I guess it is predictable that the usual vested self interests in the NHS would use today, the day when Health Minister Andrew Lansley addresses the Conservative Party conference, to try and undermine him. It is equally predictable that the BBC would row in behind this politically directed criticism! I listened to one of these NHS uber alles types being interviewed on Today and his assertion that competition was “doesn’t work” was left unchallenged. It appears that the NHS, along with the BBC, is one of the unique models that magically provides the optimum service level to consumers without any need for vigorous competition or free markets. What a stroke of luck.
IRREPARABLE HARM?
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It’s possible that the NHS and the bbc are in it together, in that if the argument for privatisation and competition is won for one of them, then the status quo for the other cannot be maintained. So it’s the case of them hanging together,or they will certainly hang separately.
“Signatories include Sir Michael Marmot, one of the world’s leading experts on health inequalities…”
Might it not have been informative to also tell their readers this:
“On 6 November 2008, Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced that the Secretary of State for Health Alan Johnson had asked Sir Michael Marmot to chair a Review of Health Inequalities in England…”
Now, that doesn’t in itself make Mr Marmot wrong, but is surely relevant context to give.
The BBC should be asking the question why, despite being one of the most expensive health services in the world, the NHS is also one of the worst ( among developed countries ). This is the real scandal the BBC should be exposing.
Sarah Montague talked to reporter Adam Brimelow about this during the first hour of ‘Today’. “Are they serious people?” asked Sarah. “Yes they are”, replied Adam. They are “senior public health experts”, he said. One of the things he found “striking” about the letter was “the pedigree of the signatories”. They are “internationally reknowned figures”. He went on, “these are people who can’t be can’t simply be dismissed in a straightforward way”. Later he said they’re “hundreds of respected public health doctors”.
OK, we get the picture!
On a day when ‘Today’ was broadcasting from the Conservative Party conference, you would have thought they’d have invited a Conservative spokesmen to reply to this criticism. Instead they invited a signatory of the letter and a non-partisan reviewer of health policy for the government who kept saying he wasn’t a politician, only a doctor, and who failed to provide much of a counterweight to the government critic.
John Humphrys read out the criticism in his introduction and added his own editorial comment, saying “Serious stuff!” before beginning the joint interview. In fairness to Humph, he did give the signatory a slightly harder time than the government reviewer (even questioning his motives), but couldn’t stop himself from bringing his own left-wing assumptions into the equation at one point:
“Yeah, but what people are really worried about – and this is where this letter will strike a chord – is particularly when they hear Dr Edmonson-Jones talking about privatisation, effectively privatisation because we will have this sort of competition that we’ve never had before.”
Always the “false choice” – unlimited care for free (£100bn from taxpayer, be grateful to Labour) or no protection = “privatisation” (Evil Tories). No other major country has copied the UK model.
Directors of Public Health are almost universally left wing, goes with the territory. On the same salary as real Hospital Consultants but with none of the responsibility, they worry a lot about the poor and how unfair it is that the poor smoke eat and drink themselves to an earlier grave.
Far from being “highly respected”, most real doctors consider them a complete waste of space – a 9-5 office job favoured by left wing harpies, and the likes of “professor” Allyson Pollock spouting her hatred of the private sector http://www.allysonpollock.co.uk/
Competion is healthy
oh dear, i am going to get such flack for this. but never mind…
as my wife is a doctor in the NHS, i do have some insight into the workings of that organisation.
and i have to tell you you cannot treat human beings like widgets. human beings wont neatly fit into the economic rules of supply and demand.
so if you put treatments out to tender, some people will be easy and cheap to treat. and others chronic and expensive. and the general consensus amongst doctors in the NHS is that the private companies will come in and hoover up all the profitable cases leaving the difficult and expensive cases to the rump of the NHS.
now if you are fit and healthy and all you care about is money. that may seem a good idea. but its amazing how even the most prudent and fiscally ardent human being becomes scared when they are faced with a debilitating life threatening disease.
but if you cream off all the cash to private companies there simply wont be enough money to treat the bulk of the difficult cases. there is barely enough now.
you get diagnosed with say kidney cancer at 73. this will mean expensive surgery and then very expensive long term care. no private company is going to want to fund that. they want all the hip replacements and melanoma removals.
so the long and the short of it is that more rationing will go on. and more people will die. rich people will be able to buy themselves out the problem. the poor wont.
but bear in mind. that 73 year old with kidney cancer may have paid into the NHS all their life. why should they be told they have to die so a few private companies can cream off obscene profits?
is the NHS a mess? yes. is it over staffed (by managers) and does it waste money? yes. can it be improved? possibly. but it is such a huge organisation that to some degree whatever changes you make, you simply transfer the problems somewhere else in the organisation.
but the public have repeatedly shown that they want socialised health care. so in the end, you may just have to roll with the punches and accept the NHS is never going to be perfect. you are certainly not going to solve its problems by funelling all the money to a few rich business men who run the private clinics. we all saw how well that worked with the southern cross care homes.
and before you all rush to accuse my wife of having a ‘vested interest’. as a GP her salary would actually go UP as a result of Lansley’s plans. so its actually in her financial interest to see these reforms go through. but she is totally against them. that should tell you that not everyone in this world is motivated by sheer greed.
and as for the BBC. i loathe the BBC and would scrap it tomorrow. i hate its pernicious left wing bias. but in this case. it is only highlighting what the bulk of those that know and understand the NHS, think.
putting on my tin hat now!!!!!!!
It doesn’t have to be “a few rich men who run the private clinics”. There’s a much bigger world out there.
But the BBC’s coverage of NHS reform in general is biased against much more than just the privatization idea. When Cameron first announced the localization angle of putting GPs in control of money, the first couple of doctors (and an administrator) they spoke to were in favor of the idea. That’s not privatization at all, just a good step towards reforming the massive waste.
After the last of them had finished their statement, the female BBC reporter turned wide-eyed toward the camera with an “OMG what is his problem” expression on her face as she turned it back over to the studio. Magically, the BBC never found them again, and the rest of their coverage was spun in the direction of the position that doctors couldn’t possibly do this, it would make their jobs more difficult, you wouldn’t want them in charge of money, etc.
What does your GP wife think of that particular idea, and the BBC’s coverage of it?
“NHS..over staffed (by managers)”
Usual ill-nformed nonsense peddled by GPs, based on zero understanding of how anything is run.That is precisely why GP’s are incapable of “managing” the NHS’s budgets.
“Widgets” theory, more ill-informed nonsense. No-one thinks patients are just”widgets”. That’s the usual straw man job. There are thousands of different clinical “widgets”, described in very precise resource-standardised categories, developed by doctors (not GP’s)
Sorry but just working as a GP in the Health Service gives you no special insight into the NHS. There are 35,000 GPs. I have met many hundreds and mostly they haven’t a clue about economics of health care. Just how to claim the maximum allowances for themselves.
Typically woolly tosh that was not thought out.
Lansley had years to get ready, but he`s like Simon Caddell in Hi-di-Hi.
As far removed from authority and clear headed purpose as is Theresa May.
Because Labour were that awful, they really never needed to think anything out from first principles.
The NHS is a sitting duck for reform, but the cack-handed Tories, their useless laminates in the LibDems have conspired to mess it all up.
These lightweight empty suits make the wickedly incompetent Labour reforms of GP contracts, consultancies and dentist training look stupid but with an internal nuttiness that Marx would have understood. Junior doctors?…poor old Lansley has no idea, but gets a nice car and dressing up box!
How you can make Labour look anything other than malicious and evil ,is some achievement to these nomark pigmies!