Save the NHS, stop the government's privatisation
Concern:
Government plans changes in our health service which will privatise the NHS. Funding squeezes mean wards are closing and doctors and nurses are being laid off.
Solution:
We want this NHS reform stopped now!
Support this campaign and let all the MPs and David Cameron know that we won't let them privatise the NHS and save our health service for future generations.
Comments:
Email to Official
Dear Official,
I live in "your local area" and I have just supported the !Change, "Save the NHS, stop the government's privatisation", on www.digitaldemocracy.org.uk. I'd really like to hear your views on the issue and would be grateful if you could you comment.
Thank you
View additional !Change information
These are some of the messages we want to tell our MPs
Not to split up our health service and hand it to private healthcare companies, that are only interested in profit not service
Listen to the the experts and those that work in the NHS and know how it functions- doctors, nurses and patients - when they give warnings about these plans take note as they know what they are talking about.
Always test changes in pilot areas to see the effect before changing an entire system that 60 million people rely on
Protect patient care and the quality of the services - don't cut beds, wards, doctors or nurses.
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Save the NHS, stop the government's privatisation
Concern:
Government plans changes in our health service which will privatise the NHS. Funding squeezes mean wards are closing and doctors and nurses are being laid off.
Solution:
We want this NHS reform stopped now!
Support this campaign and let all the MPs and David Cameron know that we won't let them privatise the NHS and save our health service for future generations.
Category:
Health and Care
UK supporters
Official Responses
CatherineMcKinnellMP - Date posted: 28 Jul 2011 06:00
II have been particularly concerned that the Government seems intent on spending up to £3billion on a rushed, unnecessary and top-down restructure at a time when the NHS is England is set to see a £1.2billion funding shortfall in the next year, and frontline staff are already being cut.
It is for all of these reasons that I voted against the Health and Social Care Bill at Second Reading on 31st January, and voted in favour of the following Motion tabled by Labour’s Shadow Health team as part of the Opposition Day debate on NHS reorganisation on 16th March:
"That this House supports the founding principles of the National Health Service (NHS); therefore welcomes the improvements patients have seen in the NHS and supports steps further to ensure the NHS is genuinely centred on patients and carers, achieves quality and outcomes that are among the best in the world, refuses to tolerate unsafe care, involves clinicians in decision-making and enables healthcare providers to innovate, improves transparency and accountability, is more efficient and gives citizens greater say; recognises however that all of those policies and aspirations can be achieved without adopting the damaging and unjustified market-based reorganisation that is proposed, and already being implemented, by the Government; notes the strength of concerns being raised by independent experts, patient groups and professional bodies about the Government's NHS reorganisation; further notes the similar concerns expressed by the Liberal Democrat Party spring conference; and therefore urges the Government to halt the implementation of the reorganisation and pause the progress of the legislation in order to re-think their plans and honour the Prime Minister's promise to protect the NHS."
The announcement by the Health Secretary that he proposed to ‘pause, listen and engage with all those who want the NHS to succeed’ was therefore welcome, but only on the basis that he genuinely intended to take on board the views of the millions of people across the country who have very serious concerns about his proposals. However, this should not have meant simply continuing with the same proposals, but more slowly. Nor should it have just involved finding a different way of ‘presenting’ the same plans. I therefore wrote to both the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister to express my opposition to the Government’s proposals for NHS reform, urging them to totally re-think these plans as part of the ‘pause’.
As you may know, the Prime Minister has since announced some ‘concessions’ on his Government’s proposals, but I believe these to be totally unsatisfactory as they still leave in place the essential elements of the Conservatives’ long-term plans to create a full-scale market within the NHS, as well as risking the breaking up of the NHS as a national, public service. Indeed, I believe that the Government’s proposals are only serving to undermine our health service and I will therefore continue to oppose the Coalition’s plans for reforming the NHS throughout the Parliamentary process.
Catherine McKinnell MP
Newcastle upon Tyne North
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Wales
Date posted: 11-Nov-11 04:34
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It's the thin end of the wedge, isn't it. Under the Tories, I expect to see a lot more of this. Thank God Health is devolved, in Wales. Mari.
North East
Date posted: 11-Nov-11 05:33
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We do not know yet how it will work out. The move came from the previous Labour government. Let's see how it goes - in five years' time. Prejudice is not a good stimulus for holding forth!
West Midlands
Date posted: 11-Nov-11 06:38
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As I see it the big problem is that the NHS is expensive. But what is expensive? Drugs are probably the most expensive items, esp cancer drugs, as the last I heard it cost about £ 40,000 to treat one adult cancer patient, wheras for this they could treat 20-25 children with lukemia. So drugs need to be reduced. This means training doctors as integrative practitioners who do not totally rely on drugs in offering solutions to healthcare issues. If they offer natural health as well, the drugs bill will be drastically reduced.
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London
Date posted: 11-Nov-11 06:40
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Any privitasation of a health service is going the wrong way, there is nothing for anyone to gain except profit for the company - good health is a fundamental right for all, the creation of the NHS recognised this, regardless of who you were, you received the same treatment.
