Is the NHS really safe in Tory hands?

First topic message reminder :

Here is a news item from North Yorkshire which never made it onto the national headlines

A York-based practice has written to its patients offering them a range of minor treatments privately, claiming they are not funded by the local NHS.

Doctors' leaders said this could be the start of a worrying trend due to the squeeze on finances and NHS overhaul.

The letter, seen by the BBC, said local health chiefs had stopped funding a range of services, but added they could still have them done privately at a number of clinics, including one owned by the practice.

These included removing skin tags from £56.30 to treating benign tumours for £243.20.

Dr Richard Vautrey, of the British Medical Association, added: "The dire finances of many trusts means that many more NHS treatments are likely to become unavailable in the future".

by oftenwrong Today at 11:19 am



With the passage of the NHS Reform Bill through Parliament, one positive thing at least emerges.

Everything that goes wrong now can be blamed on the correct people responsible.

Oh. Come on. You know that anything that goes wrong will be down to mismanagement on the 'shop' floor. Not the bosses. They're never wrong.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.](professionalflorist.co.uk)

" Hmm, let me see - Baby Kissing - I seem to recall that's £5000 a peck..."

.... but I'll leave you to provide supper!

GPs preparing to take charge of £60bn of NHS funds have been found to have shareholdings in private healthcare firms, prompting alarm about family doctors profiting from direct conflicts of interest.

Fresh research shows that in 22 of the new clinical commissioning groups (CCGs), at least half and sometimes all of the GPs that dominate their boards have a personal financial interest in a private or other non-NHS provider. Guardian report extract.

This is absolutely shameful. There is a duty IMO for the media as a whole to expose this with headlines. No chance of that with a Tory dominated government. Unlike when Brown was PM, all and sundry was exposed and most of it lies and distortion of the truth.

Remember back in the 1980's, when the thatch thought up care in the community whereby many of the large Psychiatric hospitals were closed as it was seen that it would be better of the patients to live in the community?

Many did not end up in the community they were just transferred to private nursing homes many of which were owned by the very same psychitrists when had looked after them in hospital........

Is there going to be any difference this time?

Why all the cynicism? Surely the Caring Tories have nothing but the Public's interest in mind.

"Care in the Community" resulted in a number of horrible murders of innocent people by nutters who were released with a quick prayer and some medicine. But, Hey! You can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs.

But, Hey! You can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs.

OH yes yer can!!

\/


\/




\/



A potato omelette!

Does Jamie Oliver know that?

Meanwhile, in the Psychiatric Unit...

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.](poictures.metro.co.uk)

" When did you develop this condition whereby you became a compulsive liar...?"

" It started when I decided I wanted to be Prime Minister..."

The privatisation of the NHS is now underway.

No doubt a Tory will pop up in a while and, as usual, distort the facts by saying that privatisation started under Labour. Well yes, under Labour 2% of the beds in an NHS hospital could be private, a figure that the Tories have now increased to 49%. Labour bought the services of the private sector to shorten waiting lists by, for example, providing scans. It’s all very different now. The Tories aren’t using the private sector to support the NHS, they’re using it to replace it, as these extracts from an article by Max Pemberton demonstrate:-

“On March 27 the NHS Reform Bill received Royal Assent and became law. With the ink barely dry on Her Majesty’s signature, the carving up of the NHS has begun. Virgin Care has won a £500 million contract to provide community services across Surrey and began running these services, as well as the county’s prison healthcare, on April 1. Branson’s company becomes one of the first of many vultures to start picking over the rich, tender flesh of the NHS.

What the Virgin Care takeover in Surrey really exposes are the two fundamental lies that have been peddled by the government over the past year. The first is the flat denial that the Bill represented any sort of privatisation of the NHS, despite it being obvious to anyone who read it that this is precisely what it was. Even the doctors and nurses who work in Surrey’s hospitals and healthcare centres taken over by Virgin Care are no longer employed by the NHS and instead have had to become corporate lackeys. They had no choice: if they didn’t want to work for the company when it took over services from the NHS, their only option was to resign.

The second thing this exposes is the lunacy of the concept of choice within a nationalised healthcare system. What real choice did the people of Surrey have in who provided their community health services? The answer: none. The choice was made by unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats. Increasingly, the details of these decisions and the contracts that are drawn up are deemed commercially sensitive, so we are not privy to what is happening to our NHS and our money."

For the full article:-
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]