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The latest privatisers’ idea for the NHS: charge patients £10 a month

So now we know the latest steps being proposed to make the NHS into a full-blown private health service, just like it was before 1948. The various steps to achieve this supreme goal of the private marketeers have been prepared right from the start with great care. First, Blair encouraged and then pressured NHS hospitals to become foundation trust hospitals, with more independence and financial self-reliance, the first nudge towards becoming self-standing suppliers within a competitive market. Cameron took this further by announcing that all health services would be open to tender by any qualified provider.

That began the massive process of privatising and outsourcing every chunk of the NHS that the marketeers, nearly always a very small cabal of the biggest healthcare multi-nationals, could get their hands on or rather teeth into. Meanwhile the Lansley plan for the wholesale privatisation of the NHS had been hatched in deepest secrecy between the Tory high command and the big private healthcare companies before the election, with not a word about it in the Tory 2010 manifesto because if it had been known it would have blown the Tories away. But all the time the mantra was repeated that the ‘NHS’ would remain free at the point of service. But now the truth has been let out of the bag that the Tories and their big corporate friends had in fact intended all along that it would become a fully paid-for service, only they didn’t dare say so before now.

Norman Warner, an ex-civil servant Tory Blairite camouflaged as a Labour health minister, has today let it be known in the Guardian that the NHS is “an outdated, cosseted and unaffordable healthcare system….which no longer meets the country’s needs….and is often poor value for money”. We now see why the Tories, led by Hunt, have been so keen to demean and vilify the NHS on every occasion they can over the last several months: cue the need to junk the old, failing NHS and to announce the dawn of a brand new burnished private healthcare system and – what a surprise – you’re going to have to pay for it if you want to get any medical attention. Oh yes, they’ve fixed the initial fee at the loss leader level of £10 a month, but don’t be taken in by that. Remember tuition fees: originally we were assured they’d be held at £3,000, but then as soon as the Tories got in, they tripled them to £9,000 to ‘market-clearing’ levels. If every adult in the country paid the £10 a month, this new tax would raise £5.4 billions. If that were tripled, it would offer serious money for the healthcare privateers.

It is incredible that Warner has the gall to claim the NHS is “unaffordable” without mentioning that the Tories have deliberately imposed a £20bn cut on the NHS over the current 5-year period to put it under intolerable strain and maybe breakdown in order to pave the way for a fully paid-for private service which has always been their secret aim. But then the Tories would never put profit at risk by telling the truth.

5 Comments

  1. Robert says:

    Well of course he’s not the only one, we have many people who think the NHS is now to big to expensive and stopping people like Warner getting a fist full of g bucks.

    Blair I expect is looking at making a few quid from this type of enterprise after all he started it all off.

    Blair mates and Blair backers will I suspect have the money to pay for insurance so these people will be looking at getting our NHS smaller cheaper and happier while stuffing bank notes in offshore accounts.

  2. Rod says:

    “Norman Warner, an ex-civil servant Tory Blairite camouflaged as a Labour health minister”

    There’s still plenty of Blairites in PLP disguised as Labour politicians.

    I wonder why Michael stays in the party that initiated the destruction of the NHS – New Labour’s plot was well-known by the early 2000s. By staying in the Party, Michael and others only contribute credibility to the busted flush that is today’s Labour Party.

    Want an update? Think of Falkirk and Miliband’s campaign to discredit trade unions.

  3. David Ellis says:

    I think the NHS is already privatised is it not. There is no part of it that is not now run or owned by private contractors or trusts. That is why the Tories ring-fenced the NHS budget, to attract the privatising locusts into the honey pot. They are sloughing off 20% of our NI Contributions from front line services to pay fat cat salaries and shareholder dividends. Now these privateers are increasingly expected to replace government funding with private charges so that eventually what is free at the point of use will be only the most fundamental, basic and third rate services.

  4. Robert says:

    I’m disabled I pay out money to see specialist all the time, your going to have to wait six months to see some people, my GP thought my heart was struggling because of the medication and the chronic pain I suffer, so he phoned the hospital told the receptionist, she spoke to the specialist office, and they said six weeks at the earliest. unless you can pay a fee, £150 I paid this saw him that afternoon in the hospital with all other NHS patients I arrived was given a cup of tea showed to a seat and went in first had thirty minutes with him, and was sent straight up to the ward for an operation the next day.

    The young doctor who came to see me laughed and say god your lucky you would have died if you did not come in straight away.

    Every time I have to see a specialist these days I have to pay or wait so £10 a month would be a benefits if I could get to see somebody early, to see my GP takes a month and if he is on holiday I could be two to three months .

    After labour’s mess with dentist I’ve still cannot find an NHS dentist.

    Vote labour no not anymore you had 44 years of my life mate I’ve given up with the socialist dream it’s a progress dream now.

  5. Mark Webster says:

    Robert, sorry to hear about what you’ve been through. If there was another party I’d vote for it. But in 2010 I voted Liberal in disgust at New Labour and look what I got. What’s the answer ? Switch off and leave the Tories to it ? I’m giving Labour another shot as at least Ed is 1mm to the left of Blair. After that if they go back to their Tory ways I’ll move to Scotland.

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