November blog
Breaking!!!
Follow @BSmytheee on Twitter!
Margaret Greenwood
Absolutely brilliant performance at the "Future of the NHS debate"-
in front of a roomful of Tory bigots determined to end it
https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/be3db75c-0834-42bd-a474-a3c55c8b1152?in=14:30:15
The future of the NHS mini debate:Brilliant Margaret Greenwood
Result was - a tremendous win for NHS supporters against a deceitful, defeated,withered government and its hopeful-of-promotion supporters...
This Tory government will totally ignore public opinion, continue to underfund, dismantle, privatise to the profiteers!
When any Tory drivels out the "record spending", they include the money wasted on Covid spend to their chums (Di do Harding, Mone et al) through the VIP lane, and ignore that the % is always below past normal spend increases in real terms.
Where could the money come from?
Google and Amazon to pay the correct tax
Ban overseas tax havens
Recover all unpaid taxes
Recover VIP lane payments to chums
Recover T & T to Di do Harding
Recover "Eat out to spread the virus"
Recover all fraudulent payouts
Stop spending money like water
Stop privatisation
Stop bribes, gifts from privateers, profiteers
Stop purchaser/provider
Stop % to selves and chums from any privatisation, outsourcing deals (Any forensic
accountants available...?).
A Health and SC tax directly proportional to income: Stop tax allowances to the richest, bankers...
The Tory government is using underqualified cheap labour to substitute for real qualified doctors (who attend a 5 year university medical school course),
GPs undergo elevan years hard slog training, and Junior doctors (seven years exams costing thousands...)
to dilute, subordinate and undermine real doctors-very, very dangerous!!! Real doctors have the added workload and responsibility of training and supervising-THEY get struck off-not the Physician Associaters (LEARNERS).
Physician associates, anaesthetic associates, neurology associates particularly should have a big "L" on their back.
Using associates, pretending to be real doctors, is uninsurable, unethical and dangerous to patients...
ask "are you a real qualified med school doctor?"
Who provides medical indemnity???
The General Medical Council says "we will register them-with an identical reference number format to real doctors"
but will not regulate them...
A real deriliction of their duty to protect the public from FALSE DOCTORS.
The Medical Protection societies will not indemnify them.
Dentistry
NHS dentists were told never to denigrate the quality
of NHS treatment:
you, in theory, should not say “you can have a crappy NHS crown, or I
can do a very high quality private crown…” but many did, without
censure!
We tried to provide quality treatment- inc crowns, chromes, bridges (as Blair
refused to take these out of the NHS)
We made crowns for £39, chromes for £43, bridges £130, with peanuts for profit: Now, a chrome denture is £650 (!!!-very few being made...), a computer milled crown £900 (!!!)
Many citizens cannot afford even basic extractions (£55), fillings (£100), root treatments (£500), plastic dentures, (£300), and turn up at A&E with abscesses…
Most GAs for children are for dental extractions
Most dentists have now closed their NHS lists- and having spent thousands upgrading their practices to attract rich discerning patients, will never again treat patients under the NHS.
Less ambitious and talented dentists will only provide basics if given premises, surgeries, staff, utilities and technical services, from an item of service menu-with proper fees in £,S,pence
Look at TV coverage of Grimsby, Hull, Scunthorpe, Gainsborough...- half the dentition missing- ugly gaps…
The NHS has been shafted over decades by prime ministers-expenses
and salaries being cut and cut…
-From Thatcher and Clark- who privatised cleaning and food preparation, and
introduced PFI, smaller hospitals, fewer doctors, nurses and beds
-To Blair and Milburn who allowed any qualified provider to provide NHS treatment
rather than NHS hospitals-at higher cost, cherry picking simpler cases, with
complications handed back to the NHS, who provided indemnity for problems
-Lansley who allowed more privatisation by profiteers
-to Hunt who underfunded and closed hospitals
-Coffey (!!!)
-Javid (!!!)
-Barclay- who refuses full pay restoration, refuses to allow the Doctors and
Dentists Review Body to be independent
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_of_State_for_Health_and_Social_Care
Governments! If you shaft the NHS frontline staff, you will achieve your aim- no NHS, only the rich get treatment!
Daily Telegraph is full of “reform” suggesting maternity services be run by privatised profiteers…
Look at Thatcher's great privatisations
Water
Electric
Gas
Carillion
British Railways
-great successes all-Big salaries, high service charges, whacking dividends
to shareholder, big price increases...
-Maternity, particularly, should NOT be run by private
companies-would result in even worse results, more staff leaving… profit
taken at every level!
