Letter: Does the NHS need to be reorganised?
Thursday 8th September 2011, 6:00AM BST.
Letter: Parliament is considering a bill to reorganise our National Health Service.
Proposals in the bill mean our NHS will be altered beyond recognition as private providers will want to make a profit. That can only be at the expense of patients and the many people who work in our health service.
Does anyone really believe our railways, our water, our gas and electricity services are better following privatisation? To take the NHS further down the privatisation road presents a threat to everyone – no-one knows when they might fall sick or have an accident and need the NHS. We will lose the services and, just as importantly, our peace of mind.
The last time a Conservative government reorganised our NHS, many people were left waiting years to see a specialist or to have an operation. The NHS was on its knees when a Labour government was elected on a pledge to cut waiting lists and provide better funding for health services. pledges which were met.
At the last election David Cameron promised that there would be no threat to the NHS from a Conservative government, and, real terms improvement funding – both empty pledges.
Parliament will vote on proposals which did not appear in the manifesto of any party and were not in the coalition agreement.
Beryl Mason
Wellington
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Well said Beryl, although it must be remembered that the Labour government made a start on the road to the privatisation of the NHS with the privately-run “Treatment Centres” – generally recognised as an unmitigated disaster.
We all know that the NHS has got its problems, but I fail to see how these can be remedied by moving it ever further from state control and by introducing the need for profit generation.
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Does the NHS need to be reorganised?
In some ways, yes – but only in such a way that recent scandals over patient care, especially including that of elderly/vulnerable patients, don’t happen.
I would also add regular retraining for GPs whose diagnostic skills have proved to be below par, and that would mean a very large number of them.
I’d like to see less emphasis on academic qualifications for all nurses and more emphasis on caring qualities, even go back to two categories of nurse.
But in the way this bill suggests? Absolutely, categorically not. If it was such a wonderful idea, why didn’t the Tories tell us of their plans until after the election rather than promising NO major reorganisation?
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I understand why Beryl want to emphasise the record of Labour on the NHS and they did indeed pour money in – I don’t agree that it was all good news however, as so much funding is now swallowed up in paying for PFI deals; much of the extra funding was misdirected into bureaucracy – and there was the farce of the private clinics paid to do routine operations even though many of them were never carried out and others had to be recitified later.
Better than current plans by miles, though. The Tories seem bewitched by the miserable failure of a health care system in the USA rather than looking to Europe where things are handled, on the whole, much better.
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Kath, I myself and from the USA and do NOT agree with your assessment of “the miserable failure of a health care system in the USA…” We need reform, but our system is not a miserable failure, just fortunately not totally in the hands of our federal government (yet).
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There’s a vast cultural difference here. I simply fail to understand the line peddled by much of the right in the USA that attempts to extend health insurance or to involve government in the system somehow equals Stalinism through the back door.
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Beryl Mason is a lovely person (I know, I have met her!)and is totally dedicated to the Labour party. But like all politicians, local and national, she conveniently forgets those legacies she would prefer to ignore. However, there are some who can still remember the legacy of her party colleague Phil Homer who resigned in 2005 after only two years as chairman of the Shropshire Hospitals Trust in which time he had managed to accumulate a £19 million debt, yet still be well paid in doing so! And this was done on Tony Blair’s watch when waiting lists admittedly did come down, but at what cost? Please Beryl, tell the full story before turning your guns on an easy target.
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