Wednesday 18 May 2011

Is the pregnant pause over?

Now the elections are over, has the NHS's pregnant pause passed over?

The Conservative back benchers cheered Andrew Lansley to the rafters, who wants to set up a free-market NHS comparable to the water or energy industry, and opening up all parts of the health service to private companies and EU competition laws.

The NHS reforms could in the coming two years provide a "big opportunity" for the for-profit sector, and that the NHS would ultimately end up as a financier of care similar to an insurance company rather than a provider of hospitals and staff.

This NHS reforms has received it's second reading in the House of Commons, with support by the Conservatives and the Lib Dems. Labour has lodged many amendments that has been voted by both Conservative and lib Dem MPs. Labour amendments has called for the promotion of co-operation not competition, for a stronger local government role and proper democratic accountability, for national patient standards, and for the involvement of nurses and other doctors in commissioning.

People are losing confidence in the governments handling of the NHS, unsurprising as the coalition never placed this reform to the NHS to the country, a plan drawn up in private between the Conservatives and Lib Dems.

NHS inflation outstrips normal inflation so the NHS budgets are under severe pressures, with this top down reform we are seeing an increased funding gap, lower NHS productivity and waiting times rising.

The bureaucratic costs of this private insurance model on offer from this consevative led government, is higher than the current model, so far from saving money on paperwork, this will lead to less money spent on health.

Labour created the NHS in 1948, if these reforms go through Conservatives and Lib Dems will burry it in 2011/12.

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