Governments of any civilised country should prioritise the NHS and Social care- investing in hospitals, a publicly run service, no profit, no shareholders…
US style (Simon Stevens!!!) Un-Accountable Care Organisations, Dis-Integrated Care Board, Dis-Integrated Care Systems...), Kaiser, depend for profit by keeping patients out of expensive hospital care-
but if patients need to be in hospital- like pregnancy- there should be no deterrents to this care
Public health England should never have been cut, never destroyed
The 5000 beds closed to allow distancing space for covid
patients remain unused: these must be reopened, with infrastructure payments
for layout alterations, and staff to operate them.
Bed numbers are frighteningly low. Our own GPs died because no cardiac bed was
available for thorough assessment.
Patients want treatment near to where they live: not an internet bunfight to trawl for an operation far far away
Choice is a euphemism for embedded use of the private providers-at greater cost for poor results in the surgical "chop" shops
All reorganisation, reforms ignore the real problem: lack of capacity due to underinvestment, privatisation, staff burnout, no retention, not enough doctors, nurses, midwives, anaethetists
Government now want to dilute the doctors BMA by introducing
learners at high rates of pay
PAs should have a big “L” on their back- only real doctors have
gone to medical school
Patients should not be endangered and die from cheap care provided by school leavers…
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/nov/25/margaret-thatcher-pushed-for-breakup-of-welfare-state-despite-nhs-pledge
Thatcher started the Tory's push for compulsory health insurance
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2012/dec/28/margaret-thatcher-role-plan-to-dismantle-welfare-state-revealed
Thatcher wanted to dismantle welfare state-Heath and Education
Important links...
99% The Rational Policymakers Guide to the NHS
https://youtu.be/8hMw9HV74F0?si=J67BqrFwUIM4JOoA
How
could Labour build an NHS workforce fit for the future?
https://youtu.be/8hMw9HV74F0?si=UCh3echJ5Vpwtpcn
ttt
https://keepournhspublic.com/robbing-peter-to-pay-paul-is-not-a-convincing-strategy/
Robbing
Peter to pay Paul
Robbing Peter to pay Paul is not a convincing strategy
for the NHS
10 October 2023 Keep Our NHS Public
Keep Our NHS Public is scrutinising the NHS news coming from the major political
parties this conference season and hoping to see the kind of policy we believe
is needed to save our NHS. So far, we have been underwhelmed by what is being
proposed.
It was reported by Pulse (the UK’s leading outlet for news relating to
general practice) that shadow health secretary Wes Streeting has said that ‘any
available funding’ under a Labour Government would go to primary care
and other non-acute sectors. He went on to say,
‘I’ve already made it very clear to the acutes that as additional
resources become available, the first port of call on those resources will be
mental health, primary care, community care, social care – because that’s
how we get better outcomes for patients and better outcomes for taxpayers’
money.’
Should GPs be welcoming this news? We don’t think so. All the sectors
Streeting mentions need additional funding. While it is absolutely true that
General Practice, mental health services and social care are in desperate need
of more funding, GPs want to see their patients getting the care they need,
and to do that, hospital services must be properly funded too. The NHS as a
whole, is now dealing with the dire consequences of over a decade of severe
underfunding – underfunding which is unnecessary, unacceptable and damaging
to society at large, as detailed in the recent report by the 99% campaign, ‘The
Rational Policy-Makers Guide to the NHS’. As this report makes clear,
‘if you starve a racehorse it is no good blaming the horse and ignoring
the diet when it fails to perform’.
As a result, no-one can look at the scenes in A&E where acutely ill patients
are kept for hours in ambulances meters away from life-saving care, lying in
corridors because there is no bed for them, the lack of vital staff and equipment,
or look at the long waiting lists for elective treatment, and make the case
that the hospital sector doesn’t need funding just as urgently as any
other sector.
Streeting’s proposal, is woefully inadequate, and seems sadly in keeping
with the Conservative Party’s repeated claims that the NHS is a funding
black hole we can no longer afford to maintain without help from the private
sector. We’ve debunked this ideological falsehood, and we hoped for better
from the Labour Party.
Most patients who seek emergency care aren’t there because of lack of
GPs. They’re there because they have conditions that GPs can’t deal
with, conditions that need the special resources and skills of hospital services.
Keep Our NHS Public’s Dr Louise Irvine, who has worked in General Practice
for decades said:
‘I need to know that I can get my patients seen promptly and effectively
whether they have an emergency condition such as a stroke, appendicitis or ectopic
pregnancy, an urgent condition such as a possible cancer, or a painful disabling
condition such as severe hip arthritis requiring a hip replacement. Understaffed,
under-resourced hospital services mean my patients wait longer for the care
they need. Not only does that mean they suffer, but it also adds to the burden
on general practice as we have to manage these patients’ ongoing conditions,
including their pain and anxiety while they wait. As a GP I don’t think
we should be ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul’. It makes no sense economically,
and most importantly, it makes no sense for our patients.’
