WE have already had the Hinchingbrooke NHS hospital scandal, where it was put under private management by Circle, with a brief to cut all losses, make a profit, and with Circle getting a £1bn ten-year contract.
We have already seen the BMA leaders compelled to change their position on the Health and Social Welfare Bill, when it became public knowledge that NHS commissioning, using the £80bn NHS budget, would be carried out by private companies for the benefit of private companies.
Previously, the BMA council had been carrying out a weasel line of calling for the Bill to be withdrawn to appease its membership, while concentrating in practice on trying to get amendments to the Bill, which would allow the council majority to openly support it.
Not only have the BMA council had to state publicly that they now stand for the withdrawal of the Bill, they have pledged a rapidly organised public campaign to scrap the Bill, a campaign which is still being awaited.
However, the capitalist crisis is deepening at such a rate that more and more draconian and previously unthinkable measures are being proposed to slash spending and privatise, to prop up the capitalists.
Yesterday, it was leaked by the government that today Cameron will propose that the private medical details of all NHS patients are made available to private medical giants such as GlaxoSmithKline.
The propaganda line is that this will enable medical research to take place that will benefit patients and allow the development of brilliant new drugs.
NHS patients are to be used as guinea pigs for the medical privateers, and every patient and his or her medical condition, are to be opened up to the private medical industry for superexploitation with promises of new drugs and a bombardment of ‘wonder treatments’ available at a price, of course.
Not only is the NHS commissioning to be carried out by private sector companies, the same privateers are to have a direct line to every NHS patient, with patient confidentiality consigned to history.
This combination equals the end of the NHS and it must be stopped now.
At the same time, the Labour Peer Lord Hutton has announced that his pensions plan, which the coalition has taken over, to add ten years to the retirement age as well as destroying public sector pensions, is no longer valid, and that the capitalist crisis demands much stronger measures.
This broadside comes after the coalition’s court victory that supported switching the annual pensions review from using the lower consumer price index (CPI) instead of the higher retail price index (RPI) which will rob pensioners of billions.
This is all too little too late as far as Hutton is concerned.
The bourgeoisie and its Tory-LibDem and Labour servants, such as Hutton, are clear that to save capitalism ever more extreme measures are required.
It has become crystal clear that there is no compromise solution to any of these issues or the central issue of the crisis of capitalism. This patient is on its deathbed.
The TUC unions and unions such as the BMA and the RCN must immediately meet and must call an indefinite general strike of every trade union, to be supported by all NHS patients and pensioners, to bring down the coalition and bring in a workers’ government and socialism.
It is plain that replacing backward, out-of-date capitalism with socialism, and an economy planned for the benefit of the people, is a matter of life or death.
Forward to the general strike and a socialist revolution!
