I’m confused. Chris Chope, the right wing tory MP for Christchurch and East Dorset has yet again introduced a Private member’s bill called the NHS co-funding and co-payment Bill. This Thatcherite neo-liberal has repeatedly sought to undermine the NHS with this sort of legislation for years now but this time he moight well gain some traction. The current overall tory majority might just allow the bill to get through.
The Bill has it’s second reading in the House early next month.
What confuses me isn’t that this nasty little scumbag is trying once again to derail the ‘free at point of delivery’ nature of our health service. That’s just par for the course. Weasels do what weasels do and there are few more weasely than Chope. He’s the one that fillibustered a bill to ensure landlords, like himself have to treat tenants fairly. He’s also the one who derailed a Bill to make upskirting illegal.
What confuses me is the very idea that the bill is necessary.
You see, we already have co-payment options in the NHS. That’s why we have prescription charges and fees for optician and dentistry services. It wouldn’t take a change in the law to extend that in principle. But Chope isn’t content to have the option to extend what amounts to small tweaks around the edges of the NHS. He wants to smash the very idea of the NHS by introducing co-funding too.
It may not look like much at first glance but co-funding actually means much more than the tokenistic sort of arrangement we get from prescription charges. Co-funding really does mean a two-tier system of health access where those too poor to afford treatment or who can’t get insurance, either because of high premiums or pre-existing conditions simply won’t be able to access healthcare at all.
This is the system that sees countless American citizens go bankrupt every year (Breaking bad, anyone). It’s the reason that US accident victims are known to plead with would-be helpers not to call them an ambulance because they won’t be able to pay for their care. It’s the reason why so many impoverished Americans give birth without midwifery or medical assistance, leading to much higher infant and maternal mortality rates than would be expected in a civilised, advanced economy such as theirs. And Chope wants to inflict that on us.
Please talk to your MP. And make sure that everyone in your constituency knows about the bill. Check to see how your MP votes and spread that information around too. If they vote for this bill they’re very definitely voting to further impoverish sick and disabled people in your town, to put pregnant women and their babies at risk and generally to lower the health and life-expectancies of you and your neighbours.
But the government will be able to afford more backhanders for their wealthy donor chums so that’s OK, isn’t it?
So we’re looking at 100,000 new infections per day.
The Health secretary and the Prime minister are both happy to remove restrictions, the things that kept most of us alive for the last 16 months without giving a hoot about the lives that will be lost. The economy’s the thing. Who cares if a few thousand extra vulnerable, disabled, elderly or unemployed people die?
Who cares if workers die? There are plenty of idlers on the dole to replace them and reduce the benefits bill at the same time.
If I had the energy after 16 months of nursing through the pandemic I’d get angry – but I’m beyond that now.
I released a longer video some time ago in which I talked about international trade talks, the NHS and in particular US trade talks and the practice of negative listing. That’s the idea that unless something is specifically listed as ‘off the table’ in trade negotiations it most definitely is to be considered ‘on the table’.
This week our conservative majority government, including my own MP, Mark Jenkinson voted not to protect the NHS in this way. They could have made it illegal to sell the health service in whole or in part to foreign concerns out to make a fast profit from our taxes but they didn’t. They actively chose to keep our national health service vulnerable to predatory private health providers.
Ah, you might reply, but at least it’s a British decision from the British parliament made via British sovereignty. But you’d be wrong.
You see, they also voted to extend their own impotence. Tory MPs, including my own, voted once again to ensure that the government doesn’t need the approval of parliament to make far-reaching changes to our constitution, to our system of government, to our democracy and to the institutions of state.
If your MP is not a cabinet minister then you have no representation in parliament because the tory MPs used their majority to give it all away.
Typhoid Mary meets the Broad Street pump (or so it seems).
Can anyone explain which dataset was used to verify that…
Efficacy isn’t reduced over 3 months between 1st and 2nd doses?
The delay isn’t creating an environment of evolutionary adaptation that runs a very high risk of creating a strain that’s impervious to the vaccine?
I ask because neither vaccine was tested beyond 42 days (6 weeks) and both Pfizer and Astra/Seneca have cautioned against delay, not least because there’s no dataset to analyze covering the 90 days currently mandated by this incompetent and scientifically illiterate government.
