| |
Profits of doom: NHS ‘gone within 10 years’
WILL the National Health Service still be with us in 10 years’ time?
Many doctors fear it won’t.
This gloomy prognosis hardly ever surfaces in the media. To discuss it you need to track the privatisation reforms being introduced today at such a fast rate.
Gordon Brown built up a reputation as a sound economist by banging away at the need for long-term planning.
Apply this principle to the NHS, and you can see where – and maybe when – the NHS will fall off the edge.
The alarm bell sounds this week with the news (see page 1) that the giant US corporation United Health is about to take over three GP surgeries in Camden.
This corporation first appeared on the scene a year ago when it bought up a GP practice in Derbyshire in the face of opposition from doctors and patients.
Its plan of operation, say critics, is to buy up surgeries, run them at a loss, buy up nearby practices, again at a loss, and then when the patient list is in the 20,000 region, set up a giant polyclinic-style practice. Gordon Brown’s minister Lord Darzi favours this sort of polyclinic.
Clinics of this size can then be run on conventional management-style systems where economies of scale, favoured by monopolies, take over, leading to bulk treatment of patients facing minor complaints – a kind of conveyor-belt style of medicine.
This is would explain why United Health offered to run the three practices in south Camden at a lower price than competing GPs.
It’s a loss-leader approach to medicine.
Some say, what does it matter who owns a GP surgery – the GPs, who, in a sense, form a company, paid by the NHS, or another private company?
There is a big difference. Local GPs, by their nature, are linked to the community, and few would attempt to economise at the expense of patients.
Moreover, multi-pound businesses like United Health have to keep profit margins high, high enough to satisfy shareholders – shareholders who live in other countries, and are only interested in one thing: good dividends.
GPs who form partnerships know their patients and put them first. If they become a number on the payroll of a large corporation, will they continue to do so?
The NHS doesn’t produce capital or consumer goods – it looks after our health.
You can’t use the simple yardstick of profit to govern the nation’s health.
But United Health, and other overseas companies, do. That’s how they flourish.
There should be a groundswell of public opinion against this latest takeover of the NHS.
|
 |
|
| |
