Oppose the Privatisation of the NHS: Our Security Lies in Our Fight

Workers' Daily Internet Edition: Article Index :

Oppose the Privatisation of the NHS: Our Security Lies in Our Fight

Patient Care at Risk as US Health Monopoly Moves In

NHS Doctors Resist Barbarism of New Labour in Denying NHS Treatment to Asylum Seekers

Unison Ballot on Unsocial Hours Payments:
Our Security Lies in Our Fight to Safeguard the Future of the NHS

Nearly sixty years after the establishing of the National Health Service, a service that was founded on the basis that it would be free and available to all, it is increasingly being sold off to private monopolies who stake their claim on the health of the British people to line their pockets. As cases up and down the country reveal, the undermining of a free and universal health care, whether it be the selling off of GPs surgeries to private US corporations, or the government’s refusal of treatment to asylum seekers; the NHS must be defended and safeguarded from this huge anti-social offensive.

NHS staff are particularly strong in defending the NHS. They are currently in a battle against an appalling pay cap by the government, who want public service workers to accept their increasingly eroded pay and conditions, on the basis of being good British citizens. But NHS staff are firm in their stand to defend their NHS. As the NHS demonstration held in London last year showed, the sentiment is against privatisation, and slogans on the march reflected the will of the workers to become the decision makers.

This year, Brown has painted his vision of the NHS as one that is for preventative medicine with investment in screening, etc., and, as the Darzi report in October 2007 put forward, that the NHS needs to be "fair effective, personalised and safe". But the picture that NHS staff are seeing is a scene of retrogression and return to the days of every man for himself, while giant corporations get rich off the wealth created by the workers and on the ever-worsening conditions that produce the limited health care of the British people.

This is in complete contrast with the vision held many workers of a new health service centred around the human being, both patient and staff, that acts preventatively providing the best services possible to meet the needs of the people. Workers are coming to the realisation that this sort of health service has to be fought for, and now are beginning to understand that our security lies in our fight. The health workers of Britain are becoming a huge force, demanding an end to privatisation and an increase in investments in social programmes. The articles below highlight the struggle to oppose the monopoly agenda and to fight for this different kind of health service

An American health monopoly is to take charge of three doctors’ surgeries in Camden, north London, according to the Camden New Journal. GPs in the area have warned that the contract will hit patient care.

The Brunswick Medical Centre in Bloomsbury, The King’s Cross Road Practice and the Camden Road Surgery are all due to fall into the hands of United Health – the largest profit-making healthcare company in the United States – from March. The three practices see a total of 4,500 patients and could earn United Health just under £1 million a year, according to the Camden New Journal. Doctors, health campaigners, councillors and others have condemned the decision made by Camden PCT (Primary Care Trust). United Health is believed to have undercut all of its rival bids by charging £70 per patient per year – in contrast to the £100 budgeted in proposals from local doctors on a 10-strong shortlist. The newspaper reports that there are misgivings that financial savings were prioritised ahead of potential service provision during the process.

The PCT has admitted that United Health was not the best performer in every category. One of the bids that is understood to have fared well was the Brunswick Medical Consortium which has run the Brunswick surgery for the past year and is thought to have run United Health close or bettered it on many factors – but not cost. Other failed bids included one from Camidoc, the not-for-profit, out-of-hours service run co-operatively by 300 Camden GPs.

It appears that popular local GPs have been swept aside in favour of a company with enough resources to undercut all of its competitors. Jacky Davis, co-chairwoman of the NHS Consultants Association, said: "The multinationals are very keen to get their hands on GP practices because this will put them in charge of the money used to commission the vast majority of patient care. They can then buy that care wherever they like – including the private sector."

Dr Stephen Graham, who has run the Brunswick surgery for the past year, said: "We offered the benefits of a smaller practice, where people get to know their GPs and we know the area’s needs. Patients will have to endure a change in doctors. Cost-cutting has won hands down over quality of service provision."

Dr Stephen Amiel, chairman of the Camden and Islington Local Medical Committee, added: "We are worried the chosen provider may have underestimated the resources needed. The government told us that private providers would only be brought into areas if there was no alternative. Yet, in awarding these practices to a private company rather than to local GPs with a proven track record, Camden PCT is making a mockery of this promise – or perhaps the government never meant what it said in the first place."

Whittington Hospital consultant Jacky Davis, from Keep Our NHS Public, added: "It may be United Health have decided they will not make a profit on this, but it will give them an important foothold they can exploit later."

In 2006, United Health bid to control two small surgeries in Derbyshire – and they won, reports the newspaper. However, a High Court bid by people in the former mining town of Creswell who did not want the company to take over their local GP surgery was successful. They now manage one practice in the middle of Derby.

