Do you agree that the NHS should be privatised? - the Big Urban75 Poll

[Brainaddict]

So the Health Reform Bill is not called privatisation but that doesn't mean it isn't privatisation. Under the bill the NHS is to be fragmented, turned into competing elements that will either be private healthcare providers themselves or will commission care from private healthcare providers. There will be no NHS organisation as such, just the name the NHS, a national insurance scheme, and a regulator to oversee the competition. The unprofitable bits will still be public of course, but a lot of their money will be siphoned off to the profit-making companies. Even these public bits will become 'independent' in some sense if the bill goes through, and/or will outsource a lot of their administration to private companies. Some of the public bits will likely be force-privatised if they 'underperform'. They will be judged on their performance at a time when they are being forced to accept cuts of up to 30% - cuts that the Tories promised they wouldn't make.

In a way it's all business as usual for a Conservative government but even Margaret Thatcher didn't dare to try this. So are you in favour?

Here's more info on the proposals: http://abetternhs.wordpress.com/straightforward-guide-to-the-nhs-proposals/

And here's some info and a leaflet to download: http://abetternhs.wordpress.com/nhs-leaflet-to-download-and-distribute/

This is the main (and sadly rather underwhelming) campaigning organisation to save the NHS: http://www.keepournhspublic.com/index.php
https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=40921988278&ref=ts

This is an unashamedly campaigning poll, so if you vote no, please do distribute information about this, explain to people what is happening, print off leaflets to give out and so on. The mainstream media aren't exactly exposing the government's propaganda about this, so that means it's just us

 

[Brainaddict]

I should also have added the 38 degrees campaign page for the NHS: http://38degrees.org.uk/pages/save_our_nhs_action_centre

 

[London_Calling]

If the measure is still percentage of GDP (as used by all the international statistical bodies), then there is absolutely nothing wrong with the NHS by world standards - it's all Etonian guff:

Rich countries spend between 9-10% of GDP on health care. The US is the outlier on the high end at 16%

Austria 10.1%
Belgium 10.2%
Denmark 9.8%
Finland 8.2%
France 11.%
Germany 10.4%
Greece 9.6%
Iceland 9.3%
Ireland 7.6%
Italy 8.7%
Luxembourg 7.3%
Netherlands 9.8%
Norway 8.9%
Portugal 9.9%
Spain 8.5%
Sweden 9.1%
Switzerland 10.8%
UK 8.4%
Czech Republic 6.80%
Hungary 7.4%
Poland 6.4%
Slovak Republic 7.7%
Turkey 5.7%

Canada 10.10%
Mexico 5.90%
US 16.00%

Australia 8.7%
Japan 8.1%
Korea 6.8%
New Zealand 9.2%
Average 8.07%

http://csis.org/blog/oecd-figures-health-care-gdp

 

[Brainaddict]

I refer you to the extensive studies the Tories have done with regard to the exact problems of the NHS and how best to solve them...oh, wait, no, they haven't done that at all. This is not, it seems, a program of improvement at all...

 

[quimcunx]

Why doesn't this appear in new posts?

Because there were no new posts since you last looked on the thread.

 

[Brainaddict]

Because there were no new posts since you last looked on the thread.

Yep, worked that out now thanks - I can't believe I've used the forum all these years and didn't know it worked like that

 

[quimcunx]

Yep, worked that out now thanks - I can't believe I've used the forum all these years and didn't know it worked like that

Don't be too hard on yourself. It's only worked like that since the last vbulletin upgrade.



Anyway I'm going to guess near 100% for the 2nd option on your poll.

 

[magneze]

After a few weeks of "listening", Cameron is "standing firm" apparently. Shit listening.

 

[Garek]

No, because I am not a cunt

 

[Brainaddict]

After a few weeks of "listening", Cameron is "standing firm" apparently. Shit listening.

