AN analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) on the funding crisis that is driving the NHS to the brink of collapse revealed that the health service faces the biggest cut in real terms since the 1970s.
The analysis, issued earlier this month, showed that health spending in England will suffer a £2 billion cut this year despite the NHS facing spiralling extra costs.
The BMJ (British Medical Journal) Commission on the Future of the NHS called for an immediate cash injection of about £8.5 billion annually, with studies indicating that money is needed to make up for a £32 billion shortfall in funding in England to deal with high waiting lists, access to GPs and recruiting medical staff to cover shortages.
While all those supporting the NHS as free at the point of service, paid for out of taxation, are demanding increased funding, an open call for the NHS to be wound up and handed to the private sector has been made by none other than a deputy chairman of NHS England.
Wol Kolade, a leading non-executive on the board of NHS England, said that Britain needed an urgent rethink about how the NHS is funded and for a ‘big conversation’ about the future of the health service.
In an interview with Private Equity News, Kolade said the NHS faced ‘epic’ cost rises and would ‘crash’ unless the right steps were taken. It comes as no surprise that the right steps as far as Kolade is concerned are for the private equity firms to take over NHS funding and wind it up as a public service.
Along with being an NHS chief, he is also a managing partner in the private equity firm, Livingstone, while his appointment as deputy chairman of NHS England in 2022 was controversial, given he had donated large sums to the Tory party for seven years.
Kolade was clearly planted into the NHS to push the privatisation agenda of winding up the NHS and handing it to the private equity companies.
Kolade was blunt, saying: ‘We can no longer continue to fund at the rate at which we need.’
The only future for the NHS was for private investment to take over, to deal with ‘unconstrained demand, and very limited supply’, and that taxes alone can’t fund the NHS, and it’s time for a ‘private solution’.
According to Kolade, one of the main drivers of this unconstrained demand was the fact that ‘Science has moved on so much that we can pretty much keep you alive indefinitely and the cost of that is epic.’
The problem with NHS funding as far as Kolade and the Tories are concerned, is that people are simply living too long, thanks to the NHS and medical advances.
Capitalist economists have for some time been warning about the increase in the ‘ageing population’, along with all those ‘economically inactive’ being described as a drain on the economy.
How much better for capitalism when workers had the decency to die as soon as they had exhausted their ability to be exploited by the bosses, while the sick and disabled, who couldn’t afford to pay for medical treatment, were just dumped, with only the bare minimum of care.
Already private equity firms have bought up dozens of UK healthcare companies, including ambulance fleets, GP surgeries, eye care clinics and diagnostic businesses, as they seek to cash in on NHS waiting lists making huge profits.
But this doesn’t go far enough for Kolade, he wants to see private investment taking over the NHS completely, and health care restricted to those who can afford to pay for private insurance, driving the UK back to the era where millions of workers are denied the best medical treatment. This will become the preserve of the wealthy.
The working class will never allow the NHS to be destroyed for the profit of international financiers, who are circling the NHS like vultures.
The only way to defend the NHS, is to force the TUC to call a general strike to bring down the Tories and bring in a workers government that will kick out the privateers, building a socialist economy that will provide the money and resources required for the health of all.
Don’t waste a moment. Join the WRP and the Young Socialists today, to build the revolutionary leadership that is required to lead the much needed British Socialist Revolution!
There is no other way forward!
