Do we think that the degrading of the Health Service is due to Tory ineptitude or a deliberate attempt to prepare it for Privatisation, or a bit of both?
So one question is what will/would Labour do with the NHS. Starmer as already said he wants to privatise part of the NHS.
When the Blair government came to power, ministers were told the NHS was underfunded, so they doubled the budget and cut waiting times from the previous government- Remember Blair’s second term in office……
“Tony Blair took office in 1997, with the promise of removing “internal markets” in the NHS – the idea that Health Authorities ceased to run their hospitals, but “purchased” care from their own or other authorities hospitals.
However, during his second term, Mr Blair actually pursued measures to strengthen the internal market as part of his plan to “modernise” the NHS.
Driving these reforms were a number of factors including the rising costs of medical technology and medicines, the desire to increase standards and “patient choice”, an ageing population, and a desire to contain government expenditure.
The Blair government, while leaving services free at the point of use, encouraged the outsourcing of medical services and under the Private Finance Initiative, an increasing number of hospitals were built, or rebuilt, by private companies too.
However, the Labour government soon fell-out with GMB union reps after a “framework document” appeared to propose watering down the foundations of the NHS, too.
The plan referred to the NHS being “overwhelmingly free” as opposed to comprehensively free at the point of delivery.
It also made reference to the creation of “mutuals or public interest companies within the NHS”, similar to charities, that would run hospitals and stated, “we need to use suppliers of private health care to the full”.
From 2003, successive waves of independent sector treatment centres (ISTCs) were opened throughout England, run by private companies for profit – known as the NHS Partner Network.”
On that aspect, its worth remembering both parties in one way or the other support privatisation. What ever happen’s us pheasants are highly unlikely to have a say in the future of the NHS or how it is run.
My own oppinion say’s – if we (any part) can do what Blair was hoping to achieve before he got stopped and privatise to a certain point, the NHS may well be in a far better place than it is today.