Saturday 20 July 2013

Letter 111:Privatisation and NHS; lock everything up, the Tories are in charge.




"Dear Dave,
So you've finally done it, sold off our NHS plasma supplier (or 80% of it) and sneaked the announcement out just as Parliament went into recess. So much once again for transparency and for "no decision about me without me". 
Is this how you think the trust of voters is earned? By selling such a precious, integral service to Bain Capital, a US private equity firm co-founded by Mit Romney  which has a reputation for aggressive asset stripping? According to Dr Lucy Reynolds who works at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, your deal undervalued the company. Earlier this year she wrote an academic paper strongly arguing against the sale of PRUK. She has said:
"Plasma supplies have a long record of being operated on a not for profit basis, using voluntary donors where all the necessary checks take place. The difference with a commercial firm is that they will want to have as many donors as possible and be looking to secure large profits first and foremost.This amounts to the government abandoning UK blood products users to the tender mercies of the cheapest supplier."

Is she correct in saying that there isn't any mechanism to protect the interests of UK users from harm caused by the change of ownership?  Did Lord Owen's advice mean nothing to you
Of course, this is entirely predictable. Your Government scapegoats doctors and nurses on a weekly basis for funding and organisational failures within the NHS. Isn't that also an attempt to undermine public confidence, running down the service so it can be outsourced or privatised more easily? The orthodoxy that Tories can never get ahead of Labour on the NHS has too many strands to it, to be simply brushed away by Jeremy Hunt using Sir Bruce Keogh's review as a political football, attempting to smear both the Opposition and the NHS in Parliament this week. But there's too much distrust for Jeremy to scapegoat away, full stop. Voters love the NHS and with good reason, so to trust the Tories with it seems idiotic, especially when 13% of your Party funding comes from the Private Health sector. Or when so many Tory MPs stand to gain financially from the outsourcing of NHS services to the private sector. If you factor in A&E waiting times, the possible unsustainability of the NHS 111 service, and the expansion of privatised services in NHS hospitals, it's clear: 
ON THE  NHS YOUR ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN YOUR WORDS. 
        Much, much louder.
Yours, etc"

1 comment:

arjun said...
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