I don't always agree with Will Hutton. This morning I do. Writing in the Observer his article is entitled:
The NHS is loved and efficient, so why the obsession with reform?
Will and I obviously share something in common. Over the last six months he has seen more of chemotherapy suites than he would ever have wished to. Over the last year so did I. The cancers our family members have had to deal with are different and I now know that the prognosis for my family member is very good, but the stresses are probably not that dissimilar, and the admiration for the NHS and those who staff it are the same. I hope his family member's treatment is as successful as mine has been.
What this reinforces is what I have written this morning, which is that the state can be an extraordinarily efficient supplier of services. In the case of the NHS it has been. It has been a world beater. But I write, with care, in the past tense. As a minister has admitted today, as a result of this government's reforms it has already lost control of the NHS. In that case there is, as such, no NHS left. There is just an unaccountable use of public funds that cannot in any way be guaranteed to deliver the care that is needed in a consistent, reliable or acceptable way.
Anyone could find themselves stricken with leukaemia, even health secretaries and report writers. Their chance of a successful cure will depend on the rest of us resisting the "reforms" they so ardently advocate. We can own and we can pay for a great health system. It just takes the collective will.
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I also have a family member who had to deal with cancer. It was found early as a result of public screening and treated in a few weeks. Happily, successfully. She was very pleased with the way she was treated.
I think we know the answer to Will Hutton’s question. It is not to benefit the ordinary person but to provide an ‘investment opportunity’ whereby companies can use assets paid for by the taxpayer over generations.
Four years ago I was one of those stricken by leukeamia. It was not my only battle a colleague and I had also taken on the profit maximisers. He too became ill. Unlike me, he was an American, one of 50 million without health insurance. My survival and his death without treatment told me all I didn’t want to know about privatised healthcare.
http://www.p-ced.com/1/node/75
Good luck with your continued recovery
My commiserations for the loss of your colleague
I figure that still sticks in my mind is one quoted here:
“Deaths associated with lack of health insurance now exceed those caused by many common killers such as kidney disease. An increase in the number of uninsured and an eroding medical safety net for the disadvantaged likely explain the substantial increase in the number of deaths, as the uninsured are more likely to go without needed care. Another factor contributing to the widening gap in the risk of death between those who have insurance and those who do not is the improved quality of care for those who can get it.”
http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2009/09/new-study-finds-45000-deaths-annually-linked-to-lack-of-health-coverage/
Clearly, the market is doing a great job in reducing the population. Given that the Government’s austerity propaganda has ‘suckered’ the populace of this sceptered I’ll expect this humanitarian disaster to be visiting us soon. Only when it all gets bad-very,very bad -only then will there be an awakening. Until then the sleeping sickness will continue.
Sceptered I’ll crikey, my typos are getting worse! I should have said ‘septic Isle’ of course.
Unfortunately, Richard (and as I mentioned when you blogged on a similar topic last week), the situation is far bleaker than you acknowledge. As such we certainly don’t need another parliament’s worth of ‘this regime’ to do any more damage – the damage is done.
Why? Well, for the past year there’s been a headlong rush to so called marketisation (privatisation in most cases)- and the various groups and individuals who are responsible for implementing that process are well aware (whether they agree or not) that the “message from the top” is that the momentum must continue or increase through to the election. Once those contracts are in place then there’s nothing that can be done to overturn them until they’ve run their course. Effectively therefore, in every area of the NHS where a service has been contracted out there’s no longer an NHS service as we would have previously understood it.
Second, this will continue through to the election and beyond, because even if Labour win and Burnham keeps to his word and removes the competition elements from the H&SC Bill and reforms/abolishes Monitor, that will take several months to implement. Furthermore – and fundamentally – the Department for Health was captured by privatisers years ago (under New Labour, of course) and there would need to be a complete clear out of personnel to ensure the privatisation process is stopped. If there’s not then we’ll simply see what’s gone on for years continuing – which is privatisation by stealth.
Third, and related to the above, large parts of the NHS (or what were NHS services) are now dominated by people whose interests are best served by or through privatisation. I don’t mean patients, of course, I mean managers, lawyers, accountants, HR and so on. Plus the swathe of people who make up the staff of Monitor and all the other mechanisms and structures that have been put in place to promote and support the destruction of the NHS as a public service. As a footnote to that I should add that a colleague of mine who has long been involved in various NHS networks has been reporting for over a year a startling rise in the number of people within these networks who now have their fingers in the privatisation “pie” and have become strong advocates of the new system. In short, and fundamentally, the culture of what was the NHS – at a managerial level at the least – has probably been changed beyond the point at which reversal is possible without years of commitment and effort, and I seriously doubt Labour has the talent or resources to undertake that work.
So, ultimately, what will we be left with by mid 2015? A hotch potch, half way house of a mess, more US in style than what we used to call the NHS. And for that reason I’d say that the voices within the DfH and all their advisers, will have all the ammunition they need to “advise” any incoming government that the most effective way to sort of the mess is to continue to a full UK mirror of the US model. That’s always been the goal, and we are too close to that now for the zealots who have been behind this policy for years to give up.
Ivan
You are depressingly accurate, I suspect
Including as to Labour’s willpower on this issue
Look at its past track record when faced with the prospect of easy earnings for some who got a little power
Richard
My husband died from brain cancer over two years ago. But I do not blame the NHS and still want to try and save it. It was the best thing we had in this country for all of us. It should bring us together, but too many people do not seem aware of what we are going to lose, particularly if the TTIP goes through as it is.
I agree
And am sorry for your loss
In a private letter to FDR, John Maynard Keynes decribed Businessmen as domestic animals. The relevant paragraph (thank you Brad Delong) is set out below:-
“Businessmen have a different set of delusions from politicians, and need, therefore, different handling. They are, however, much milder than politicians, at the same time allured and terrified by the glare of publicity, easily persuaded to be ‘patriots’, perplexed, bemused, indeed terrified, yet only too anxious to take a cheerful view, vain perhaps but very unsure of themselves, pathetically responsive to a kind word. You could do anything you liked with them, if you would treat them (even the big ones), not as wolves or tigers, but as domestic animals by nature, even though they have been badly brought up and not trained as you would wish”
Has anything really changed? I would describe our current crop of businessmen as similiar in nature to Mogwais, when it comes to take real risks. The change is dramtic though when the NHS is being slowly roasted as a Boar on a spit, they transform into Gremlins!!
Allyson Pollock at TEDx back in April explained our non-NHS brilliantly, and with graphics. It’s well worth a watch, thoroughly explains what that moronic Torygirl MP called “exciting”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cz5dl9fhj7o
(I saw it via a CiF commenter last week)
Thanks for this
I have no posted it as a blog