Thoughts on politics and life from a liberal perspective

Sunday 2 September 2012

An appeal for the NHS

Now that the dust has settled a little bit on the NHS reforms I have a request.

I tried to pay close attention to the detail of what the changes mean as the bill was going through parliament. Lord knows we had enough coverage at the time (although there was often much more heat than light I fear). As far as I can tell the changes are fairly modest and essentially involve more devolution of power to local GP practices and some extension of private providers running NHS services (which was also done by previous administrations). Everything that was free at the point of use before will still be free at the point of use and again as far as I can tell the NHS budget has been protected (albeit there will be some efficiency savings with the money ploughed back into the NHS budget).

So, can someone please tell me, with links to evidence, how the NHS is being "abolished" or "destroyed". I have seen many people claim this, often Labour activists but I have never seen proof of it, or even a convincing prima facie case.

Just in case anyone here thinks I am being provocative, I am not. I am genuinely asking. I am a member of one of the parties in government in this country and if I really thought that my government had enacted a bill that would end the NHS and free at the point of use healthcare, I would leave the party and vigorously campaign against it.

So I am appealing for someone to prove to me that these claims about the NHS being destroyed are true.

Anyone?

3 comments:

Stu said...

You shall have a long wait, I fear.

Jerry Taylor said...

Would it be so bad to have a system like the world's best in France which is not free at the point of use? Since it is accepted as the best and much better than ours what would be wrong about making ours as good? It is universal, none of the US horrors in France and none of the NHS horrors either.

NHS Worker said...

NHS workers don't know what's happening, as managers are not giving them any information.

Speaking as someone who works in a hospital which has a major reorganisation planned for the future (A&E going, etc) I can tell you that there is a lot of uncertainty about the place. We are crippingly short of staff because of all this, and the workforce is tired with low morale.