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".

Tories spending more on the NHS? Pull the other one!   
 
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What a surprise. The law of the alpha-primate: You scratch my back, and I'll scratch yours.

Andy Burnham is not entirely correct to say, "Nobody gave Cameron permission to sell the NHS to his friends." It was a man called Clegg who showed a green light to the process.

Hopefully the voters will remember that next year.

" It was a man called Clegg who showed a green light to the process."

That's hardly fair, ow. I know for a fact that there were detailed and lengthy discussions , during which Clegg extracted all sorts of assurances from Cameron, as per the evidence below :


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" Give me an important -sounding title and a chauffeur and I'll sign anything , David..."

Last Thursday, Cameron invited private health companies to bid for another £12 billion slice of the NHS.

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Separated at birth, eh? (then one was placed in a stasis pod of course)

Not incorrect, bobby, but our entire capitalist reward system is based upon the notion of financial gain in exchange for work done. What are the alternatives?

Below are some extracts from an article by the comedian Rufus Hound, in which he describes the damage being done to the NHS by the Tories, quotes Nye Bevan, but never once mentions the Labour Party. He points out that Jeremy Hunt has employed Stuart Rose to advise him on “improving” the NHS, when Rose works for private equity firm Bridgepoint which part owns Care UK and stands to make billions from its campaign to run hospitals.
 
Hound is actually standing in the EU elections in May as a candidate for the NHA Party. How ironic that he should choose a single-issue fringe party in his attempt to save the NHS, instead of backing the only party which can be in a position to protect Bevan's cherished institution from further Tory demolition.
 
Here are the extracts:-
 
I'm fighting to be Euro MP so I can save NHS - healthcare isn't best served by market forces
 
Before the last election, Cameron promised that there would be no more “top down reorganisations of the NHS”. But the moment he was in No.10 he sneaked in changes so massive the head of the NHS said they could be “seen from outer space”. So now hospitals are closing, local services are cut and private companies are getting lucrative contracts. They are selling off the NHS to their rich mates at an alarming rate.

Since April 2013, private healthcare firms with Tory links have been awarded NHS contracts worth nearly £1.5 billion, with more still to come. Loads of NHS services such as GP surgeries, ambulances and even entire hospitals are being run by private companies like Circle, Serco and G4S (yes, them of Olympic cock-up fame), but you wouldn’t even know as they hide behind the NHS logo.

I’m not saying that the NHS is perfect. That every single one of the 1.35 million it employs are angels. That every one of the 10 million operations, 21 million A&E attendances, 15 million hospital admissions or 340 million GP consultations end in raging success. We’re not robots. We can’t get it right all the time.

All the time we are encouraged to focus on so-called scandals, health tourism, and benefits cheats – the smokescreen created by the ultra-rich to keep us fighting amongst ourselves. The coalition is undermining the NHS, underfunding it and demonising it. It is deliberately creating a set of problems that – coincidentally – the companies that have given them millions of pounds will profit from. But it’s not theirs to sell. It’s ours.
 
For the whole article:-
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How they affect the way people think:

JOIN THE SUNDAY TIMES CAMPAIGN TO BEAT CANCER

Prominent on a page listing unfortunate failures in NHS treatment over a period of years. (There is no known cure for Cancer.) Who's fault is that? The chief executive of Cancer Research UK is quoted as saying that GPs must end culture of delay.

The Tories' attacks on the Welsh NHS have been exposed as baseless
 
Extracts from an article by Owen Smith:-
 
When Cameron first became PM, he came to Wales and pledged "a new respect" agenda, promising collaboration and partnership between the devolved Welsh government and his own. He has returned to Wales and spectacularly broken that promise. In a vitriolic speech that demeans the office of PM, Cameron described Offa's Dyke as "a border between life and death". Sadly, this sordid intervention by Cameron is a new low in a long campaign the Tories have been orchestrating to smear the NHS in Wales.

What is most galling about this grubby strategy is that it is based on a lie. On the day this speech was made, the Nuffield Trust published a report which made clear that "no one country is emerging as a consistent front-runner on health system performance". It also points to “significant improvements in the 4 UK health systems over the past 2 decades", showing the Tory claims of a health service in meltdown are groundless. The Tories’ fox has not only been shot, but stuffed and mounted as well.

A recent poll showed just 14% of Welsh people trust the Tories with the NHS; too many of us remember when they were last in charge in Wales. This smear campaign is a smokescreen to distract from Cameron’s handling of the NHS in England, where he has caused an A&E crisis and wasted £3bn on a pointless reorganisation. If the Tories want to fight the next election on the health service, be our guests.
 
For the whole article:-
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IVAN This attack on the Welsh NHS will definitely come back and bite Davy boy on the butt, what I can not understand why when the likes of the Chunt comes out ands says they have increased the NHS budget, what is stopping the doctors and nurses from telling the general public the real truth??

Weariness? Sisyphus would have had difficulty in persisting with arguments against this duplicitous government.

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First they came for foreign patients in the NHS. But I was not a foreign patient. Then they came for foreign doctors:-
 
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It may only be a question of time before Grant Shapps comes up with a slogan like, "The NHS - too good for the Poor".

Tories are starting to tell us that we can't afford a free-at-the-point-of-use NHS. Yes we bloody can!   
 
