health – Left eye view

I’m confused

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?

Let me rephrase that

There are many ways to say the same thing – each one brings to light a different piece of information to drive the point home.

Email to my MP about SAGE’s scientific integrity

Dear Mark Jenkinson MP,

I have a couple of questions. They relate to the current debate about the membership of SAGE. The government’s position appears to be unclear but do you personally believe that science should inform politics or that politics should inform science?

Bear in mind that previous attempts by politicians to influence science have resulted in dangerous psuedoscience like eugenics (AKA Social Darwinism) which completely bastardised a scientific theory for nefarious, discriminatory ends against poor people, the sick and disabled and non-Europeans.

What’s your personal view, Mark?

Should politics inform science or should science inform politics?

Yours sincerely,

Stuart Sorensen

Workington resident

Coronavirus: What to do with all that hand-sanitiser?

I’m a community psychiatric nurse, a CPN. That tells you something about where I work – in the community. You know, the place where I can’t always get to a sink. I’ve relied on hand-sanitiser gel throughout my career to keep myself and my patients safe, especially when giving injections or performing other procedures involving a biological risk.

Hand sanitiser is OK but it’s not as good as soap and water. When I’m near a usable sink I use soap and water because it’s better. When I can’t get to a usable sink I use gel. At least I used to – until a few weeks ago when we ran out.

A little history: Jesus of Nazareth

The Nazarene (0-33) seems to have been an extreme lefty by today’s measures. He preached against greed (many of his followers conveniently ignore that bit) and recommended compassion instead. He even got a bit ‘fighty’ with the capitalist pigs in the Temple grounds.

Like other socialists, he was especially unhappy with the usurers (like modern day bankers) whom he described as ‘thieves’. These were the money changers, the guys who took normal money in exchange for unsullied ‘Temple coin’ that could be used to purchase sacrificial lambs at Passover. The money-changers charged exorbitant rates – a bit like Wonga (which is linked to the Tory party, by the way) and so profited from the obligatory observance of the faithful. Jesus seems to have had a point there.

Jesus apparently hated inequality. He was the guy who said that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. He lived among the poor, helped the sick and the disabled and eschewed the tables of the wealthy whose oppressive ways simply maintained the suffering of their fellows.

Like many others before and since from Confucius, the Buddha and Lao Tzu to a host of Gurus and philosophers he recommended living by the Golden rule – Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

That’s why he fed those who were hungry and advocated help for the sick and those without shelter, the direct opposite of this present government’s actions. The tories have spent the last 10 years increasing homelessness, forcing people to use foodbanks to survive and denying sick and disabled people the resources they need. They’re even starving the NHS of funding in preparation for selling it off to private enterprise as a way of increasing personal profit through the suffering of others.

It’s amazing how many Tories profess to be Christians and yet ignore almost everything their Messiah said.

As Archbishop Desmond Tutu once remarked…

“I am confused as to which Bible people are reading when they suggest that religion and politics don’t mix!”

To those non-religious Tories and others and others who either support oppressive Tory ideology or stand idly by and look the other way, the good Archbishop had this to say…

“When the Elephant stands on the mouse’s tail, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality”

Tory MPs caught telling the truth

Yes, I know – trawling through Hansard can be a pain. So much of a pain that few people ever bother but I promise you, it’s well worth it if you want to know what’s actually going on. It’s one thing to see how an MP votes but if you want to actually catch them in their hypocrisy then Hansard is the place to go.

On Thursday January 16th, the House of Commons debated a motion tabled by Shadow secretary of state of health, Jon Ashworth. It was a proposed amendment to the new Health and Social care legislation proposed in the Queen’s Speech. The amendment would acknowledge that nothing less than a cumulative 4% increase in NHS funding would suffice to repair the damage caused by long-term Tory underfunding since 2010. Mr. Ashworth began…

“I beg to move an amendment, at the end of the Question to add:

‘but respectfully regrets that the Gracious Speech fails to ensure that the National Health Service and social care will be properly funded;
and calls for the Government to bring forward a plan and additional funding to end the crisis in social care and provide for at least a 4 per cent per year real terms increase in health spending.’. “

Yasmin Qureshi Shadow Minister for Justice reported that…

“When Labour came to power in 1997, there were 1.3 million people on a waiting list—the highest number since the NHS was created in 1948. The Labour Government used targeted and sufficient funding to bring all those figures down, to the point where A&E waiting times were down to four hours and waiting lists were down to 18 weeks. It is regrettable that the Government now want to abolish the A&E waiting time target. Is that simply to spare Ministers’ blushes? Since last October, 320,034 people waited more than four hours at A&E, whereas in 2010 the figure was just 41,231.”

