A few recent news articles concerning the UK’s Conservative and Liberal-Democrat coalition government – the ConDem’s – brutal attack on the National Health Service.
Commenting on the NHS Confederation’s survey findings that 53% of NHS leaders felt NHS availability of care and waiting times will worsen, Debbie Kleiner-Gaines of the Association of Medical Insurance Intermediaries says, “This will be a very worrying concern impacting a lot of people who may now find it necessary to consider having access to the private sector and possibly insurance to fund it. At least then they can be confident speedy treatment will be available if they need it.”
“I try to avoid saying things that are capable of misinterpretation,” Andrew Lansley told HSJ last week.
Readers will judge for themselves whether the health secretary has been successful in achieving that goal during his first year in office.
Mr Lansley was talking about hospital reconfiguration – but he made much the same point when pressed during his NHS Confederation conference speech on why he had not spoken up more for NHS managers.
As soon as the question was asked, the health secretary adopted his now familiar tone of barely restrained frustration: hadn’t he always attacked “bureaucracy” and not “managers”? Hadn’t he always praised the importance of good “management”?
He was not responsible “for what the Daily Mail writes”.
This is disingenuous rubbish. Mr Lansley – in common with many politicians – is rarely unhappy when talk of “too much bureaucracy” is translated into “too many managers”. Praise for those in management roles is saved for speeches aimed at NHS leadership which are unlikely to get wider coverage elsewhere.
I had this argument with Bliar re: show some respect Bliar. It’s time that Cameron, Clegg and Lansley showed some respect to the conventions and basically the way it is in UK.
The UK national health service is respected and treasured by UK subjects. I would like it improved without interference by private interests. I totally oppose your Health and Social Care Bill which is clearly intended to destroy the NHS.
Prof. Appleby of the King’s Fund think tank says that spending more on the NHS is possible. link
Tory think tank the Institute of Economic Affairs proposes abolishing the NHS and even claims that there is widespread public support for it.
Conservative election poster 2010
A few recent news articles concerning the UK’s Conservative and Liberal-Democrat coalition government – the ConDem’s – brutal attack on the National Health Service.
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In an article in the Daily Telegraph last month, Health Secretary Andrew Lansley suggested on current trends £230bn would need to be spent on health by 2030 compared to the £103bn which is spent now.
He said that figure was one that the country “simply could not afford”.
But Prof Appleby, the chief economist at the think-tank, questioned that.
He said taking into account the expected growth in the economy a budget of £230bn would require the health budget to rise at about 4% a year above inflation – only a little more than it has got on average since 1948.
Such rises would bring total health spending, including investment in private health care, to about 12.4% of gross domestic product (GDP) – roughly in line with what high spending countries such as the Netherlands are already spending.
Prof Appleby added: “It is a question of priorities really. It could be afforded, but would just require more money to be spent on health. But we are not talking about ridiculous amounts.”
Shrinking the size of the state by abolishing the NHS and limiting overseas aid to humanitarian disasters could save more than £200bn a year and pave the way for growth-generating tax cuts, says a leading free-market thinktank.
The Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), responsible for many of the policies implemented by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, said the plans to tackle Britain’s budget deficit during the current parliament are not radical enough.
Publishing a report urging a rethink of education, health and welfare, the thinktank said there was public support for plans that would see government spending reduced to less than 30% of national output. Spending peaked at about 50% of gross domestic product during the recession and the chancellor, George Osborne’s proposals would see public expenditure stabilise at 40% of national income.
“The recent comprehensive spending review was anything but comprehensive,” the report, Sharper Axes, Lower Taxes, said. “Certain departments were omitted from the review altogether. Most other areas of spending were ‘salami-sliced’. No coherent, bottom-up analysis of government functions has taken place.”
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[comments are worth reading]
Andrew Lansley’s controversial NHS bill is premised on “choice and competition” and the creation of a market in healthcare. These three stories below from the US show choice and competition at work on the ground. They also explain why 45,000 Americans die every year because they can’t afford – and in many cases can’t even obtain – health insurance.
