Bankers' Bonus or Care for the Elderly?



We have just seen a report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (full report here) which raised the issue of charging for NHS services and even for GP appointments - something that is roundly rejected by all those who wish to defend the NHS as a service available to all no matter what their background or income is. 

All this flows from the constant political dogma we hear that the NHS is 'unaffordable' and 'we can't continue like this'. The NHS has been told to 'save' £20bn - we have never been given robust evidence or reasons for this and they are seen by many as cuts. The £20bn 'efficiency savings' as they are called, were initially instigated under the New Labour government - a policy continued by the coalition. However the real reason for these austerity measures meted out on the NHS are now coming to light.

On the day we were told the country couldn't afford £2bn to care for our elderly when they are at their most vulnerable, we hear that the NHS had actually been in surplus last year. 

Now you would have thought this surplus would be ploughed back into improving patient care or even used to fund social care for our deserved elderly. But no! £1.4bn of the £1.7bn NHS underspend ('cuts') has been sent back to the Treasury to fund the banker induced economic collapse we see around us. So the NHS suffers while the bankers laugh all the way to the errrr.... bank!

This is a truly shocking story that deserves much wider coverage. Maybe it is a story the coalition would prefer not to elaborate on. After all they don't want to upset their friends in the city.

Comments

  1. xraypat18 July 2012 at 05:55

    An excellent piece. Thank you. I worked in the NHS for 40 years and have never been so depressed as now about it's future.
    Please keep writing and showing the people of the UK what's happening. TV news is sadly letting us down and most people get their news from the screen or tabloids, I understand.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Porsche or a Ventilator?

We've seen the government announce they want to borrow money from City hedge funds to prop up the NHS finances. In effect this means taxpayers will be funding a hedge fund dealers new Porsche rather than buying a neonatal ventilator. Tax payers will be fleeced and huge interest payments on this deal will go to the hedge fund meaning less funds are available to the NHS for direct patient care. I've written an article in the BMJ on this and you can read it here... http://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2017/04/13/david-wrigley-financing-the-nhs-through-hedge-funds/ Do leave a message on the BMJ website on how you feel about this.  David 
Read more

The serious implications of the case of Dr Bawa-Garba

A shockwave swept through the medical profession this week. The erasure from the medical register of Dr Bawa-Garba left many doctors thinking 'that could be me.....'. Dr Bawa-Garba was a junior doctor working in a busy paediatric department in Leicester in 2011. She was just back from a years maternity leave and thrown straight back into acute paediatric care with doctors missing on the rota, faulty hospital equipment and far too much work/too many patients to remain a safe doctor. Tragically, on that day a child died due to multiple failures and indeed the hospital itself admitted it had many areas it needed to improve on to prevent such an incident occurring again. Dr Bawa-Garba was subsequently convicted of manslaughter in a court of law and given a 2 year suspended sentence. It is said the court did not take into account the serious pressures Dr Bawa-Garba faced that day. Some time later she subsequently went through a process at the Medical Practitioners Tribunal ...
Read more

General practice is on a cliff edge - and ACOs could tip it over

The latest acronym to hit the NHS is ACO – Accountable Care Organisations. You would be forgiven for sighing with disbelief at yet another change to the way the NHS operates. It wasn’t enough for the Conservative led coalition to push through the single biggest reorganisation of the NHS with the Health and Social Care Act 2012 – a change so big you could ‘ see it from space’ according to the then NHS chief executive David Nicholson. ACOs are the latest reorganisation by NHS England which Simon Stevens expects to “deliver fast-track improvements, such as fewer emergency hospitalisations and better care in people’s homes”. On the face of it that sounds like a good plan but the potential seismic shift in how the NHS runs under an ACO is frightening. ACOs will seek to bring together all organisations (providers and commissioners) offering health and social care under ‘one roof’ in a geographical area. Social care is now based on means testing so you have to pay if you have some ...
Read more