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7 reasons why we urgently need to defend our NHS from vicious Tory attacks
 
by Abi Wilkinson
 
1. The pre-2012 NHS wasn’t actually unaffordable.

2. Corporations have a legal obligation to prioritise money over people.

3. Several Tories personally benefited financially from the changes.

4. The Conservative Party received donations from private health providers.

5. Private NHS contractors can now reject 'less profitable' patients.

6. GPs can make money by denying treatments to patients.

7. The creation of the NHS is one of our country's greatest achievements. 
 
For a detailed explanation of each of those reasons:-
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The question is whether an apathetic electorate will extend the Tory rule beyond 2015 - in which case the privatisation program will leave no opportunity unexplored. Can anybody visualise a modern Peasant's Revolt resulting?

Just to show how far down the slippery slope we've gone in just four years.....
 
GPs to vote on charging patients for appointments
 
Under the plan, patients could be charged a flat fee of up to £25. The proposed fee is seen as an incentive for patients to turn up to appointments and a way of helping to fund cash-strapped doctors' surgeries.
 
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Another glorious opportunity for Miliband to create a clear distinction in the minds of the public - as if one should be needed - between his own party and the Tory Menace.

And surely Clegg will have his say on such a scheme, too...?

Ivan wrote:Just to show how far down the slippery slope we've gone in just four years.....
 
GPs to vote on charging patients for appointments
 
Under the plan, patients could be charged a flat fee of up to £25. The proposed fee is seen as an incentive for patients to turn up to appointments and a way of helping to fund cash-strapped doctors' surgeries.
 
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The identical wording appears in The Sunday Times. It's the steady drip of misinformation being fed into the public's ear, designed to make us think the system isn't worth keeping.

Anybody know why surgeries are "cash-strapped"? It may be because the Coalition has diverted National Insurance Contributions elsewhere. Just guessing.

oftenwrong wrote:-
Anybody know why surgeries are "cash-strapped"?

Cameron has claimed for the last four years that the NHS budget had been ring-fenced. Yes, the Tories allocate the money, but then Osborne claws some of it back later. In 2012, he took back £1.4 billion:-
 
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The money was put to a good use – helping to fund a tax cut for millionaires, though the Tories also tried to tell us that cutting the top rate of income tax would bring in more revenue, so why did it need funding?  
 
 
In 2013, Osborne went even further, and operations were rationed so that he could claw back £2.2 billion:-
 
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Nobody who values the NHS should ever consider voting for the Tories; the bastards do everything they possibly can to undermine it.

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Rule of thumb on Tory promises is that whatever they say, will prove to have been the opposite of what they do.

We may not need reminding that it was Jeremy Hunt, former Minister-for-Murdoch, who allegedly introduced the now convicted Andy Coulson to David Cameron.

At my G.P.s surgery, unless you telephone and make your appointment prior to 9.30am, you have to wait until the next day.
Or you can make an appointment at the next one available, which is often in 2 weeks in the future.
So you will be in hospital or the morgue.

Can anybody be in doubt that the Tories are succeeding in their efforts to distance the Health Service from the responsibilities of Government? The size of the NHS "pot" is making the private sector dribble with excitement. People are beginning to comment that they would pay £10 for an appointment to see a Doctor! Whilst the amount collected by HMRC in National Insurance Contributions is 21.5% of all taxes received.

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At the private surgery oftenwrong, it is £25 per appointment.
Which more people are using and claiming back from their insurance.
Getting more like America each week, are we not?

For some strange reason at my own GP's Surgery ( 4 miles west of me) an appointment is usually obtainable either on the day or within 2 days. My neighbours' GP's Surgery( 4 miles east of them) is often unable to offer appointments within about 5 days.

I have no complaints about my experience to date of the NHS, but I feel sure it won't be long before things start to change...

My surgery is pretty good, too, but then I very rarely need to see the doctor, so I can't really speak for people with severe and chronic health problems.
The practice I'm with seems to invest a lot in preventative measures - regular appointments with the nurse to get blood pressure etc checked, which I suppose leaves the GP's a bit freer to see patients with new and emerging or more serious problems.

Seems a good system ---

You check your blood pressure yourself on a machine (before going in to see the GP) at my practice, but it has definitely become more difficult to get an appointment in recent months.

I also understand that GPs have been told to "lower patients' expectations" of what they can get on the NHS.

That may explain the less friendly manner you seem to get when you do actually see one, I do not bother now unless it is more serious than normal.

Goodness, it seems I am lucky indeed - hope things don't get worse

I know what you mean bobby, and agree wholeheartedly.

'The Sun': preparing its readership for NHS privatisation

"Why are they running this three-day series on the ‘crisis’ in the NHS now? Murdoch’s mouthpiece is talking down the NHS to prepare it for privatisation, much as British Rail was driven down by the right before its sell-off, or how the coalition claimed Royal Mail needed significant ‘new investment’ despite operating on a £400m profit. Only a cynic would suggest the Tory-linked paper would be doing the Conservative’s chosen bidding…"

Full details here:-
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Hand hospitals over to their staff, says Francis Maude
Cabinet office minister believes NHS services should increasingly be run as mutuals and taken out of public hands

More NHS hospitals and youth services should be taken out of public hands and owned by the people who run them as mutuals, Francis Maude, the cabinet office minister, has said.

The senior Conservative MP told the Guardian that he was "more and more convinced" this was "the way of the future" for a greater proportion of public services – suggesting the only exceptions from possible spin-offs should be front-line police and the armed forces.

The Tory minister said he had a "missionary fervour" about the idea

However, he acknowledged: "It is, if one wants to be nitpicky, technically privatisation. In the health service they all tend to be social enterprises, but they do leave the public sector and they talk about it in that way. All of the health care mutuals will talk about 'when we were in the NHS' … even though they are providing NHS services."

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Privatisation here we come?

Judge for yourself ....

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That'll be why Branson mostly lives abroad now