[afro-nets] Privatisation will wreck UK's NHS

[Claudio Schuftan <claudio@hcmc.netnam.vn>]

Privatisation will wreck UK's NHS
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Privatisation will wreck NHS, say campaigners
By John Carvel
Guardian, Saturday September 24, 2005

Excerpts

A campaign to halt the government's drive to commercialise the
National Health System (NHS) is being launched today by the for-
mer Labour health secretary Frank Dobson with the support of
leading figures from the British medical establishment.

In a letter to the Guardian that is likely to form the focus of
dissent at the Labour conference in Brighton next week, they say
that reforms being introduced by the health secretary, Patricia
Hewitt, threaten to destroy the character of the NHS by forcing
hospitals and health professionals to compete with each other.
The public service union Unison intends to move a resolution
calling on the government to "suspend any further expansion of
the role of the private sector into the NHS". This motion could
become the main flashpoint of the conference.

The letter came as the BMA published a survey of NHS medical di-
rectors across England suggesting that a third of NHS trusts are
preparing to reduce services to avoid a debt crisis.

Opponents consider it madness to guarantee private providers
huge volumes of work, often at a higher cost than the NHS, while
NHS hospitals are deprived of essential funding.

The campaign's website is www.KeepOurNHSPublic.com

At the heart of the changes is the creation of a market that
welcomes profit-driven international corporations and will com-
pel hospitals and health professionals to compete with each
other. If these reforms continue the nature of the health system
will change radically:

- Income and profit will come before clinical considerations.
- Profitable services and patients will attract money at the
   expense of unprofitable ones.
- Forced market competition will break up the NHS as a collabo-
   rating network of shared resources and information.
- Even more of the new money allocated to health will be di-
   verted to shareholders and wasted on the huge administrative
   costs associated with a market.

There will be winners and losers, with some units and even en-
tire hospitals having to close. The end result will undermine
the choice that is most important to patients - access to com-
prehensive, trustworthy and local health services.