Health News Blog

Edited by Ken Kirk

Copy of FUND OUR NHS (8)

31st July 2024

Why privatisation won't solve the NHS crisis
The new Health Secretary Wes Streeting claims that the answer lies with the private sector.  He also said that Labour would "hold the door open" for the private sector in the NHS, pledging that if elected they would use “spare capacity" in the sector to cut the NHS waiting lists. But the private sector preys upon the NHS for staff, so if the waiting list demand is directed onto the private sector, more staff will be poached from the public NHS. For more, see here.

The PFI  scandal
Under PFI, rather than borrowing to build, the government contracts with the private sector to finance, design, build and maintain public assets. These have ranged from hospitals, schools, roads, prisons. But are PFI contracts value for money? The National Audit Office (NAO) scrutinises public spending. Seventeen NHS trusts have already paid out at least the full cost of building new hospitals, but still face years of increasingly heavy payments under the PFI contracts.

Does the NHS want reform, or proper funding?
NHS  "reform" is often code for more privatisation, resulting in syphoning off NHS funds for private profit. How does our health spending compare? Average day-to-day health spending in the UK between 2010 and 2019 was £3,005 per person – 18% below the EU14 average of £3,655. Matching spending per head to France or Germany would have led to an additional £40bn and £73bn (21% to 39% increase respectively) of total health spending each year in the UK.

Covid Inquiry: appalling failures during pandemic
The inquiry has been told of a catalogue of failures in prearing for the pandemic during years of austerity under the Tories and the Tory-Liberal Democrat coalition. "There is no doubt that the provision of PPE to healthcare workers during the pandemic was hopelessly inadequate",

NHS: "The whole service may collapse"
The NHS’s finances are so dire that the whole health service may break unless it receives a massive cash injection. So said the National Audit Office, the watchdog to oversee government spending. The Health Foundation says the NHS will need £38bn more a year than planned by the end of the next parliament in order to cut the care backlog and end long treatment delays.

 

 

 

10th July 2024

The NHS must be set back on its feet once more
Here's a reaction to the election of a Labour government from Keep Our NHS Public. "Delivering on health care is a good place to start, and it is an urgent priority to fully invest in the NHS, including committing to full pay restoration for NHS staff."

Labour's NHS pledges analysed
"Blair-Brown government [NHS] performance was improved precisely by increasing funding and investing in staff, making the NHS one of the best services in the world" ..."Myths of unaffordability and the efficiency of privatised services need to be dispelled and the vital role of public health reaffirmed."

How privatised eye care hurts the NHS
"The effect of outsourcing - a ‘hollowing out’ of NHS eye care departments due to the loss of income and activity from cataract care has the potential to leave the NHS eye care departments as a ‘poor service for poor people’.

Why not privatise the NHS?
For an analysis of why privatising the NHS a) gives a poorer service b) is poor value for money, and c) the effect upon the publicly provided NHS, see this Keep Our NHS Public briefing.

Rolling back privatisation
Campaigner John Lister points out Labour's Manifesto commitment to roll back privatisation in public services. "Before any service is contracted out, public bodies must carry out a quick and proportionate public interest test, to understand whether that work could not be more effectively done in-house." We wait to see it carried out for privatised NHS services!

 

 

 

27th June 2024

It will drive you to tears
The TV film "Undercover A&E: NHS in Crisis" reveals the desperate catastrophe that 14 years of Tories' underfunding has wrought. This has been known this for years, and they've done nothing to improve it. You can only assume that the Tories want the NHS to fail.

Union victory at Barts
Nearly 700 Unite members working as porters, cleaners and facilities staff were demanding a payment for working in the pandemic. After months of negotiations, strikes and demonstrations, workers have now accepted a deal; they get additional "special leave" to the equivalent value of the lump-sum payment.

A&E waits means "plane load of deaths each week"
President of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine says situation is ‘nothing short of a national scandal’. Research by the RCEM found there was one excess death for every 72 patients that spent eight to 12 hours in an A&E department.

Theft of patient data was from a private provider
The cyber attack by Russian group Qilin was made from the private firm Synnovis which manages blood tests for NHS trusts and GP services, primarily in south-east London.

19th June 2024

"NHS would be worse off" with both
An assessment by the respected Nuffield Trust of NHS policies of both Labour and Conservatives says the level of funding increases would leave them struggling to pay existing staff costs, let alone the bill for planned increases in doctors and nurses in the workforce plan agreed last year.

"Destabilising NHS eye care"
The percentage of NHS cataracts delivered by the private for-profit sector has increased from 24% in 2018-19 to 55% in 2022-23. The Royal National Institute of Blind People said the use of private providers is having a “destabilising effect on NHS eye care services”. The Royal College of Ophthalmologists says that while the independent sector has “continued to expand to a level where there’s less and less benefit and more and more cost”.

Privatised to a "dodgy US firm"
The Camberwell Satellite Dialysis Unit provides excellent care and that the staff are like family to their patients but it's now being outsourced to US giant Diaverum. A CQC report from April 2023 into one “inadequate” dialysis centre run by Diaverum found it had risked disease transmission by not keeping dialysis lines clean, among a litany of other failures.

Private health get £10 million profit per week
We Own It analysis reports that £6.7 billion, or £10 million a week, has left the NHS’s budget in the form of private profits on all private contracts given by the NHS from January 2012 to May 2024. Ask your prospective MP "Isn't it time there was a cross-party consensus against NHS outsourcing in the next parliament?"