The Destroy the NHS / Health and Social Care Bill is due it’s third (final) reading in Parliament today and tomorrow. Unless abandoned in its entirety, it will then pass to the House of Lords.

It is widely accepted and recognised that the purpose of this bill is to kill the NHS as a quality public service free at the point of need.

Health professionals continue to warn of the dangers of the bill.

The Trades Union Congress (TUC) warns of the dangers of the bill.

Helston and West Cornwall MP Andrew George reaffirms that he will vote against the bill and warns of the dangers of the bill.

A few recent news articles about the UK’s Conservative and Liberal-Democrat coalition government – the ConDem’s – brutal attack on the National Health Service.

The NHS reforms still amount to privatisation | Society | guardian.co.uk

This bad bill will force hospitals to choose private over public care to make ends meet, write Kailash Chand and JS Bamrah

• Dr Kailash Chand has been a GP for 30 years and chairs Tameside and Glossop NHS

• Dr JS Bamrah is a consultant psychiatrist and honorary senior lecturer at North Manchester general hospital

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Cameron’s reassurance that the NHS is safe in Tory hands now seems hollow. To date, Andrew Lansley has failed to explain to the British public the need for this monumental change. Remember, a recent study in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine showed that the NHS is the most efficient service in the world, in lives saved per pound spent. How has David Cameron allowed this to happen?

The public should have no illusions: beneath the veneer of the listening exercise, the core substance that constitutes the bill remains contentious. The NHS reforms remain driven by pure market ideology, without a shred of evidence that they will benefit the English population. On the contrary, the evidence shows that if you create an American-style healthcare system the result will be denial of care and huge costs for the taxpayer. If the bill is passed, coming generations will not forgive us for taking the “National” out of the NHS.

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Trades Union Congress – NHS Bill is ‘toxic cocktail of competition, markets and cuts’

The Health and Social Care Bill, due to start its final Commons stages today (Tuesday), has been ‘barely improved’ by the government’s pause and Future Forum consultation, says the TUC in a briefing for MPs produced on behalf of all its member health unions.

The main concern of health staff that the Bill undermines the founding principles of the NHS has not been met, says the TUC. Instead the NHS will be made more complex and bureaucratic with new structures absorbing funds that will be taken from patient care at a time when services are already being cut.

NHS staff’s top concerns with the Bill are:

• The reforms are still based on extending competition and markets within the health service even though international evidence already shows the NHS is one of the most efficient health systems in the world.
• NHS hospitals will be allowed to maximise their income from private patients, which will mean NHS patients are pushed to the back of growing waiting lists.
• The government is still pushing ahead with the Any Qualified Provider concept which will hinder NHS provision, and open up swathes of the health service to the private sector.
• The Secretary of State for Health will no longer have a full duty to ensure the provision of NHS services, increasing the risk of postcode lotteries in the care available, and meaning a lack of accountability.
• The changes are being forced through at a time when the NHS is already being asked to find £20 billion of efficiency savings (4 per cent a year) and Monitor* has advised foundation trusts to find an extra 2.5 per cent a year. The cost of the re-organisation is estimated at £3 billion a year and is rising by £1 million a day.

MP urges colleagues to vote against health bill (From This is The West Country)

Helston and West Cornwall MP Andrew George has said he will vote against the government’s controversial Health Bill this week as concerns rise that it will see the privatisation of the NHS.

There has been widespread concern among doctors and campaigners that, as it stands, the bill will allow much of the £85bn NHS budget to flow into the pockets of private companies and their shareholders.

GP leaders and unions have also stepped up calls on MPs to reject the bill this week after e-mails obtained under the FoI act showed Department of Health officials have discussed plans for private firms to run between ten and 20 NHS hospitals in a deal worth up to £500m.

Speaking ahead of the debate, Mr George said; “The bill breaks the Coalition Agreement, is based upon a false claim that the NHS performs poorly in comparison with health systems across Europe, and represents the biggest upheaval of the NHS in its history at precisely the time it needs stability and certainty.

