NHS

Explanation of How Government's NHS Reforms Will Affect NHS




In 1997, when the New Labour government came into office the National Health Service was at a serious crossroads, the decision had to be made, was the NHS going to continue to be the pride of our nation and remain "free at the point of need" or would we allow it to continue along former Conservative's governments road to privatisation? The decision was taken and billions of pounds in government and PFI investment to help save the NHS began.

Since the Conservative controlled coalition government came into power in 2010, once again we witness the NHS on a steady decline and moving towards total privatisation of the health service. No one paper (except the Daily Mirror group) or broadcast media has accurately reported the decline, in fact vital key stages of the government's Health and Social care Act of 2012, were totally ignored as the bill made its way through parliament and the House of Lords. This has been especially notable with the BBC.  How the BBC betrayed The NHS

History of How and Why NHS Came Into Being



Links to NHS Stories of Interest

The complete stories concerning the Tory led government's Health and Social Care Act of 2012 are now too many to insert here, so I will just be providing a link for future reference.


999/Ambulance Delays and Problems



Who Gains out of Tory Privatisation of NHS?


A Little About the NHS Previous to 1997
It's now widely understood that under successive Conservatives governments between 1979 to 1997 the NHS was deliberately run down,  giving the opportunity to the previous Tory administrations to imply to the nation that the NHS is not working, it costs too much and to save it we must act now. That was the situation in 2010 when the Conservative controlled coalition government came to power, and this is in effect what they have done. Except it was hard for the government to sell their story about an NHS in decline because it wasn't, the NHS was a far cry from the terminal mess it was in, in 1997 where previous Conservative governments had left it, in fact the NHS is a bright modern progressive success story thanks to the efforts and sheer hard work of dedicated NHS staff and the investment from the Labour government between 1997 and 2010. Labour left the NHS a modern vibrant success story, with every single A&E Department in the country refurbished or renewed and 110 brand new state of the art modern hospitals and technology. When Labour left the NHS in 2010 not only was it completely unrecognisable from the decimated service it was in 1997, it was recording its highest patient satisfaction rates. The NHS had become the one of the most cost effective efficient health services in the world - this is definitely not something that the present government want you to know.

See Queen Elizabeth in Selly Oak as an example of one of these new hospitals. The Queen Elizabeth also has a wing especially for military; State of The Art Hospital Queen Elizabeth Selly Oak . This is one of the 110 brand new hospitals provided by the former Labour government.

Over the 19 years of Conservative administration, the NHS had been deliberately starved of investment, and numbers of trained nurses and doctors was at a critical all time low because the then Tory government cut the numbers of training places. Under the Tories the service was *broken*, it was barely functioning and the staff that were operating within it were overworked, exhausted and totally demoralised, yet they continued to struggle on trying to give people the care they so desperately needed. The New Labour government's immediate task was to increase the number of nurse and doctor training places to provide the nurses and doctors for the future, they then had to try and redress the balance by bringing in trained professionals from other parts of the world. This has not been without its problems, not least it caused an ethical dilemma and in some cases a language problem.

In 1997, there were long waiting times in A&E departments, people were kept on trolleys for days as there was no room in the hospitals because Thatcher had closed down every cottage hospital and closed wards in general hospitals and reduced the number Intensive Care Units beds and cots in Special Care Baby Units across the country. People waited upwards of 2 years for hip, knee replacements and also the waits for general surgery were horrendously long. Also in 1997 our hospital buildings were crumbling, decaying, dirty filthy hovels, were hospital born infections the so-called "superbugs" MRSA and Cdiff etc were increasing alarmingly, this was as a direct result of something the Conservatives did to the health service. *The introduction of market forces* one of the first things the Tories did was to force hospitals to sack all their cleaning (domiciliary staff) from the public sector and put hospital cleaning out to tender in the *PRIVATE SECTOR*, the lucrative contracts went out to private companies, many owned by Tory backing financial donors. These companies re-hired hospital cleaning staff and slashed their wages and pensions and changed their terms and conditions, the result of this was negative demoralisation of staff and resulted in staff with reduced pay, far heavier workloads and reduced hours in which to complete their jobs. The impact of this on the cleanliness of hospitals cannot be over estimated and hospitals became dirtier, dustier hovels and the bacteria that caused these so-called superbugs multiplied and cross infection was rampant and people whose wounds had become infected with this were nursed out in open general surgery wards where other people were undergoing surgery and many of those patients became infected, it was a horrendous state.
This and so much more was the condition that successive Conservative governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major had left, this was the legacy of the NHS from 1979 to 1997.

The Tories are back now in 2010 and the NHS was not recognisable from where their previous governments had left it and now despite the lies of Cameron designed to tell the public that the NHS was safe in his hands, we discover that it isn't and yet again they are going to take the NHS and introduce the very thing that nearly destroyed it in the previous 19 years of successive Tory governments, *market forces*, already there are Tory backing financial donors in the shape of Tribal health care, Health Care UK chairman is John Nash - who donated £20.000 to the Andrew Lansley the then shadow health secretary's office during the 2010 general election. Sir Peter Gershon who helped the Tories in opposition draw up the very cuts that will stand to make his own company Care UK millions of pounds richer.

When in opposition David Cameron promised us and he promised NHS there would be no more "top down reorganisation of the NHS" - he lied! he blatantly lied to our faces, as soon as he assumed power he ordered the biggest top down reorganisation in the NHS history.

He promised to ring fence NHS spending, he famously promised to "cut the deficit not the NHS" but he hasn't, it's all been one huge con trick and complete lies, in fact Cameron was pulled up by the Chair of the UK Statistics Authority that “expenditure on the NHS in real terms was lower in 2011-12 than it was under the former Labour government in 2009-10.

In 2013 we are beginning to see the effects of the Conservatives market forces destroying our NHS once again. Our accident services are beginning to be clogged up, waiting times are up and people are being treated in tents in hospital car parks and people are also being left on trolleys in corridors because there is no room in our hospitals. Huge multi million pound contracts are being awarded to health care companies who donate financially to the Conservative party and profit is being put before patient care. The British taxpayer is now starting to see what was previously NHS funding, being taken out of the NHS and diverted into the bank accounts of shareholders of private health care companies.

It is now clear that the Conservative controlled government, aided and abetted by their coalition partners the Liberal Democrat party are privatising the NHS by stealth. the real picture of what is going on is largely going unreported by the Tory supporting right wing press and by the Tory biased right wing broadcast media, even the BBC is totally ignoring vitally important developments that will affect the health care of every single person in this country and as a result the public are sleepwalking towards the loss of our beloved NHS. It will be OK if you can afford the money for private health insurances for you and your family, and don;t forget you need several to cover you for everything, from GP visits to medication and hospital treatments and stays. How many of us can or will be able to afford this? Our NHS is being taken towards the American model, where they don't treat people first, they ask for your credit card!



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