THE BMA leadership yesterday came out in favour of NHS rationing. It also supported the NHS having a written constitution, and being run by an Independent Board, appointed by the government, which would be broad enough to allow a ‘Venture capitalist from Texas’ to sit on it, said BMA chair, James Johnson.
Even though he hastened to say, observing the change in the body language of his audience, that this was ‘most unlikely’, he did not rule it out, creating the distinct impression that the NHS is about to be thrown to the wolves, since the only venture capitalist from Texas we are acquainted with is Texas Pacific, the private company that sacked 800 Gate Gourmet workers by megaphone on August 10th 2005.
The working class will never allow the NHS to get into their hands.
Yesterday the BMA leaders were not just floating some ideas and seeing how they went down after they published them in ‘A rational way forward for the NHS in England’.
Resolutions along the policy lines set out in the document are already being voted on to go forward to the next Annual Representation Meeting of the BMA at the end of June, which will decide on policy for the country’s doctors.
Johnson did have trouble trying to convince his listeners yesterday that talk of core treatments did not equal rationing. He said that the House of Commons had to clarify what the NHS could treat and what it couldn’t.
Everybody is to be therefore equal, we are being told.
The reality is that there will be no rationing for the rich or those who are able to take out health insurance.
They will be able to pay for the treatment and get it, probably in the same hospital that has turned away a worker, and his family who don’t have the cash to pay, because the hospitals will have wards for people who are able to pay, creating a huge tension in the area that it covers, no doubt.
This is the situation that the BMA leaders are suggesting be allowed to emerge.
All the breast beating to the effect that ‘we’ will never allow a US style health industry in Britain is just plain humbug, since the bosses of the US health industry as Johnson admitted, will no doubt be sitting on the Board of Governors.
In fact what the BMA was doing yesterday was making its position clear to Gordon Brown, the man who would be the next Premier, who supports an independent administration for the NHS.
Blair is going to announce tomorrow that he is going at the end of June or before. It is out with the old policy that the BMA did its best to bring in for Blair and in with the new, to try to cosy up to Gordon Brown.
They are assuring Brown that they will not stand in the way of NHS rationing, or putting big business chiefs and bankers on the would-be NHS Board of Governors.
As Mr James Johnson, chairman of the BMA, said: ‘The BMA believes that the NHS should provide a comprehensive range of services, available to all on an equal footing. If we are going to retain an equitable, universal approach within limited resources then priority setting is inevitable. Politicians need to acknowledge this, and that it happens already but in a non-transparent and piecemeal fashion. A clear and transparent approach is needed.
‘We need a public debate to decide a process to define a list of core NHS services – it will be a very substantial core – that will be nationally available.’
Meanwhile, over 10,000 NHS junior doctors are due to have their services dispensed with by the NHS, while thousands of nurses graduate and are unable to get jobs, and with up to 60 District General Hospitals about to be reconfigured ie closed. It is at this time that the BMA leaders are hoisting the white flag.
Its members are being attacked by wage cuts authorised by Brown, their jobs are being destroyed and the asset-strippers are about to be welcomed into the NHS. The response of the BMA is to try and get closer to Brown, the bankers’ man.
This leadership must be removed at the June conference. All hospital and cuts and closures must be fought with a policy of occupations and we must go forward to a workers government carrying out socialist policies.
