THE BBC yesterday revealed that NHS leaders in Scotland have been discussing setting up a ‘two-tier’ health service.
These discussions were recorded in draft minutes of a meeting of NHS Scotland health board chief executives held in September and marked ‘in confidence not for onward sharing’.
It’s not surprising that these chief executives want to keep their plans secret. What they are discussing is nothing less than destroying the very foundation of the NHS as a publicly funded, free at the point of delivery health service.
These executives have determined that NHS Scotland is not sustainable in its present form.
One of the ‘possibilities’ put forward included the proposal that hospitals should abandon the policy of keeping patients in hospital until the risk of discharging them is minimal; instead, they demand hospitals should change ‘their appetite for risk aversion’ by sending patients home as quickly as possible, regardless of any risk.
The proposal is for a target to be set for patients to be sent home for ‘treatment’ after a maximum of 23 hours, noting that this is ‘what other countries can do without an NHS’.
They want the NHS to follow the example of countries like the USA where a privatised health system frequently bundles those without expensive medical insurance out of the door, regardless of any risk.
The minutes propose the solution to the NHS crisis is to ‘design in a two-tier system where the people who can afford to go private’ are allowed the best medical treatment while millions of workers and their families are dumped into underfunded hospitals collapsing under massive staff shortages.
Other points put forward to ‘reorganise’ the NHS in Scotland included reviewing the ‘cost of long-term prescribing (of drugs) where there are alternative options, while another option discussed was to ‘Pause funding of new developments/drugs’ unless they can be proved to save the NHS money.
What is being openly proposed in Scotland is the destruction of the NHS, replacing it with a two-tier health service where the wealthy can buy the best treatment and the rest of the population will have to suffer, and where medicines and treatment are rationed to what a deliberately bankrupted NHS system can afford.
As the BBC health correspondent noted, it is ‘unusual to see these sorts of thoughts written down by NHS bosses, but the discussions in Scotland are – by and large – ones being had across the UK.’
Tory Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s Autumn Statement last week, which promised to increase the NHS budget by 2.9%, falls short of the 4.2% increase needed to bring down the massive waiting lists, leaving the NHS hundreds of millions of pounds short of what is required to even begin to address the crisis in hospitals and staff shortages.
There is no money for nurses who are calling for a 17.3% pay rise to keep up with the soaring cost of living, with the Tories, in their determination not to give an inch over pay, refusing to negotiate with the Royal College of Nursing (RCN).
Instead, the Unite union revealed yesterday that Tory Secretary of State for Health Steve Barclay had written to the NHS Pay Review Body telling them the pay offer for NHS workers next year must be an insulting 2% – a move guaranteed to drive a mass exodus of healthcare workers out of the NHS which, Unite general secretary Sharon Graham says, will put ‘the very survival of the NHS at risk’.
Graham added: ‘The situation is clear: We are in a fight to save the NHS and workers are ready to take a stand.’
The working class is more than ready to take a stand to defend the NHS.
The burning issue is for workers to force the trade union leaders to stop just warning and get moving by organising a general strike to kick out the Tories and bring in a workers’ government that will expropriate the bosses and bankers and bring in a nationalised and planned socialist economy.
Only socialism can ensure the funding required to guarantee and build the NHS to meet the needs of every worker and their family in the country.
