CAMERON’S warning that the NHS must ‘Reform or die’ and his statement that the ‘NHS is in danger’, were clear admissions that there is nothing wrong with the NHS, except that capitalism, and the capitalists, can no longer afford it because of the world crisis of the capitalist system. Therefore it has to go!
The Tory leader admitted the bankruptcy of capitalism when he said, producing his very best crocodile tears, ‘the principle we all hold dear, and we all want to keep, of free healthcare when they need it – for all who need it, that precious principle is coming under threat’.
The NHS will only be allowed to continue, and to do so for a limited period, provided its billions of revenues, produced by working class taxation, are handed over to the capitalists, and the biggest of big business international health conglomerates, to make up their super-profits.
This stage will not last for long, since once big business has got its grip on ‘GP commissioning’, and competition rages for control of the health market, it will only be a matter of time before the full US private healthcare system, that has enriched the capitalists and produced such misery and suffering amongst the working class and the poor, is forced in.
Cameron has made no concessions. The three months pause was a fraud to give the appearance that something was happening.
The GP health commissioning bodies, with their multi-billion budgets handled by private companies, in competition with each other to purchase the health commodity from private providers, remain.
The fact that Cameron is willing to allow a token presence of some nurses or hospital doctors constituted into ‘clinical senates’ is not a concession – it is an insult to the intelligence of health workers and NHS users, who are all about to be fleeced by the private medical industry and its Tory-LibDem front men.
The pledge that the NHS budget will be increased in real terms, year by year, has already been broken as inflation has rocketed upwards and, combined with the £20 billion savings drive (cuts), has produced thousands of NHS sackings, huge health cuts and many hospital mergers and closures.
Cameron said: ‘We will not endanger universal coverage – we will make sure it remains a “national” Health Service.
‘We will not break up or hinder efficient and integrated care – we will improve it.
‘We will not lose control of waiting times – we will ensure they are kept low.
‘We will not cut spending on the NHS – we will increase it.’
All these pledges have already been ripped up, and Cameron’s warnings reveal that the process is to be accelerated.
The working class and middle class understand what it is dealing with.
In the latest opinion poll of voters, conducted mainly amongst middle class people, a total of 59 per cent of the voters agreed that ‘deep down, the Conservatives want to fully privatise the NHS’, while 45 per cent thought any reforms to the Health Service made by the Tories are designed to ‘help business, not patients’.
The pause has produced nothing, after all of the discussions, debates and deliberations, except a coalition determined to privatise and a working class determined to fight it.
The trade unions, both TUC and non-TUC, such as the BMA and the RCN, must join hands and warn the Tories that they will not accept the Health Bill coming into law.
This must be met with industrial action leading to an indefinite general strike to bring down the coalition and bring in a workers government.
This will defend the NHS and develop it after it expropriates the bosses and bankers and puts an end to capitalism.