Anyone who has ever been involved in a 'consultation' of any sort knew exactly what to expect of this one. In fact Cameron made it clear from the beginning. He said, and I'm more or less quoting: "Everyone's agreed on the principles of these reforms but we've realised we need to work on the details". The first part of this sentence was a lie. He said this to a journalist but apparently journalists don't see it as their role to expose government lies any more. So anyway, he made it clear that at most they would tweak the proposals a bit and wouldn't change anything significant (like the privatisation of the NHS).

 

[magneze]

There's a petition on 38degrees:

http://www.38degrees.org.uk/page/s/Protect_our_NHS_Petition

 

[magneze]

What's the key phrase that is being removed as part of this bill? Someone referred to it on another thread (ymu I think?). Something about the health ministers responsibility. Summed it up quite well.

 

[rikwakefield]

Healthcare should be about the patient not profit. There is a conflict when you bring profit into the equation, as demonstrated by our American cousins; their system is fucked.

 

[peterkro]

If the measure is still percentage of GDP (as used by all the international statistical bodies), then there is absolutely nothing wrong with the NHS by world standards - it's all Etonian guff:

If anything the U.K. can afford to spend more on the NHS and still be in line with comparable countries.Of course that may involve spending less on war toys.

 

[magneze]

I found the bit I was looking for (different source tho):

Clause 1 of the Bill starts the process by changing the duty of the SoS. Since 1946 that duty has been to provide a comprehensive national service that is free at the point of use. This duty made the NHS truly national. The Bill removes this duty and replaces it with merely a duty to secure the provision through other bodies. This is the first and crucial step in dismantling our NHS, even if it only involves changing a few words.

http://www.sochealth.co.uk/news/Darkside.html

Fucked up.

 

[Brainaddict]

Hadn't seen that magneze. It's sometimes difficult to understand why changes like this aren't headline news. This article is mostly about Labour's privatisation program and it illustrates how deep the rot goes in terms of the corruption that has led to this attempt to dismantle the NHS.

http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/colin-leys/plot-against-nhs

One of the ideas it puts forward is essentially that rather than having competing elites at the moment we have a sort of conglomerate elite that has learned very well how to get on with each other in their own interests:

But one question can't be entirely omitted from even this brief account: how could the NHS be abolished as a public service without a debate and without the public knowing? The answer is really the story of what has become of democracy in the neoliberal age, condensed into a single case. Spin, of course, has played a big part – secrecy, misrepresentation, manipulation of statistics, lies and the suppression of criticism. But even more important has been a radical change in the nature of government: in effect, the state itself has been privatised.

First, in terms of personnel, the boundary between the Department of Health and the health industry has become so permeable as to be almost non-existent. By 2006 only one career higher civil servant was left in the Department’s senior management team. The rest came chiefly from backgrounds in NHS management or the private sector. In addition, senior positions in the department were filled with personnel recruited directly from the private sector, while former department personnel (including two Secretaries of State) moved out to firms in the private sector. The revolving door has revolved faster in the Department of Health than in any other part of government except perhaps the Department of Defence. Conflict of interest has become so routine as to be almost unremarked. The idea of a boundary between the public and private sectors, which civil servants and ministers police in the public interest, has gone out of fashion.

What I take him to be saying is that although all the little people might squeak against these changes, there are very few people left in high places to fight the battle there, and so no one to get the stories to the journalists who barely leave their offices and or to put the opposing view in the 'public arenas' that most people have no access to. And its not that I want to rely on those people at all, but journalists/media orgs are crap and most of them only seem to listen to 'important' people, hence the very, um, relaxed state of the debate in the media.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

It is quite an interesting example of the ideological bunker that mainstream political discourse and "debate" is in at the moment. It's been explicitly stated that the aim is to move the NHS from being a provider of healthcare to a commissioner of it on a market basis, and there's no challenge to that concept at all - in most of the news, challenges to it are portrayed as simply being from public service employees afraid of losing their jobs.

