SAJID Javid, Tory Health and Social Care Secretary, has spoken to the Royal College of Physicians, on Health Reform.
He claimed that there is not enough money to provide proper healthcare for the population, which is getting older.
He proposes that ‘the way the NHS responded to the pandemic gives us a wealth of innovation and learning to draw from.’
He is unworried that thousands of NHS staff have left the NHS from overwork and stress and lack of a decent pay rise.
He claimed that Thatcher and Blair used ‘reforms’ to maintain the NHS and he himself is totally committed to ‘reform’.
He ended by summing up his four principles.
‘First, that services are redesigned around the patients by prioritising prevention and personalisation.
‘Second, is clear performance standards and accountability.
‘Third, is more choice, power, tech and funding in the hands of patients.
‘And finally, backing our people with more freedom and support for system leaders (i.e. leaders of the 42 Integrated Care Systems) and front line innovators to partner and deliver.’
Of course he did not mention the central drive of all these policies and that is the fifth, Privatisation.
‘Choice’ means using NHS money for patients to go private on the NHS.
He put huge emphasis on changing the NHS constitution to encourage patients to choose the private sector, especially he said when they are on long waiting lists had waited a long time as a result of the cuts to normal services during the pandemic. And they would be offered free transport and accommodation to help them choose the private sector.
The last principle of his reforms mentions freedom. He attempts to cover up this reality, by stating ‘Free at the point of use and freedom at the point of delivery.’
Freedom means freedom to make a profit for private ‘partners’, which are ‘integrated’ into the new 42 governing bodies of the NHS in England, the Integrated Care Systems, being made statutory in the upcoming Health and Social Care Act.
Patients are to manage their own health. Patients are to be given the ability to use their NHS apps to organise for themselves virtual appointments.
He said: ‘I want that app to be the new front door to the NHS … Health needs to embrace the revolutions that have already come to banking and shopping – it needs to be as easy for doctors and patients to order a blood test as it is to order a burger … on your phone.’
He said: ‘The primary way people will interact with health services will be online.’
Personalisation is a euphemism for giving patients personal health budgets, and supporting them to use choice, to spend it in the private sector.
‘Taken together I intend for this to be one of the biggest transfers of power and funding in decades; from the state, to the individual and their family,’ Javid said.
The only way to restore a real personalisation to patients is to restore patients’ face to face access to their GPs. The GP/patient relationship was the bedrock of the NHS. Patients are not doctors.
Javid’s agenda remains to accelerate the run-down of NHS hospital care and promote the private ‘partners’ to do the routine elective care on the high street and elective surgical hubs to make a lot of money out of patient budgets.
It is clear that the £36bn raised over three years from hiking National Insurance Contributions in April, will be spent on building up the private sector, ‘tech’ and leaving patients to fend for themselves.
