GPs have already expressed their opposition to the Coalition plan to privatise the NHS being pushed into law by Health Secretary Lansley. They have also succeeded in convincing their leaders to hold a Special Representative Meeting of the BMA trade union on March 15th to discuss the Tory plans and also to vote on whether to support them or not.
This will be a vital conference for GPs, their patients and all those who support the NHS and defend it as part of the Welfare State.
An Ipsos MORI survey of BMA members has already shown that 89 per cent of GPs consider that increased competition in the NHS will lead to a fragmentation of services, while 65 per cent agree that it will reduce the quality of patient care.
66 per cent agreed that the move for all NHS providers to become, or be part of, foundation trusts will damage NHS values and that the proposed system of clinician-led commissioning will increase health inequalities.
What is only now being exposed is that Lansley’s Health and Social Care Bill will allow GP Consortia, which will control £80 billion of NHS funds, to hand these funds over to private companies who will be taking their chances on the stock market.
The private health company Integrated Health Partners (IHP) is already proposing that the commissioning budget for patients be handed over to a private company in which family doctors would own a 20 per cent stake. The company would treat patients at 95 per cent of the NHS rate, making for an immediate profit of five per cent.
IHP is working with 15 GP practices near Guildford in Surrey, and has plans to raise funding from the City via the stock market.
Under its model, GP practices agree to submit to vigorous performance management of their referrals, presumably to exclude the most expensive treatments.
Its founder and managing director, Dr Oliver Bernath, says it is developing a model based around private investment with GPs sharing risks and profits after they take on full responsibility for commissioning in April 2013.
The BMA has already had to demand that in ‘view of reports that some areas seem to be pre-empting proposed legislation’, that the government halts the implementation of the ‘reforms’ before the legislation has been agreed by parliament.
A YouGov poll in January confirmed yet again that the public are not in favour of an increased role for the private sector in the NHS. Only 27 per cent of people supported it, and less than half of conservative voters.
In fact the international legal framework underpinning these reforms is the General Agreement on Trade in Services or GATs, the product of protracted negotiations of big business interests at successive World Trade Organisation meetings dating back to 1986. The proposed government shake-up of health in England amount to a bill of rights for transnational health companies, and a charter for profiteering practices at every level of the health service.
Under the World Trade Organisation legislation GPs can be compelled to refer to the most competitive – ie cheapest unit cost – provider.
Far from being patient choice, the private companies will make the choice, taking the easy work whilst leaving the difficult and loss making treatments and patients in the public sector.
This is a prospectus for a two-tier national health system, with the poor and the sick on the bottom of the pile.
The BMA must throw this privatisation plan out.
It must ask for the support of the TUC trade unions to prevent it destroying the NHS and bringing in a US-based profiteering system.
The vast majority of the people oppose NHS privatisation. The TUC must call a general strike to stop it by bringing down the coalition and bringing in a workers government pledged to defend and develop the NHS.