Months ago I warned about the government’s eugenicist agenda. It was all the way back in early May when the whole, sordid story became clear. The British government didn’t cause Covid but it has certainly been very opportunistic about getting rid of the country’s ‘useless eaters’.
Have a look at my post and video from 6 months ago and compare it with developments since..
Welcome to the peoples’ democratic, Francophile republic of Kent. Separated from the rest of UK by a 380 mile border, Kent and its coastline will soon be annexed by France, rejoin THE EU and the customs union and make its GDP primarily from lorry parking fees.
When Covid19 first made it into the news I was as concerned as most people but not dismayed. I had faith in the government to do what’s right and in fact, didn’t criticise the shower of shit we have in Downing Street until April. I saw my role as a good citizen to get behind the government, propagate positive messages abut hand-washing, social distancing and generally support the national effort to keep people alive and not too worried.
I did criticize a bit but that was reserved not for Boris and his cabal of criminals but for hoarders and spivs. Not until April did I start openly criticizing the way the government was handling the pandemic, putting British lives at unnecessary risk by ignoring the advice from the rest of the world.
Even then though, my regular blog posts and videos were aimed more at ludicrous conspiracy theories about mobile ‘phone signals and unsubstantiated claims about Boris not really being unwell, after all. I’m still uncertain about that last one, mind. Then the Health Minister, Matt Hancock delivered a message that I’m afraid really did get up my nose. He claimed that the reason we hadn’t enough PPE to keep ourselves and our patients safe at work was because we were over-using it. The chance would have been a fine thing.
The reality was (and is) that 10 years of Conservative government failures to prepare for the inevitable contagion, a contagion that the government’s own exercise highlighted was not sufficiently prepared for, has left us woefully under-resourced to meet the challenge. My own MP, Mark Jenkinson (more about his spurious attempts to discredit nurses later) insisted there was no problem. As his more senior colleague (everyone’s more senior than Jenky), Matt Hancock had claimed it’s our fault, we nurses for actually using the stuff we’re given. Of course we’ll run out if we use it… and only once too! That’s what ‘disposable’ means, Matt. It’s to do with infection control, a rather important aspect of dealing with a pandemic like Covid19, as it happens.
A large part of the reason why we went into this crisis so unprepared is because of 10 years of conservative cuts on the health service.
A large part of the reason why we went into this crisis so understaffed is because the tories have spent the last 10 years abusing the workforce. A workforce that now, after risking their lives to care for the sick and the dying are expected to pay for the shortcomings of this despicable bunch of bastards. As if we haven’t given enough already.
A large part of the reason that we went into this crisis so under-resourced was because when everyone else was buying up PPE, ventilators and other equipment we were still being told to sing happy birthday by our Prime Minister who made a song and dance about shaking hands with hospitalised Covid-19 patients. What an example to set!
Then, to add insult to injury, Jenky hired people to travel 35 miles during lockdown to go door to door posting his pointless propaganda like so many typhoid Maries merrily spreading the virus as they went. It seems that nothing can get in the way of a tory MP’s self-agrandisement – not even the risk of killing his own constituents!
And it was Dominic Cummings who stole the headlines in early June with his now infamous ‘Durham Dash’. Conservative MPs across the land frantically toed the party line, desperate to placate constituents with thinly disguised platitudes and non-sequeters, posted en masse without the slightest thought or apparent concern for the impact such patronising authoritarianism might have on their recipients.
Needing a distraction and still ignoring scientific advice the government began a new offensive. This time they were attacking the teachers, hoping to make them the next scapegoat because of their reluctance to return to over-crowded classrooms full of covid19. Unfortunately for them, the nation had already seen through the same tactic when Hancock tried to blame health care professionals and were having none of it. The clear message was that the government didn’t care a jot about children, despite their protestations. A decade of abandonment, not to mention their recent decision to cut off lone child refugees in Calais showed just how little concern they have for anyone’s children but their own (well, except boris who doesn’t even know how many kids he’s got). No, this was all about the money – about freeing up parents to get back to work and die of Covid just so long as they can keep their betters in profit.
Left eye view 