RECENTLY there have been a few years of increased government spending on the NHS, after many years of chronic underspending.
Most of the new money has gone on measures to privatise the service, and enrich private providers by handing over a significant chunk of the NHS budget to them, as well as on introducing massively expensive but out-of-date and inefficient computer systems.
Now under conditions of a deepening crisis of capitalism, Labour, under Gordon Brown, is desperate to slash the NHS budget.
The ‘leader’ has just spent £50 billion to try to rescue the Northern Rock bankers from the capitalist crisis of their own making. He is also prepared to extend the same generosity with the taxpayers’ money to other failing bankers. He is also facing rabid demands from the military and the Tories for a vast increase in the armed services budget so that it can continue with the imperialist slaughter in Afghanistan.
Brown’s loyalty is to the capitalist system, its bankers and its armed forces. It and they are to be massively state-aided, the National Health Service is to be slashed or even terminated.
The government is accordingly desperate to be able to ration NHS care so as to be able to proceed with this policy. This is why the Brown government is now pushing the need for an NHS Constitution, which will outline the responsibilities of people to stay healthy, with a breach of this ‘obligation’ removing the obligation of the NHS to treat them.
There is no need for this ‘constitution’, whose sole purpose is to provide a cover for refusing medical care to millions of people. The NHS was founded to provide free medical care at the point of need to all, and this is how it must remain.
If the government is concerned about obesity because of the fat-rich and salt-rich factory foods that millions of people on low wages have no alternative but to consume, it should nationalise the food industry to rectify the situation.
If the government is concerned about ‘binge drinking’ then it must repeal the laws that it brought in to allow 24-hour opening to enrich the brewers.
The government will not carry out these policies because it is a bosses and bankers government.
Instead it is proceeding with its programme to privatise the NHS and shut down a very large number of District General Hospitals, purely in order to slash the health budget by transferring care into the community where the patient will be told to be ‘responsible’ and treat himself or herself.
The latest manifestation of this is the government’s message to large numbers of people with arthritis, asthma and heart failure that they should treat themselves and administer their own medication.
They will be expected to report on their own treatment to doctors at the end of phone or computer lines.
Gordon Brown spun out this policy in his New Year’s message to NHS staff, pledging an NHS that ‘gives all of those with long-term or chronic conditions the choice of greater support, information and advice, allowing them to play a far more active role in managing their own condition’.
The Health Department’s ‘Value for Money Delivery Agreement’, sent to NHS trusts over the Christmas, spells out: ‘Reductions in the use of NHS (GP consultations, outpatient appointments, inpatient admissions, length of stay, emergency care and prescribing) can be achieved through increased support for self care (for example through education and skills training, information, prescriptions, or self care devices).’
Workers will not accept this situation where health care is slashed in order to rescue the bankers and supply the military with wmds.
Trade unions must organise councils of action that will occupy all hospitals that are threatened with closure to keep them open.
The unions must defend the NHS by taking action to bring down the Brown government and bring in a workers government that will defend and develop the NHS, and nationalise the banks and the drug companies to get the resources to do so.
