Sign this petition to protect the NHS: Healthcare is a right, not a privilege.
Please take a moment to sign this petition in support of protection of the NHS. If you’re not in the loop about what’s going on in the UK at the moment with healthcare, do read this article published in The Guardian last month: The NHS Reforms Still amount to Privatisation. I’ve included some interesting sections below:
“The public should have no illusions: beneath the veneer of the listening exercise, the core substance that constitutes the bill remains contentious. The NHS reforms remain driven by pure market ideology, without a shred of evidence that they will benefit the English population. On the contrary, the evidence shows that if you create an American-style healthcare system the result will be denial of care and huge costs for the taxpayer. If the bill is passed, coming generations will not forgive us for taking the “National” out of the NHS.
The latest proposals remove the cap on private patients being treated by NHS hospitals. Waiting lists are already growing, and will get worse as more capacity is used for private patients. The situation becomes desperate when hospitals in financial difficulty make up the deficit by taking on more private treatment.
Let’s set the record straight: we are not against private healthcare. We simply object to private hospitals being given priority over NHS hospitals, putting the NHS at risk.
Over time, all hospitals will have to become Foundation Trusts (FTs), effectively commercial bodies. They would have the power to close services without public consultation, and caps on income from private patients in NHS hospitals will be removed, tempting many to increase their income at the expense of NHS patients.
As in any commercial organisation, the main objectives for these FTs will be profit generation. This might be achieved by methods not universally approved within the NHS, such as competing for patients from other areas (threatening local hospitals with closure), by treating private patients (at the expense of NHS patients), and by reducing the priority of treating chronic and complex conditions (which are generally more costly).
A profit driven model will undermine all that is precious about the NHS. Furthermore, it will produce an underclass of patients with chronic, debilitating illness, who will be seen as pariahs by those organisations who seek financial benefits over and above good health”
i implore each and every one of you to sign this petition. the tories’ dismantling of the NHS impacts each and every one of us and it must be stopped before it’s too late. the first lords vote was on wednesday but we still have time to turn this around if we all fight the privitisation of our healthcare system.
you’ve seen what private healthcare has done to the working classes in america - that is what we are heading for if this doesn’t get stopped.
