In January I watched a webinar from Every Doctor about the NHS. In this I was reminded that the NHS has been reorganised so that it doesn’t get funding for very operation it does or patient it treats – instead it has a Managed Care System based on Capitation Fees: a budget per head of population it serves. It can keep any money left over from this budget. So there is an incentive to not treat people, and private providers see this money and they want it. This is the USA model where the Health Insurance Companies refuse treatment for certain patients and for certain conditions in order to save money and make money and profits. USA management consultants introduced it here to the NHS – invited to the UK and into the NHS by the previous head of the NHS who came here from a USA Health Insurance Company.
The Group We Own It have launched a campaign where they are asking voters to contact their Parliamentary Candidates to sign a Pledge for The NHS.
By taking the Pledge for the NHS candidates will be promising that if elected they will demand that, irrespective of the winning party, the new government must:
- Reinstate the Health Secretary’s legal duty to provide healthcare to all.
- Invest £40 billion more per year in the NHS, especially in staffing, capacity and modernisation, to catch up with equivalent European countries;
- Bring services outsourced to for-profit companies back into the NHS as their contracts end;
Links to the pledge and how to contact your local candidates is here. https://weownit.org.uk/blog/pledge-nhs-key-facts-candidates-and-activists-0
When we interview candidates as our CLP’s candidate should we ask those being interviewed to commit to this pledge?
I read that Labour (Wes Streeting) has said that if Labour form the next Government they will bring all scanning services in house to the NHS and provide the funding to provide the number of scanners required to do this.
Related to this The Times reported that NHS spending on private-sector scans tripled in five years, despite the number of scans falling (NHS spent £1.1bn on outsourced radiology while number carried out fell by 200,000). Parliamentary answers showed that the cost per scan went from £31 to £100.
I read that in the NHS there are Surgeons and Consultants etc who are willing to take on additional work (and they have to capacity to do so), but the Government has refused the additional money to do this, but it is providing this money to provide these services by the same doctors in the private sector.
There are doctors who wish to become GP s but the Government is refusing to train them so they can do so.
The Government is paying Pharmacists to undertake NHS consultations – but these consultations cost 3 times as much as it costs to have these consultations done by GPs (That is the Government is paying the pharmacists 3 times as much as it pays GPs)
On a different subject. if renewable energy is to be supplied and be cheap it has to be in Public Ownership – Report by Common Wealth https://www.common-wealth.org/publications/the-case-for-ambitious-public-ownership-of-renewable-generation
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Steven Boxall
Political Education Officer