But first, let me introduce myself – as I did in June 2009 when I testified before a congressional committee that was investigating the many abuses of the private insurance industry in the US. “My name is Wendell Potter, and for 20 years I worked as a senior executive at health insurance companies, and I saw how they confuse their customers and dump the sick – all so they can satisfy their Wall Street investors.”
I described how insurance companies, in their constant quest to meet profit expectations, routinely cancel the coverage of sick policyholders and strive to spend less and less of premium dollars on medical care so they can divert more and more of those dollars to executive salaries and dividends for investors.
A few months before my testimony I had left my job as head of communications for one of the largest US insurers, Cigna. I could no longer in good conscience continue to serve as a spokesman for a profit-obsessed industry that I had come to realise was largely responsible for the American healthcare system’s descent into dysfunctionality.
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A few recent news articles concerning the UK’s Conservative and Liberal-Democrat coalition government – the ConDem’s – brutal attack on the National Health Service.
We may be entering the summer silly season for news, with the NHS barely visible in the papers and forgotten by broadcasters.
But don’t be fooled – brace yourself for an autumn of massive cuts as NHS bosses draw up plans to slash each area on an unprecedented scale.
More than half of all senior NHS managers are worried that patients’ access to care will be cut back as a result of a tightening financial situation, which 42 per cent of them described as the “worst they had ever experienced,” according to a recent survey by the NHS Confederation.
Thirty-nine per cent of NHS chairs and chief executives expected financial pressures to increase over the next three years, while 75 per cent felt cuts in spending on social services by local councils would also impact on health services.
Analysts are now warning of a new ice age in NHS funding, with budgets growing little, if at all, even after 2015.
These findings came less than a month after David Cameron, seeking to smooth the way to push through Andrew Lansley’s microscopically modified Health and Social Care Bill, went on record with five pledges on the NHS, one of which was that “we will not cut spending on the NHS – we will increase it.”
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Our National Health Service celebrated its 63rd birthday last week. I think it’s been one of the great success stories of the past century – an institution dedicated to treating the sick, relieving suffering, and saving lives, regardless of ability to pay.
Apart from the fact that the NHS is there for everyone when they need it, I have reason to be grateful to this fantastic service. It saved my life when I was diagnosed with advanced stomach cancer some years ago. And I want the NHS to be there for generations to come.
To mark the anniversary, I delivered a giant birthday card to the Department of Health, along with other trade union leaders. And later we lobbied Parliament to ask them to join us in wishing the NHS Many Happy Returns. This was not just a celebration of 63 years, but an impassioned plea to our politicians to make sure that the world’s largest and best publicly funded health service is not dismantled.
For that is what I fear will happen if the Frankenstein Health and Social Care Bill is passed into law. The LibDem arm of the coalition Government has made a great deal of noise, belatedly, about the changes it has wrung from its Tory partners to sweeten what will be a bitter pill. But, those changes are just not enough to prevent our NHS being dismantled or to save it from those who want to make a profit out of the sick.
Labour has accused the government of increasing rather than cutting NHS bureaucracy.
Speaking in the Commons this afternoon shadow health secretary John Healey said: “In spite of the spin the truth is the prime minister’s personal promise to give NHS a real rise in funding is being broken.
“It’s not just how much it’s how well the money is spent, and today Mr Speaker is one year to the day the health secretary launched plans to ‘liberate’ the NHS.”
Healey said that rather than phasing out top down hierarchy and reducing the cost of NHS related quangos, Lansley had overseen the creation of a lot more bodies.
He questioned why Lansley was setting up the National Commissioning Board which was set to employ 3,500 people.
And he asked why the government was setting up 500 public bodies in the NHS when 161 “do the job now”.
“Why is govt wasting precious NHS funding on the biggest reorganisation in its history it should be spent on patient care,” he said.
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