In an act of defiance, 275 GPs are resisting the appalling policy of the Brown government to stop treating asylum seekers on the NHS. Under proposals by the Department of Health and the Home Office, a refugee who has lost a claim to asylum will also lose the right to see an NHS doctor.

This act of resistance is bringing together GPs who will defy any new law by continuing to give health care to refugees, many of whom are torture victims, children or pregnant women.

Medical experts want the government to withdraw the "foolish" plan, which they affirm would cause health risks for asylum seekers. In a letter to The Independent and The Lancet medical journal, GPs warn: "It is not in keeping with the ethics of our profession to refuse to see any person that may be ill, particularly pregnant women with complications, sick children, or men crippled by torture. No one would want such a doctor for their GP."

Failed asylum seekers are already denied free secondary care on the NHS and are entitled to see a GP at their surgery only if the doctor agrees. Since 2004, the government has been consulting on proposals to remove this part of the legislation, so that failed asylum seekers would be entitled to free NHS care only in cases of emergency.

Dr Frank Arnold of the Medical Health Network, which has organised a petition against the idea, said: "The Hippocratic oath makes no mention of discriminating against groups of people who are the target of public hate campaigns or whom governments find politically inconvenient." He goes on to say: "To tell doctors who they can and cannot see on this basis will have unpleasant effects on the practice of medicine. Do you want to be struck off your doctor's list because you are overweight or have a condition which might be expensive to treat?"

On January 16, the government refused to reconsider its decision to deport a terminally ill cancer victim whose visa had expired. Ama Sumani, 39, was sent back to Ghana from Cardiff but cannot afford kidney dialysis to prolong her life. The Lancet called the decision "barbarism".

This barbarism is fully reflective of the reactionary legislation and overall treatment of asylum seekers. It is with contempt, racism and complete ignorance that the government defines its "policy" towards asylum seekers with no acknowledgement that these human beings have rights by virtue of their being human. The right to health care is being viciously attacked and it is those who come from the most adverse conditions and situations that are having the worst of the offensive directed towards them.

The hysteria and lies focused around asylum seekers are an attempt to create an "enemy within" fear, and to contribute to the inhuman notion that a person is illegal. The working class and people must proclaim that no one is illegal, and that all human beings have a right to health care. The stand that these 275 GPs and refugee groups are taking is a beacon of resistance and is testament to the working class and people’s stand in defence of the rights of all.

In a new society centred on the human being, health care would be guaranteed as an inviolable right. No one is illegal! Health care is a right!

On January 25, Unison ballot papers were sent out on the new proposals for unsocial hours payments. They are to be returned by 10am on February 15. The NHS Staff Council of Unison has agreed a proposal for a harmonised and universal scheme of payments for staff working during unsocial hours to replace the interim (mostly former Whitley) scheme detailed in Section 2 of the NHS Terms and Conditions Handbook.

The new scheme would apply to all staff covered by the Agenda for Change agreement.

Unison members are being given the opportunity to vote on whether Unison should vote to accept this new scheme at the Staff Council. The Unison Health Service Group Executive is recommending the proposal which is due to be implemented in April. They conclude that it appears that staff working rotary shifts will not suffer any detriment from the new unsocial hours system. Some on alternating shift will lose out completely and the proposal offers a cash sum as compensation.

In an article on the ballot, the Unison South Tyneside Health Branch Newsletter of January 25, 2008, says: "The increasing anti-social character of the organisational culture that is being imposed on us and the patients from the political climate in the country. For example, in the Primary Care Trusts this ill wind that is prevailing is the ‘commissioning’ culture that even if there are yet not that many private companies that can seize these services in South Tyneside then everything the Foundation Trusts and GPs do is supposed to conform to this ‘commissioning’ culture. This is why everything we predicted about Foundation Trusts that they too have this retrogressive culture that is all about trying to turn the clock back on all the enlightened thinking that the 20th century has given rise to. That health care being a public service as the responsibility of society must be provided from the cradle to the grave. That has now been replaced with the phrase the ‘NHS services are still free at the point of delivery’ and those services are gradually being redefined to try and exclude more and more. Then what is left has to be packaged up into chargeable bites and then ‘commissioned’.

"The new principle being promoted is the duty to provide ‘world class commissioning’ to replace the duty to provide comprehensive universal health care for all which is the principle on which the NHS was founded.

"But this is not the prevailing culture and values amongst health workers or the patients who fight tooth and nail to defend services and oppose discrimination against this or that group that the government says is undeserving of free health care. It is interesting that those in the PCT that are in the forefront in providing the best possible service to meet the needs of the people in preventing ill health are the most determined to defend those services and refuse to see their service ‘commissioned’ into the private sector. The ideas and logic of this retrogression in health matters has no standing, or currency amongst the health team. Neither does it have any real standing amongst those that are given the task to manage the NHS. Yes, they go through the motions but few believe in it."