I got onto Any Answers? (again) after last Saturday’s Any Questions? on Radio 4. What got my goat this time were the comments of a panel member, Bob Crow, leader of the RMT union, who was described as a “communist/left wing socialist”.
In response to the fairly predictable question comparing the NHS and the US healthcare systems he managed to get in a diatribe against the Conservatives. David Cameron and his team, he insisted, hated the NHS and were going to sell it off the private sector. We could not trust them with the future of the NHS!
Excuse me but which planet has this guy been living on for the last 12 years? New Labour has taken the NHS further down the privatisation road than anyone could have imagined. They have paid between £5bn and £7bn to private companies, much of this very questionable value for money and with some very dubious clinical outcomes. Tony Blair seemed to fall in love with the private sector, as did a number of health secretaries who landed very lucrative personal contracts as advisers to private companies six months after giving up the job. So the idea of the NHS as “safe in our hands” is questionable to say the least.
Having said this, I doubt that an incoming Conservative government would change much.
The NHS is heading for a major financial meltdown for all the well-rehearsed reasons and changes in the way it is funded and managed. We have already accepted the principle that many of us will need to fund our own dental care from now on and I suspect that other aspects of healthcare will soon follow.
Perhaps the current debate with our US cousins over the differing types of provision will stimulate a healthy debate. As doctors we must be part of the solution, not part of the problem.
- Tom Goodfellow’s comments on Any Answers? are aired after 8 mins 45 secs of the programme if you want to listen.
Tags: Privatisation, US healthcare
AGree with you - NEw Labour has thrown away millions of tax payers’ pounds opening up the health care market to private companies, with very dubious results, as I’ve seen first hand in my own region. THere is no justification for doing this other than on ideological grounds, as the resulting care has not been any better, and in many cases worse than the NHS. Unfortunately the the Conservatives would undoubtedly take us much further down this route, as they are really showing their true colours as the party of the rich who can afford top health insurance.