IT IS crystal clear with the Tories seeking to impose even bigger cuts if they are re-elected in May, that under their rule the NHS is becoming more and more completely unaffordable.
Labour’s Ed Balls has been speaking about £70bn of Tory cuts that would inevitably mean major increases in taxation, such as in VAT and, as well, payments for NHS treatment – ending the NHS.
Consequently all of the schemes that the Tories are now rushing in such as regional NHS autonomy, and the just announced ‘29 Vanguards’ have to be seen in the light of the huge financial crisis, the massive austerity that is to continue, and that ending the NHS is the Tories’ number one domestic project.
Just days ago it was announced with a great flourish that ‘Greater Manchester is to become the first English region to get full control of its health spending, as part of an extension of devolved powers.’
Chancellor Osborne said the £6bn health and social care budget would be taken over by the region’s councils and health groups.
He added that it was a ‘really exciting development’.
In reality, this is a programme for putting an end to the NATIONAL Health Service. The regions are to be told that they have their NHS cash, that’s all that they will get, and that they must now get on with it. This will include making agreements with their ‘private sector partners’.
This is a recipe for postcode treatment with a vengeance. Many regions will collapse under the strain. They will be told that it is their own fault, and they will have to work their way out of it – by less provision, and offering treatments that the region can afford, imposing charges, and offering private medicine a bigger ‘partnership’ role.
The richer shires will no doubt do better for their well-heeled residents. This will make for a situation where every region has a different standard of health care, with the posher end wanting to avoid contact with the lower end at any cost.
This is the regionalism that the Tories want to usher in. The role of marshals for this ‘new order’ is already being handed out to the ‘29 Vanguards’ that have been announced by NHS England boss Simon Stevens.
Stevens is no stranger to private medicine. From 2004-6 he was President of the US’ UnitedHealth Europe and moved on to be Chief Executive Officer of UnitedHealthcare Medicare & Retirement and then Executive Vice President of UnitedHealth Group.
He was a specialist in ‘leading UnitedHealth’s strategy for, and engagement with, national health reform, ensuring its businesses are positioned for changes in the market and regulatory environment.’
The job of the 29 Vanguards will be to marshal or bring together hospitals, GPs, community services and care homes to provide more joined-up care under a series of pilots.
The approaches vary, but lead to more services being available at GP practices rather than in hospitals and more NHS care provided in care homes.
Stevens said the ‘starting gun had been fired’ on a new way of working.
The pilots are backed by a £200m transformation fund – money which was set aside by Chancellor George Osborne in the Autumn Statement – and they come after Stevens set out a five-year plan in October for changing the way services are organised.
That document, the NHS Forward View, called for local areas to come up with new ways of working by breaking down the traditional barriers that exist between hospitals, GPs, mental health and community services.
They will carry out the cherished Tory ideal that goes along with their savage cuts policies of shutting down hospitals, especially their A&E and Maternity departments.
In particular, NHS Forward View stresses the need for the NHS to work more closely with council-run social care services – since they are going to be handed the NHS regional budgets!
The Tories must be stopped. The trade unions must mobilise to bring them down and bring in a workers government and socialism.
Defending the NHS cannot be left to Labour which is also pledged to balance the books of British capitalism using austerity measures to do so.