 

[weltweit]

tbh, what I want it good quality healthcare, free at the point of use.

The best? it would be nice if it was the best in the world, but I don't know how one might measure that, equally I would prefer that it did not take all of my disposable income.

So high quality healthcare at a good value cost.

 

[Brainaddict]

tbh, what I want it good quality healthcare, free at the point of use.

The best? it would be nice if it was the best in the world, but I don't know how one might measure that, equally I would prefer that it did not take all of my disposable income.

So high quality healthcare at a good value cost.

You've got it. I know you can always point to this or that problem with the NHS. But studies comparing it to other healthcare systems have yet to reveal some magical land where all is well in the world of healthcare. One of the things certain people are fond of saying is that throwing money at the NHS is like throwing it into a black hole. This isn't true. Standards declined when less money was spent on it and went up when more money was spent on it. Pretty much as you would expect really.

As for these changes, they are about neither quality nor value. They are about who ends up with the NHS budget in their pocket. It's all very well being neutral on how your healthcare is delivered, but these changes aren't being made for your benefit at all.

http://abetternhs.wordpress.com/2011/03/29/the-nhs-excellence-and-efficiency/

 

[Brainaddict]

The link in post 19 also points out that

we need to be aware that forcing one of the cheapest universal healthcare services in the world to make the deepest and most sustained cuts of any healthcare system in the world cannot occur without catastrophic effects.

'Catastrophic effects' in healthcare is going to mean people dying.

 

[kained&able]

what kind of prick would vote yes?

dave

 

[ViolentPanda]

Healthcare should be about the patient not profit. There is a conflict when you bring profit into the equation, as demonstrated by our American cousins; their system is fucked.

Yup.

We often get thrown in our faces (usually by right-wingers) the fact that health spending per capita is higher in the US, but of course it is. Healthcare is massively more expensive, with the HMOs rooking their captive customers for everything from the medical procedures they have, to the water they sip and the bog roll they use while in hospital.

 

[ericjarvis]

I always refer back to one basic problem with a neo-liberal approach to the NHS. You cannot have a market unless you can create a consensus value for the products offered in that market. You can't do that with health. It generally involves something that is of near infinite value to the patient whilst being of almost no value to many involved in the same market. Market economics can't be applied to health until there is a subjective measure for treatment outcomes that is widely accepted.

So there is currently only one reason to privatise most aspects of the NHS... to allow somebody to make a large profit in exchange for their donations to political parties. So it will happen like as not.

 

[nino_savatte]

what kind of prick would vote yes?

dave

A neoliberal weirdo or a Randroid.

 

[discokermit]

what kind of prick would vote yes?

dave

ExtraRefined

 

[magneze]

Is this the most one sided poll ever?

 

[girasol]

Well, just like tuition fees, no one wants this to go ahead, apart from the tories. And we all know what happened to tuition fees

Also, does the US really spend 16% of GDP on health? I'm confused... Isnt' their public health system crap compared to ours?

maybe this explains it... Still confused though

Health insurance benefits are an attractive way for employers to increase the salary of employees as they are nontaxable. As a result, 65% of the non-elderly population and over 90% of the privately insured non-elderly population receives health insurance at the workplace.[67] Additionally, most economists agree that this tax shelter increases individual demand for health insurance, leading some to claim that it is largely responsible for the rise in health care spending.[67]

from that wikipedia

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Well, just like tuition fees, no one wants this to go ahead, apart from the tories. And we all know what happened to tuition fees

Also, does the US really spend 16% on health? I'm confused... Isnt' their public health system crap compared to ours?

If you're well insured, US healthcare is great. But their system of insurance is hugely wasteful and expensive.

 

[Badgers]

Is this the most one sided poll ever?

Nope, that bacon versus tofu poll is never gonna be toppled now

 

[xenon]

How does something become better value for money when you have to take a profit from the investment. Running a bath doesn't become more efficient if you drill a hole in the side.