Keep Glos NHS Public - two films and the madness of the health bill

Photos from the evening

The Public Meeting in Stroud Subscription Rooms, hosted by Stroud Against Cuts, was to celebrate Michael Lloyd’s recent success in the High Court, hear more about the astonishing legal case and it's implications plus where next. These two films capture the highlights - the first covers most of the issues while the second is only a 4 minute taster.

http://stroudcommunity.tv/keep-glos-nhs-public-20-min-highlights/
http://stroudcommunity.tv/keep-glos-nhs-public-4-min-taster/

The Health bill will be a disaster - even Lord Tebbit cautioned last year that the private sector bids for the straightforward and easy stuff, ensuring the public sector is left without the bread and butter work to subsidise the more difficult surgery and the teaching of surgeons. As Caroline Lucas says: "The only way to safeguard the founding principles of our health service is to dismantle this reckless ideology - before it can cause irreparable harm."

See more of Caroline Lucas' statement here in Left Foot Forward or click 'read more' below. You can also read the shocking links to tax havens here - a Corporate Watch investigation into the accounts and finances of five of the major private healthcare companies has found widespread use of tax havens, including the British Virgin Islands, Luxembourg, Jersey, Guernsey and the Cayman Islands.

Basically as the NHS Support Federation say:
The health bill will result in more of us paying for our healthcare
Privatisation is already taking place but can be stopped
The health bill has been mis-sold to the public
NHS staff are overwhelmingly against the health bill

Avaaz is calling on the undecided members in the House of Lords to keep the knives off our NHS and ensure we can all read the official risk report; sign tonight:http://www.avaaz.org/en/last_chance_to_save_the_nhs/?vl

Sign the NHS petition at: https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/Save-our-NHS

Do please tweet and facebook the Stroud Community TV links - and sign up to monthly SCTV newsletter in right hand column at; http://stroudcommunity.tv And 'like' Stroud Community TV here.




Lucas: "Dismantle this reckless ideology - before it can cause irreparable harm"

Caroline Lucas MP (Green, Brighton Pavilion) is the leader of the Green Party

We are entering a critical week for the future of the National Health Service as we know it, because despite the hollow government assurances of recent weeks, and cosmetic tinkering around the edges of the health and social care bill, the reality is that the core intention - to vastly increase the commercialisation of the NHS - remains intact.

I wish this were scaremongering, but it isn't. Under this administration, we can already see the ground opening up to more NHS hospitals being run by the private sector.

Just last week, for example, George Eliot Hospital in Warwickshire confirmed it is open to a takeover and in talks with potential private partners including Serco, Care UK and Circle. This comes after the government tried to downplay the privatisation of Hinchingbrooke Health Care Trust in Cambridgeshire as a 'one off'.

Liberal Democrat peers may have succeeded in making the health and social care bill marginally less bad - but it is still deeply flawed and, when it comes to our health service, 'slightly less bad' is simply not good enough.

For a start, the bill still allows hospitals to use nearly half our public beds for private work. It introduces a dangerous element of competition between service providers, and establishes the framework to allow private companies to cherry pick the easiest cases for treatment.

As even Lord Tebbit cautioned last year, where the private sector bids for the straightforward and easy stuff, the public sector is left without the bread and butter work to subsidise the more difficult surgery and the teaching of surgeons.

The bill also proposes a far more complex NHS structure. Rather than giving power to local GPs, the proposed system of clinical commission groups (CCGs) will create confusion about individual bodies' roles and responsibilities - inevitably leading to a crisis of accountability.

Commissioning is a full time job, and as the BMA, the Royal College of Nursing and others have warned, these changes will mean GPs will be forced to club together to bring in the private sector to do the commissioning job for them.

To make matters worse, the bill makes provision for charging for services. It removes the statutory duty to provide public health services for children, smoking cessation services, alcohol and drug services and a raft of other crucial services. As I understand it, the only services that CCGs are obligated to arrange are ambulance services and "emergency care".

The government has no mandate for any of this, either from the voters or in the coalition agreement (pdf). The Department of Health's arrogant refusal to release the NHS risk register despite two legal rulings by the Information Commissioner speaks volumes; they know their own assessment could be the nail in the bill's coffin.

The bill reaches the Lords for its third reading today, with the Commons vote on Tuesday being the last chance saloon for forcing the prime minister to drop it once and for all.

When I addressed a public protest against the plans outside Hove Town Hall on Saturday, I called on peers, particularly those in the Liberal Democrat camp, to exercise their power and reject it outright.

As well as ridding ourselves of this bill, we must also now have a wider debate about the creeping commercialisation of the NHS that has taken hold over the last 20 years - helped along in no small part by the previous Labour government.

The underlying conviction, that competition in healthcare markets automatically leads to cost efficiency, improved quality, and greater equity flow, is just ideology - not evidence-based policy. Even the Office of Fair Trading has conceded there is as yet no "clear evidence on the role of competition in driving performance in health care".

The only way to safeguard the founding principles of our health service is to dismantle this reckless ideology - before it can cause irreparable harm.