THE coalition’s much-vaunted consultation period over its proposals to smash up the NHS and privatise it out of existence finally came to an end yesterday with the publication of the results of its ‘independent review’ into the Health and Social Care Bill.
This review, carried out by the NHS Future Forum, was entirely predictable in its attempt to provide a smokescreen for the privatisation of the health service.
On the issue of the Bill’s central move to dismantle the NHS through the creation of groups of GPs in consortiums that would take control of £60 billion of NHS funds and be responsible for health commissioning, the report merely recommends that the date for this to occur be more ‘flexible’.
Under the existing Bill, GP consortiums would have come into existence in 2013.
On the further issue of commissioning, the report recommends setting up ‘clinical senates’, which would involve not just GPs but other healthcare professionals, hospital doctors and nurses, who would, on paper, have a say in spending NHS funds.
What these two recommendations mean is quite clear: GP consortiums, controlling the vast majority of the NHS budget, will go ahead, though there might be a slight delay in getting them up and running.
The principle that GPs will commission healthcare from private companies remains intact.
On the creation of clinical senates, this is just a cynical attempt to draw nurses and hospital clinicians into the poisonous web of commissioning from private healthcare providers.
This cynicism is matched by the report’s much-trumpeted scam of changing the wording of the remit for Monitor, the new economic regulator for the NHS.
Under the existing Bill, Monitor had a ‘duty to promote competition’; its remit was to force the NHS to turn to the private sector in commissioning healthcare.
Under the proposals submitted by the Future Forum, this has become a duty to ‘protect and promote patients’ interests’.
In case anyone runs away with the idea that this represents real change in the role of Monitor, and a setback for the privateers, it should be borne in mind that Monitor will interpret this duty as one of seeking the cheapest treatment, in the interests of the patient naturally, and this will inevitably mean choosing the loss leaders in treatment that private companies will provide to ensure the demise of NHS provision.
In any case, Monitor will now play second fiddle to the Co-operation and Competition Panel for the NHS, set up by the coalition to inform the Department of Health and Monitor of breaches to the rules of competition and enforce these rules.
It is this body that will now take on the responsibility for the break-up and privatisation of the NHS.
These miniscule, cosmetic changes to the Health and Social Care Bill have, of course, been greeted with joy by the Lib Dems, who are claiming a massive victory over Cameron and Lansley.
They will now line up behind the Tories to ensure the Bill’s passage through parliament, while the Labour Party will passively vote against in a token of opposition.
What unites all these parties is the fundamental belief that bankrupt British capitalism can no longer afford a national health system free at the point of delivery.
The only way to defend the NHS today is not through token opposition to this Bill, but through the mobilisation of the working class in a general strike to bring down this government, and replace it with a workers government that will expropriate the banks and the privateers and go forward to a socialist system that will guarantee and extend the NHS.
