NHS bill: US corporates seize our health service
We all know that the U.S. healthcare system is a thing of nightmares, but now we're creating our own version of it. The Health and Social Care Bill going through parliament converts our once efficient NHS into US-style Accountable Care.

NHS bill: it's really rationing and more privatisation
The government tells us that the bill will support the NHS in tackling its backlog, including by promoting ‘integration’ with social care. But no plausible explanation of how the bill will achieve that is offered. The care system languishes, privatised, means-tested, short-staffed, fragmented, unaccountable and underfunded.

Patient harm 'a continuing theme'
This HSJ piece is behing a paywall but you see enough. Ambulance trusts are as underfunded as others. It tells us of incidents including a cardiac arrest where an ambulance took more than an hour to arrive and the patient died. They cannot prevent patient harm under their current funding levels.

The catastrophic failure of Test and Trace
Our private Test and Trace system has cost £37,000 million so far and it's a disaster. It's failed to prevent further lockdowns, it must now "wean itself off its persistent reliance on consultants" who charge £1000 per day.

46 'VIP' deals awarded before proper due diligence
At least 46 PPE deals were awarded to firms put in a special “VIP lane” by Conservative ministers, MPs and officials during the Covid pandemic before a formal due diligence process was put in place.

£60 million to Deloitte of your taxes
That's how much the Tory government has handed over to Deloitte for what the Public Accounts Committee has described as our 'failing' Test and Trace system.

FT: We must spend more on health and social care
Alas behind a paywall, but quotes the Institute for Fiscal Studies "between 2009−10 and 2019−20 UK government health spending grew at an average real-terms rate of 1.6 per cent per year — lower than any previous decade in NHS history." And we must spend more wisely, not as above.

Please sign to protect the NHS
A We Own It petition asking The House of Lords to protect the NHS aganist the NHS Bill, and pass on to others.

Minister's should face misconduct charges
The People’s Covid Inquiry formed by Keep Our NHS Public and lead by Michael Mansfield QC, said there had been “serious governance failures” at Westminster that contributed to tens of thousands of avoidable deaths.

"Pandemics aren't new, we were so unprepared"
So says Roy Lilley. The fact that we were so unprepared was underlined when the under-resourced PHE was binned and replaced by the UK Health Security Agency, with a budget fit for a small country.

Midwife shortage: home births suspended
A severe shortage of midwives has led to home birth services being closed or reduced by a number of hospital trusts across the UK.

Javid refuses to acknowledge staff burn-out
Ministers are playing-down what staff are saying, that they are physically and emotionally exhausted by constant pressure. Sajid Javid refuses to acknowledge the scale of the crisis; otherwise he would have to admit that it's down to Tory underfunding, particularly 2010 to 2018 .

GPs vote in favour of industrial action
GPs have voted in favour of taking limited forms of industrial action to protest against the government’s drive to force them to see patients face to face. The chronic shortage of GPs is the reason patients are facing long waiting times.

Why market doctrine in NHS doesn't work
This article is behind a paywall but you see enough. Privatisation failures are exposed yet again by the pursuit of financial gain by private interests. 15 CCGs are being sued by a French firn over the awarding of an £85 million contract.

Call for inquiry into PPE contract
Although she denied it, it seems that Tory peer Michelle Mone did act on behalf of PPE Medpro Ltd over two contracts for face masks and surgical gowns valued in total at £203 million.

One million pounds a day of your taxes
That's how much management consultants are costing in the privately-run "NHS" Test and Trace system. At the end of October it employed 1,230 consultants. Test and trace has average daily contractor rates of £1,100, costing us £1,353,000 a day.

Patients stuck at surgeries due to ambulance delays
Patients experiencing life-threatening emergencies such as heart attacks, strokes or major breathing problems are becoming trapped for many hours in GP surgeries, unable to get hospital treatment because ambulances are taking so long to turn up.

Record 5.8 million waiting for hospital treatment
Many hospitals can now cope only with patients coming through emergency departments. A total of 5.8 million people were waiting to start treatment at the end of September. This is the highest number since records began in August 2007.

A coming winter crisis?
Underfunding throughout the 2010s meant that the service was increasingly ill-equipped to cope with the rising prevalence of chronic illnesses. Even in November 2019, several months before Covid-19 hit, NHS England was described by senior leaders as being "on its knees". No wonder, now, the CEO of the NHS Confederation, which represents trusts, said that “many hospitals are only able to cope now with people coming through emergency departments”.

Renationalise the NHS
Here's a petition to rid our NHS of a bloated bureaucracy of commissioners, accountant and lawyers, and of private profit-hungry healthcare firms, and allow most funding to get to the medical frontline, to pay for more nurses, doctors and hospital beds. For all our sakes, sign it.