“The bill runs the high risk of producing a NHS which is driven more by private profit than by concern about patient care; risks undermining emergency services through the fragmentation of health systems; is a major missed opportunity to produce a health service that is more accountable to the patients and communities it serves; and fails to do what really needs to be done, i.e. streamline the pathways between health and social care.”

The Destroy the NHS / Health and Social Care Bill is due it’s third (final) reading in Parliament tomorrow and Wednesday. It will then pass to the House of Lords.

Spinwatch has revealed that the Department of Health has been negotiating the running of hospitals by foreign companies. The Guardian identified the German company Helios. This clearly discredits government assurances that there is no intention to privatise the NHS.

There are proposals to sell St Mary’s, Paddington teaching hospital to property developers.

The Royal College of Nursing, the union Unite, and the umbrella group for health service managers, the NHS Confederation, warn about the complex tangle of management and quangos proposed by the ‘reforms’.

I suggest that Liberal-Democat members seriously consider dumping their Tory leader Clegg. Clegg has supported privatisation of the NHS from the very outset, engaged in the sham of the listening exercise, not followed direction from the Summer conference and even now still supports the shambolic Destroy the NHS Bill. Liberal-Democrats should be the stronger coalition partner since their support is essential.

A few recent news articles about the UK’s Conservative and Liberal-Democrat coalition government – the ConDem’s – brutal attack on the National Health Service.

DoH email exchange stokes NHS reform fears – Channel 4 News

Fears that the Government’s health reforms will mean the privatisation of the NHS are reinforced by an email exchange in which health officials consider private firms running up to 20 hospitals.

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Concerns about the privatisation of the NHS were reinforced today when it emerged that emails between the Department of Health and an international consulting firm discussed the possibility of private companies taking on the running of up to 20 NHS hospitals.
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German company involved in talks to take over NHS hospitals | Society | The Guardian

Helios involved in discussions about ‘potential opportunities in London’ with officials from the health department

A German company has been in talks to take over NHS hospitals, the first tangible evidence that foreign multinationals will be able to run state-owned acute services, a market worth £8bn, the Guardian can reveal.

On the eve of the last Commons vote on the government’s bill before it heads to the Lords this week, freedom of information requests reveal a series of meetings focused on “potential opportunities in London” between officials from the Department of Health, the NHS, the management consultant McKinsey and one of the largest German private hospital chains, Helios.
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Top hospital to be closed as cash crisis engulfs NHS – Health News, Health & Families – The Independent

A leading teaching hospital faces closure as a result of the financial crisis gripping the NHS. Managers at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, which runs three major hospitals in London and two smaller units, is considering a proposal to shut St Mary’s, Paddington, and sell off the site to property developers.
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New NHS could be more complex and costly, warns nursing chief – Telegraph

Dr Peter Carter, general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, said the introduction of new levels of management and quangos could “tangle” the health service in “more red tape and bureaucracy”.

His concerns are echoed by the leading public sector trade union, Unite, and the umbrella group for health service managers, the NHS Confederation, which has raised concerns over “confusion and duplication” among newly created quangos.

Their comments come in another wave of opposition to the Government’s biggest upheaval in the 63-year history of England’s National Health Service, which aims to hand control of buying treatment to GPs while giving private companies and voluntary groups more opportunity to run services.

The leading doctors’ union, the British Medical Association, is still calling for the entire Bill to be withdrawn despite the concessions made earlier this year and it faces opposition from peers when it reaches the House of Lords as well as Labour MPs who fear it spells the backdoor privatisation of a key public service.
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27/11/13 Having received a takedown notice from the Independent newspaper for a different posting, I have reviewed this article which links to an article at the Independent’s website in order to attempt to ensure conformance with copyright laws.

I consider this posting to comply with copyright laws since
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dizzy