The NHS suffers because it is mis-managed, possibly on purpose. Its a bit far fetched I know, but why gets things perfect when the people who manage it now know that they will only end up on higher salaries working for companies providing the same service under a private company, and have less people to answer for and no remit for accepting difficult clients.
We cannot have a 'tier' health system. No one should ever have to be 'insured' or pay for their well being.
We live in an age where we can push society forwards, take care of everyone, ensure that we all have enough to go around and that no-one suffers. Instead we choose to make life difficult for one another, to put money first, comfort first, ourselves first.
This government doe's not speak or act on my behalf - in fact I'm sure it doesn't act on the majority of peoples behalf, this is not a democracy, a democracy listens to its people, it doesn't push forwards an agenda decided already without listening. It is only when the right people make enough noise it listens, though this is becoming increasingly rare.
See: Iraq War, selling off the forests (?!), 'Right to Peaceful Protest'.
What can we do in this system? I feel constantly lost.
Ok, I'm off for a cup of tea, to think about things and hopefully not ignore whats happening around me when I feel so strongly against it.
Oh, and privatise education? You mean making information and truth difficult to reach? Scared of an educated public? Whatever next.
- West Dunbartonshire
Date posted: 4-Feb-12 14:10
West Midlands
Date posted: 11-Nov-11 06:43
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In planning for the first NHS hospital to be privatised, how much subsidies will be offered to maintain the hospital? I expect it will turn out to be very much like the railways privatisation when it was all 'sold off', yet thegovernment still keeps paying out £ millions plus for running costs...
South East
Date posted: 11-Nov-11 07:09
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The WelshScottish and N.Irish NHS are totally separate from the English NHS. This campagn relates to the ENGLISH NHS (the Welsh Scottish and N.Irish NHS's have sufficent funding not to bother). So why doesn't the campaign say English NHS?
So Digital Democracy please change the wording from 'our NHS' to 'the English NHS'.
- West Dunbartonshire
Date posted: 4-Feb-12 14:25
Eastern
Date posted: 11-Nov-11 07:58
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Reform is needed. Too many nurses sitting behind nurses stations while patients die of malnutrition, cold and dirt.
Privatisation is NOT the way forward, it hasn\'t worked for trains, water, gas, electric, hospital cleaning, council refuse or any other privatised public service.
If is a total nonsense to say that cost of service + profit is somehow less than cost of service. Clear nonsense.
IF a private company can run the same service for less money then we need to sort out the problems in the public service, we shouldn\'t privatise it.
Clearly there are issues of accounting (just lies in the numbers), too much paperwork, too many \'managers\', inefficient purchasing and so on.
Of course, ultiimately, like many things, what is needed is competent management and motivated staff. In the UK we have little of either, in the NHS none of either.
South East
Date posted: 15-Nov-11 04:35
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The debate of privatisation may be a false one, as guest 3934 says it is about efficiency. The issue is how to achieve it and privatisation may be one answer. With the takeover of a hospital by a private firm there is an opportunity to study. There should be an open book accounting practise whereby an independent , really independent, body can evaluate the success or not of the takeopver. It should last for 2 years and the results made public. The deal should also cap the profit potential.
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South East
Date posted: 15-Nov-11 05:07
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I have serious doubts about Digital Democracy when they won't change the wording to English NHS! What is their problem??
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- City of Durham
Date posted: 15-Nov-11 05:41
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North East
Date posted: 21-Feb-12 09:28
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NHS privatisation: Compilation of financial and vested interests.
For full details of all Lords and MPs see this link
http://socialinvestigations.blogspot.com/2012/02/nhs-privatisation-compilation-of.html
David Cameron PM
Nursing and care home tycoon Dolar Popat has given the Conservatives £209,000. The Ugandan-born dad-of-three has amassed an estimated £42million fortune as founder and chief of TLC Group, which provides services for the elderly.
Mr Cameron made the businessman a peer shortly after entering No10 last May, and Lord Popat’s donations include a £25,000 gift registered a week after the Tories’ health reforms were unveiled last July.
Andrew Lansley MP - Conservative
John Nash, the chairman of Care UK, gave £21,000 to fund Andrew Lansley’s personal office in November 2009. In a recent interview, a senior director of the firm said that 96 per cent of Care UK’s business, which amounted to more than £400 million last year, came from the NHS. - Hedge fund boss John Nash is one of the major Conservative donors with close ties to the healthcare industry.
He and wife Caroline gave £203,500 to the party over the past five years.
The “hedgie” is also a founder of City firm Sovereign Capital, which runs a string of private healthcare firms. Fellow founder Ryan Robson is another major Tory donor who has given the party £252,429.45.
His donations included £50,000 to be a member of the party’s “Leader’s Group”, a secretive cash-for-access club. The would-be MP, who tried but failed to get selected as the election candidate in Bracknell, is managing partner at Sovereign Capital.
Andrew Lansley’s wife, Sally Low, is founder and managing director of Low Associates (“We make the link between the public and private sectors”). A Daily Telegraph report in February records that the Low Associates website lists pharmaceuticals companies SmithKline Beecham, Unilever and P
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