulty
Ministers were unable to provide the committee with reassurance that financial problems will not impact on the quality of or access to care provided by troubled trusts, at a time when the service is struggling to find £20bn of cuts.
The report claims that while NHS bodies reported a surplus of £2.1bn in 2011-12, the healthy financial picture masks a "significant minority" of bodies which are in difficulties.
Ten NHS trusts, 21 foundation trusts and three primary care trusts have reported a combined deficit of £356m, £115m of which was accounted for by two London trusts.
I think this is an occasion when cutting the crap is essential, if you'll excuse my use of the vernacular. The NHS is a branch of government: so too are all HNS organisations such as PCTs and Foundation trusts. As such these bodies cannot go bankrupt as such; that would be to say the government itself is bankrupt and it is not and nor is there any prospect of it being so. The only thing that is happening is that the Department of Health is deciding, for its own reasons, not to fund demand for NHS services in some areas, and to punish the populations of those areas for accounting and funding issues arising, largely as a result of the application of completely artificial rules that have no bearing on real on the ground issues.
To put it another way: there is no funding crisis in the NHS; there is just a problem of the Department of Health's creation to suit its own political agenda. And that's something very different indeed. Channel 4 confirm this. As they note:
Commenting on the findings, Health Minister Lord Howe has revealed that the NHS will not "endlessly" support trusts with "historic financial problems".
That, I think, is called reckless disregard for the obligations of government by pretending they are the creation of someone else, when they're not.
And that is the NHS funding crisis for you in a nutshell.
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Absolutely right – all NHS funding is a political decision, not related in any way to lack of ‘money’ or ‘debt’. Why, oh why, can’t we have a political party anywhere that understands macro-economics like Bill Mitchell? http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=21494
“all NHS funding is a political decision”
I would call it an “ideological” decision. One of many a mantra of the right wing is…The strong survive…The weak perish.
Brian, Totally agree with you on Bill Mitchell
….Richard, just noticed another commenter has recommended your book to Bill (see page referenced by Brian)
Is the £20 billion of savings (over the five years of this Parliament?) part of the deficit reduction?
I thought Cameron was going to safeguard NHS spending. If it were ‘efficiency savings’ (usually that term is an oxymoron) to expand other parts of the NHS e.g. care homes for the elderly, or better mental health provision, there might be a case. Or even to try to tackle the problem of health costs rising more quickly than inflation.
It is hard to avoid the conclusion that setting a budget too low and then ‘balancing the books’ by selling off hospitals to the private sector is what they intended all along.
Ian, the 20 billion is pthe ‘Nicholson challenge’, instigated during last govt. It was supposedly to get rid of the layers of wastful management. It didn’t. They got rid of the wrong management. They hacked away at the lower management comprised of ex-clinicians – the sort that actually understand health care.
Kings Fund, however, estimate the cuts to NHS to equal, eventually, closer to 45 billion due to reforms and upheaval. But they’ll always find the money to throw at the outsourced services and private takeovers
Privatisation of the NHS (and many other things).
“When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men, they create for themselves in the course of time, a legal system that authorises it, and a moral code that glorifies it.”
Political economist Frederic Bastiat, The Law (1850).
This is all part of the plan to privatise the NHS. The Tories dare not make a full frontal assault, because most of the electorate would vote them out of office. However, they can apply slow corrosion, so that bit by bit the NHS disappears without the electorate recognising what is being done. I’ve doubt the Republicans have used similar tactics in the US, which the Tories have borrowed.
I’ve mentioned in a previous comment that Thomas Frank highlights the destruction of government in his book the “Wrecking Crew”.
Picking up on Brian’s link to Bill Mitchell’s excellent blog, the “Left of Centre” or “original Liberals” as the US would refer to them need to get their act together internationally, so they can speak with one clear voice on the economic arguments against the current neo-liberal/con dogma.
I know there are thirty years of lost ground to make up , but at the moment it really is a case of amateurs facing professionals.
I found an interesting item on a blog called ‘Granny Good Food’. (Sorry I cant insert address. Not familiar enough with process).
The conclusion was that the 1% were indulging in their own form of Anarchy. I tend to agree. Asset stripping your own(?) country is madness.
“Asset stripping your own(?) country is madness.”
To you and I, to the 1% its an extremely profitable project!.
Richard, the starbucks thread is now closed to comments, so could you post this as a belated addition ?. Well, I thought it was funny as well as truthful…
https://fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/230955_10151072157736417_1414148560_n.jpg
But if you change your mindset it all makes sense.
After all, they see it as 1% versus 99%.
And they have all the money they need, if not all they want.
It must be galling to be a millionaire/billionaire/trillionaire and notice hundredaires perfectly happy, so galling that they envy anyone possessing anything.
The specific instance of Hinchingbrooke illustrates your point quite clearly, so far as I can tell
http://thosebigwords.forumcommunity.net/?t=47582789&p=339665101
There is a good article about this on the Green Benches website, about giving money to Hinchingbrooke, but not to other hospitals that are going bust.
There is an epetition to ask for an inquiry into govt. ministers links with private healthcare companies. Everybody on websites like this one knows the problem, but the general public do not. The only way many of them will find out the iniquity of people like Branson, and the number of businesses involved in healthcare that donate to the Tory Party will be if it gets discussed in parliament.
Funny how the private company running Hinchingbrooke got bailed-out to the tune of £4 million…I thought we were not bailing-out failed companies any more.
Tweet Jez Hunt and ask him:
http://eoin-clarke.blogspot.co.uk/
Funny how that bail out is not all over the mainstream media: they were very gung-ho when the hospital was privatised and the positive spin was inescapable. Hurrah for a free and fearless press….