The government is insistent that we need reforms. They quote cancer death rates to prove this, cancer death rates which have now been debunked. They talk about making the NHS a world leader in health - when it already is. Lies upon lies upon lies to justify a bill which is poorly set out, doomed to fail and will maybe pave the way for privatisation of the NHS.
But this is not what concerns me the most, what concerns me is what happens when you talk to average man or woman on the street and ask them what they think.
They will tell you they support the bill, because they like the word reform, and then they will tell you why they want reform. It always comes from a very personal perspective, something like "My Mum was in hospital for 4 weeks, took them that long to find a nursing home, while she was in she got a urine infection which the doctors ignored and got bed sores because the nurses couldn't be bothered to roll her. We need to change this system."
And I agree, we need to improve nursing numbers, we need to improve access to social care and we need a decent and coherent structure for getting doctors trained and have them the ability to stay on the same ward for more than 2 days at the time so they know the patients, or at the very least know what speciality they are training under.
Private companies bidding for your health and GPs commissioning services will not change any of this.
It will lead to a disorganised and disjointed system. The reason social care takes so long to organise is because it is done through private providers and is not integrated with health care. All HSCB will do is fragment this service further.
You think commissioning healthcare will get more nurses in? In my opinion unlikely, commissioning often means going to the lowest bidder, and what is a companies most expensive asset? Its staff, no more nurses for you then as they cost money.
Training will suffer, I've talked before about how I feel letting 49% of beds go to private companies will end. Training is a shambles as it is, this will only worsen the case. Why else are a quarter of doctors each year jumping ship?
http://www.remedyuk.org/index.php/RemedyUK-News/Why-are-so-many-doctors-leaving-medicine.html
Don't let this bill through, changes are needed, but this bill and its reforms are not.