Furthermore, while there is a logic in thinking that investing in primary care
and prevention will reduce the need for hospital intervention, this cannot be
obtained simply by starving secondary care. In fact, there is going to be an
increased need for hospital beds over the next few decades, as the population
ages and demand continues to grow. At best, improved primary and social care
will reduce the degree of increase that is required but will not mean we can
ever plan to reduce hospital provision from its current low point.
Even with the best primary care in the world, people will continue to become
unwell with problems that need hospital treatment – that’s why we
have hospitals in the first place.
The projection is that this need will grow over time because of demographic
changes and GPs can’t do hip replacements, treat heart attacks, provide
cancer treatment and so on.
As part of a long term plan involving increased funding for all sectors of health
care Keep Our NHS Public has no objection to primary care having a bigger percentage
of the total NHS budget allocated to it, but that would need to be a bigger
share of an overall bigger budget that also meets the needs of the hospital
sector. A safe and successful national health service is based on strong primary
and community services working in partnership, not competition, with well-funded
and effective hospital and mental health services. We cannot have one without
the other. And in fact, good community services may paradoxically increase the
admissions to hospital as they uncover unmet need and neglect. We need a vision
for a comprehensive health service, not short term fixes that fail to address
the population’s needs.
Taking from one under resourced area to give to another is not a convincing
strategy, especially while the current waiting list of 7.7million is mainly
to do with hospital provision and the service wide staffing crisis anyway.
We are also concerned about Streeting’s statements today that it will
take Labour two terms in office to turn around the ‘existential’
challenges faced by the NHS and social care. While we recognise that the damage
done by the current Conservative Government will take some time to repair, this
doesn’t speak of the urgency we believe is required to save our NHS and
save lives. Streeting has also said the challenges facing the NHS in England
were ‘enormous’ and without significant reform ‘it isn’t
sustainable for the long term’. What is troubling is that by all indications,
Streeting believes this ‘significant reform’ will have to involve
the private sector. We believe this is simply wrong.
Streeting also told a conference fringe event, that there was too much ‘sentimentality’
about the NHS, saying ‘If people want a shrine, sign up to a religion.
The NHS is a public service and it’s one that is failing far too many
people’. Again, his reference to the NHS as a religion echoes the derogatory
comments of Conservative politicians and right-wing commentators who then go
on to argue for privatisation of services as the only rational way forward.
We do, however, agree that the NHS is failing too many people, but this is because
of the devastating de-funding and insidious spread of privatisation in the NHS,
not because of the impossibility of sustaining investment, or a fundamental
flaw in the NHS model. This is ideological nonsense. The model of the NHS, based
on the founding principles of universal care, public ownership, management,
and accountability, has for decades provided one of the best health care services
in the world. It is the undermining of these principles that has led us into
the crisis we are now facing. In fact, investment in the NHS is good for both
health care outcomes and for the economy. And it isn’t just us that says
so. The 99% campaign’s report makes the case in detail, but recent articles
on a wide range of platforms agree with us too. See NHS Confederation, New Statesman,
even the Financial Times.
Keep Our NHS Public isn’t sentimental about the NHS, but we are willing
to fight for our vision for a people’s NHS, because if we do, it can deliver
first class health care for all, and improved outcomes for society at large.
Surely there is little as urgent as that.
NHS crisis downplayed at Conservative Party conference
Delivering a vision for the people’s NHS
Dilution and subordination of frontline doctors, surgeons and consultants
Their influence in a Trust hospital, with the NHS England, managers at all levels has been diluted. No constructive communication is allowed or encouraged...
Other countries Departments of Health talk frequently with frontline staff to improve efficiency, effectiveness and remove bottlenecks and impediments to good care.
The Secretary of State Health, Barclay, has no duty to provide a comprehensive NHS.
ICBs can decide which treatments to provide, or not.
Profiteer providers decide, the Market decides...
Some might say it would be good to actually take suggestions and strategy from the people at the sharp end, not politicians and civil servants-who are "here today, gone tomorrow" (Robin Day)
Sunak, Hunt, Barclay, Palentir, Redwood, Letwin all want to privatise the entire NHS: strategy is to underfund it, run it down, demoralise, decimate and dismantle-then claim privatisation is the only solution- as Letwin and Redwood described in 1990 "Privatise the World"
Australia, the US might respect and pay doctors and nurses better-but if the poor have no insurance, they get no treatment.
Lynton Cosby advised the Tories NOT TO TALK about the NHS...
Our MP, Edward Leigh, never replies to campaign letters. (Maybe to paid upTory members...)
When the 2021 Health and Social Care Act (NOT the NATIONAL HEALTH and Social Care Act!) was going through Parliament-not a single TV sources, Newspaper source even mentioned this Act
-which removed the Duty of the Secretary of State for Health to PROVIDE a comprehensive National Health Service.
I started this website desperate for electors and taxpayers to know the truth...