WITH 23,000 beds being cut from hospital wards over the last four years alone, the entire trade union movement must immediately move into action to defend the NHS and stop the cuts, closures and the privatisation of hospitals.
Figures have shown that, in just four years between 2009 and 2013, the amount of NHS beds that were available for overnight stay have plunged by 14% with Christine McAnea, Head of Health at Unison warning that because of severe bed shortages ambulances are queuing up in hospital car parks.
Recently, the Royal College of Psychiatrists reported that there are so few beds available to patients suffering from mental health problems, that there were cases of patients sleeping on sofas in the ward or being forced to section themselves in order to be seen.
Dr Chaand Nagpaul, Chair of the British Medical Association GPs Committee, further warned of a ‘chronic’ shortage of doctors and highlighted the crisis hitting GP surgeries. 98 are threatened with closure across the England and Wales!
Nagpaul warned that a two week wait to see your GP was now the norm.
Meanwhile the Tory coalition government is planning to cut another £2bn from the NHS and take £200 million from the NHS budget to add to the Better Care Fund, used for social care.
The Parliamentary Health Select Committee has also warned of the acute crisis of the NHS. It warned yesterday that the current practice of cutting NHS hospital services for patients suffering long-term illnesses without developing services in the community is a ‘recipe for disaster’. Those with long term illnesses face being ‘dumped’ into the ‘community’ without the necessary care, to die.
Margaret Hodge, Chair of the Committee of Public Accounts added yesterday that a quarter of hospital trusts are going into debt and facing ‘failure’ ie closure!
‘Failed’ hospitals, or even whole areas, are first put into special measures by the Care Quality Commission as a precursor for shutting them down or privatising them.
This is what is happening in Staffordshire. Its cancer services and end of life care have been secretly put out to tender in a ‘£1bn procurement process’ where £1bn of taxpayers’ money will be handed over to private companies to administer ‘care’ for profit. As Unison correctly states: ‘With profit as the main driving force, how can it not lead to problems?’
To add insult to injury, Tory Health Secretary Hunt has now been awarded powers to be able to shut down any hospital he pleases with just 40 days notice.
The scene is being set for mass closures and mass privatisations in the NHS.
In fact it has already started. ‘On the 1st of July Barnet and Chase Farm Hospitals Trust was dissolved. Chase Farm Hospital has become an ‘acquisition’ of the Royal Free Hospital Trust. All property, land, staff, services and other ‘assets’ became the property of the Royal Free Hospital Trust to do with as it pleases! Meanwhile Chase Farm, which has already had its A&E closed, faces being completely shut down, with the land that the hospital is on, sold off!
With perfect timing, Simon Stevens took over as the new Chief Executive of NHS England, from David Nicholson on the 1st of April.
In 2006, Stevens was President of Global Health, & UnitedHealth Group, the US private medical giant. In October 2013, speaking at a health networking conference he was introduced as a privateer whose ‘responsibilities include leading UnitedHealth’s strategy for, and engagement with, national health reform, ensuring its businesses are positioned for changes in the market and regulatory environment.’
Stevens is well under way with his plans to ‘reform and innovate’ the NHS by selling it off chunk by chunk to private companies to make profits out of sick people, with UnitedHealth no doubt given its share of the pickings.
The time has come when the NHS must be defended and saved from privatisation.
There is only one way to do this. The July 10th one day general strike must be the dress rehearsal for a full and indefinite general strike to bring down the coalition and bring in a workers government and socialism.
The TUC must be made to call a full general strike at this September’s TUC Congress. The YS will be marching from London to the TUC Congress in Liverpool to demand that the TUC Congress calls an indefinite general strike.
Every worker and youth must support their march and march with them!
