NHS: kill the Bill

Will Cameron stop him, before it's too late?

“The government’s health reforms run a high risk of reducing levels of safety and patient care while leading to overspending, internal NHS reports have warned.” from today’s Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/feb/14/nhs-health-social-care-bill

OK, so it may be hard to know who to believe, but so many people working in the NHS are against these changes.

We know the demands on our free Health Care system are ever-growing, and there has to be a limit to Government spend on our health service. It is our taxes they are spending. But is this the time to embark on a major re-structuring of the health service? Is this what the public want? Any change is disruptive to the delivery of services. It might be worth it, if we believe that in the long term the system would be better.

Many of the general public are understandably confused. They assume that like changes to many other government departments this is a ‘cost saving’ exercise that is necessary. But how many people actually believe these changes will improve ‘patient choice’ or save money. Do patients need more choice. What we want is an NHS that delivers a reliable service. That saves lives and makes the sick healthy again. Our doctors and nurses already have the means to signpost us to the most appropriate services, which are local to our needs. Do doctors need the added complexity of ‘managing’ the funding for these services? The truth is the funding will be managed by third parties. The bureaucracy that is always attached to any government funding to monitor spend will still be there, and this is where the system becomes expensive and inefficient. It is these ‘third party’ organisations that will profit, and soak up much of NHS funding.

I don’t believe Lansley’s new Bill is a change for the better. We need Cameron to act and kill the Bill.

Visit – http://www.38degrees.org.uk/campaigns – and add your support to the NHS campaign [503,257 signatures so far]

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• My open letter to the PM about the NHS bill (leftfootforward.org)
• The health and social care bill: here is a way out of this mess | Shirley Williams (guardian.co.uk)
• Letters: Doctors dispute the diagnosis for NHS change (guardian.co.uk)
• Public opposition to Coaltion’s NHS reforms grow as its revealed more than 100,000 have signed e-petition (dailymail.co.uk)