What are Starmer and Streeting doing with our NHS?

Felicity Dowling writes: They are taking us on a dangerous path for patients, staff, and the health and well-being of us all. This is another reason for the struggle to return the NHS to its basic principles.

The economic theories of this government are useless and damaging, as are the links they are building with global corporations, like Blackrock. Imitating Trump by attacks on the civil service helps none but the huge corporations, who are often richer than entire countries.

The NHS is the gift to us from the generation that fought and defeated fascism. It is a fundamental part of the wealth of the people in the UK. The fight for healthcare predates the founding of the NHS. The history of those fights must be remembered and recalled as we fight for it now and for its future.

Like many other major assets, such as water, gas, electricity, railways and buses that we held in common ownership, much of the NHS is damaged by privatisation. It is not that we are by being charged for each of the NHS services (yet) but that huge contracts are being handed out to global corporations, and services are being damaged in the process.

We are charged for plenty of services that once were free at the point of need.

Not least of these corporations is Palantir, who have a huge contract to control NHS data. This article from Keep Our NHS Public is very useful. Palantir are being paid hundreds of millions to do this despite the fact that data is precious to the public and hugely valuable to health corporations and insurance companies.

The NHS is the one institution in the UK that is as large as some of the huge corporations that dominate the international economy.

It is not that NHSE England was a worthwhile organisational form, but that what’s replacing it will still be run by those trained up by McKinsey and Co, far, far from the Bevan model of universal, publicly provided, not-for-profit health care.

Streeting said “(We are) putting in place a new transformation team to drive change, and alongside Dr Penny Dash as the incoming Chair, I am delighted to have such a capable leadership team of radical reformers to lead NHS England with me through this transformation.”

But who is Penny Dash? Penny Dash has been a senior NHS administrator trained up by McKinsey and very influential in the Kings Fund, a think tank for the dreadful years of the NHS. Tom Kibasi who will run the ten-year plan was also trained and employed by McKinsey.

The Lansley Health and Care Act of 2021 was truly damaging to health care in the UK, but the 2022 Act was still more dangerous.

The closing of National Health Service England sadly does not bring in better times, but more risk for all of us, and more grift opportunities for the huge international health corporations. The change from NHS England to bringing it formally back under Government control could have been good, had it been led differently. It is also unclear what will happen to the important regulatory process previously hosted by NHS England.

The health of the nation is suffering both from poverty and poor healthcare.

We are suffering more from the long term impact of Covid than other countries. We demand the full renationalisation of the NHS, with full funding from the government and the restoration of closed beds and closed maternity services.

The NHS has too few beds, doctors, midwives, nurses and related professionals. The fabric of the buildings is in poor repair, and staff are severely overworked.

Investment in healthcare has great returns to the economy, as well as to personal and family happiness and well-being.

Last winter saw many of our people die unnecessarily. While hospitals should have been planning to provide enough beds and staff to cope with a winter surge, instead they were made to have regular meetings with Price Waterhouse Cooper about making 5 or 6 percent cuts.

The Government provides twice as much funding in compensation to babies and mothers injured at birth than they do for the whole maternity service. This was discussed in Parliament on February 25^th. Maternity must be dramatically improved. Parts of the NHS continue to provide truly excellent care, thanks to staff diligence and innovation, but swathes of the NHS have been wiped out. Most residential mental health beds are now privately owned, NHS dentists are like hen’s teeth, and routine treatments for eyes and ears are farmed out to private companies, as are simple hip replacements. This model severely damages the NHS’s role as the educator of medics, nurses, and midwives.

The 2022 Health and Care Act created 40 Integrated Care Boards (ICBs), replacing the appalling GGCs that predated them, and which in turn were encouraged to support ninja privatisation. The ICBs were set up to model the US Accountable Care Organisations, which are indeed a horror story. They were designed for privatisation.

The legacy that generation gave us is still today worth financially roughly what a family now pays in rent or mortgage, for that is what US families pay for their health insurance, before all the copays and refusals.

The NHS should be

• A national, publicly owned and publicly delivered service for all.
• Free at the point of need.
• Providing the best available treatments for all
• Staffed by fully qualified and well-educated staff, with good working conditions and full trade union rights.
• Providing care from pre-conception, through birth and the various stages of life to a well-tended death, for every human in the country.

Investing in healthcare is good for us all, for our health and well being and for the local and national economy.

The NHS was once the best in the world, winning the best overall ranking in 2014, but even then it could have done better. How that has changed in a decade!