CURRENTLY all over the country A&E’s are being closed, in some areas entire hospitals are to be demolished, while the number of private patients to be taken by NHS hospitals is being driven up.
On September 10th, the A&E’s at Hammersmith and Central Middlesex hospitals are closing, while Charing Cross and Ealing hospitals are to be demolished and replaced by urgent care centres.
At the same time, the numbers of private patients in west London hospitals are to be driven up on a huge scale. This is happening all over the NHS. It is being cut, closed, and dismembered to be privatised, and purchased by the likes of the US privateer, UnitedHealth.
It is at this point that along come the enthusiasts for privatisation to finish the job. They suggest that since the NHS is in such a state it should be amalgamated with elderly care, currently provided by private homes for the elderly, and privatised care in the communities that comes under 150 local councils.
Access to the NHS is free at the point of need, while payment for care homes and home support is means-tested. But the Barker Commission which was set up by the King’s Fund think tank, said the distinction was unfair and must end.
It says the merger of the two systems, created in 1948 as part of a post-war welfare settlement, was needed because the ageing population and rise in long-term illnesses had blurred the lines between the two and was now causing ‘distress and unfairness’.
Already, £3.8bn, under the Better Care Fund project, has been transferred from the NHS to social health care. This is just the beginning of the transfers.
The Barker Commission says that the cost of providing free social care would come from new taxes and cuts to benefits and ending prescription exemptions.
This is to include ending the National Insurance exemption for those working past the state retirement age. Increasing National Insurance contributions for those earning more than £42,000 a year by 1% and for those above the age of 40 by the same amount, was also suggested.
Winter fuel payments, free TV licences and prescription exemptions given to older people should be got rid of or ‘curbed’, as the review says.
What is being proposed is, that as well as the NHS funding being further decimated by further transfers to the elderly care sector run by private companies, that billions more should be taken from the working class and the poor that will then be transferred to the privately-owned care homes so that the bosses can make record profits out of this rapacious taxing of the workers.
The plan is that the NHS should be levelled and privatised and brought together with the private sector-dominated elderly health care market, to enrich the private monopolies beyond their wildest dreams, while the poor are robbed of their winter fuel payments, and new taxation.
There is only one way forward for the NHS, elderly care and care in the community. This is that they should all be free at the point of need, and managed by the state as national services, with all private companies banned and banished.
The Barker Commission has revealed a future where both the NHS and elderly care are privatised, with additional revenues for the private sector secured by heavier taxation.
The TUC is meeting next week in Liverpool. It must pledge to take action to defend the NHS and elderly care by driving the private sector out of both.
