The NHS is broken and no longer needs fixing. Now, what many have been waiting for, the Tory press is proclaiming it needs replacing. According to the Daily Telegraph, that is.
In a major PR-piece for his new book on how privatised systems are better than the NHS, James Bartholomew takes a Grand Tour around Europe, hailing the virtues of those other, ‘better’ systems that are part-privatised while decrying the ‘bad’ performance of the NHS for certain key areas in international comparisons.
The premise of this argument is sinister enough: that the NHS can no longer work as an efficient system. This is not true [1]. It has been starved of funds for years so of course is running down. What system wouldn’t? NHS staff are burning out all over the service, because their numbers are just not enough to do the job properly. So how does this government respond? ‘We will have a 7-day NHS’.
Which is now looking more like the distraction it was always meant to be. Privatisation is the real agenda here. Which is where this argument gets really nasty. ‘The NHS cannot work – so these privatised or part-privatised systems are better’. Tosh. There’s absolutely no evidence that a privatised system yields better performance PER POUND than the NHS [2]. None. Instead, we have the obscenity of NHS services, already under strain from massive under-investment, having to spend even more of their cash – which they cannot spare – coming up with ‘competitive bids’ against private providers. Who are expert at putting in competitive bids – then finding the staff for them afterwards, by cutting corners [2].
KONP has been predicting all along that this is what would happen. That the ‘broken NHS’ would then need ‘fixing’, then ‘replacing’ with a privatised system [3]. The first thing that has to change to allow that is people’s perceptions of what is wrong. And the best way of getting that is to change the language. That’s what this piece is for. It’s unethical spin at its worst.
Stop this, stop this, every way you can. Join us now.
References
[1] Davis, J., Lister, J. and Wrigley, D. (2015) NHS For Sale. Chapter 2. Available from the Keep Our NHS Books page for £10. Order now.
[2] Davis, J., Lister, J. and Wrigley, D. (2015) NHS For Sale. Chapter 8. Available from the Keep Our NHS Books page for £10. Order now.
[3] Davis, J., Lister, J. and Wrigley, D. (2015) NHS For Sale. Chapter 9. Available from the Keep Our NHS Books page for £10. Order now.
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