This is, of course a damning indictment of not only the conservative mishandling of the NHS since 2010 but also of the previous tory government that ran it down in much the same manner prior to 1997.

This is why a minimum, consistent 4% increase is so vital. But it’s not only the opposition that are highlighting such damning figures. The tories themselves are unhappy at the state of the NHS too. That’s why Conservative MP. Desmond Swayne’s words near the beginning of the proceedings were so important…

“This motion is about giving the NHS the funding it needs. It is a motion that will test every newly elected Conservative Member of Parliament on their commitment to the NHS.”

And test them it will!

Every single Conservative MP claimed to support the NHS. My own MP, Mark Jenkinson was extremely clear about his intention to support extra funding for health and social care services of a kind that would make a genuine difference to the level of service available to his working class constituents.

Swayne continued…

“The hon. Gentleman will recall that the Government accepted the Dilnot proposals and even put in place certain legislative provisions for them to be implemented in the next financial year.”

The Dilnot proposal recommended placing a maximum cap on the amount that individuals could be asked to contribute to their care in any circumstance, including issues related to old age or chronic illness. The conservative government scrapped their commitment to it in 2017 leading to the famous ‘Dementia tax’ proposal that lost Theresa May so much ground in the election of that year.

“…I never understood why, during the 2017 election campaign, they departed from that position—but what is the Opposition’s position on Dilnot?”

The commitment to Dilnot has still not been reinstated by the Conservative government despite its popularity within the country at large. Speaking for the labour party Jon Ashworth, Secretary of State for Health responded…

“We have long argued for a cap on care costs, but of course the Government, as the right hon. Gentleman says, dropped their support for this policy.”

He went on to remark that…

“This is a motion about the 4.5 million people on waiting lists… This is a motion about the 34,000 people who wait more than two months for cancer treatment. This is a motion about those constituents, such as mine in Leicester, who had their bladder cancer operations cancelled twice. This is a motion about the 79,000 cancelled operations last year, and the 18,000 children’s cancelled operations. This is a motion about the 110,000 children denied mental health care, even though they are in the most desperate of circumstances. This is a motion about the 98,000 patients who waited on trolleys last month—a 65% increase on the previous year—many of them elderly, many of them in their 80s and 90s, languishing for hours and hours on trolleys in hospital corridors… This is a motion about the 1.5 million people, many of them with dementia, denied the social care support they need after years and years of swingeing cuts.”

Mr. Ashworth later remarked…

“The Secretary of State is proposing a Bill that fails to reverse the £850 million of cuts to public health prevention services… He is asking us to approve a Bill that does not reverse the raids on capital budgets or deal with the £6.5 billion backlog of repairs facing our hospitals… He is proposing a Bill that does not give the NHS the 4% uplift annually that many experts say it needs. That is why Labour has tabled an amendment today to give the NHS a 4% uplift, and every Tory MP who believes in the NHS should support it.”

Every Tory MP who believes in the NHS should support it.

But that’s all very well. The opposition is supposed to call out the government on its plans and claims. What did the Conservative MPs have to say about the NHS after 10 years of their own party’s policies? For example, Caroline Johnson, Conservative MP for Sleaford and North Hykeham pointed again to the ‘creative accounting’ of the Prime Minister’s claims about new nursing staff…

“I want to ask him about the 44,000 vacancies that he talked about. Is it not right that when the Health Committee looked at that, it found that 38,000 of those places were actually occupied by nurses who work on the bank?”

Daniel Poulter MP is a Conservative with grave concerns about the impact of market forces on the NHS…

“There is a particular concern among patients and people who work in the NHS about the fragmentation of services, which has been the result of the sometimes market-driven approach to the delivery of healthcare and the encroachment of the private sector on the delivery of traditional NHS services.

“As a clinician, what matters most to me is that we deliver the right services for patients. We need to recognise that the involvement of private sector provision has sometimes led to greater fragmentation and a lack of joined-up care for patients.”

The damage caused by this fragmentation is plain to see thanks to the targets and metrics set up by the last Labour government. And they make very telling reading.
What is the Tories’ answer to the worst A&E performance figures on record? It is to scrap the four-hour A&E target. Abolishing the target will not magic away the problems in A&E. It will not suddenly fix a system that saw 100,000 people waiting on trolleys last December.

Perhaps most bizarrely, Mike Penning is the tory MP from Hemel Hempstead. Despite knowing full well the problems resulting from the last 10 years of tory governance he still intends to vote against the amendment…

“We have got into a situation where the only way we can fight this, believe it or not, is to take the trust to court. There is a lack of accountability—I have called for debates in this House on that for years now. The only way we can fight the fact that the trust has only put in a bid for refurbishment of the Watford site is to take it to court and challenge it under judicial review. I have a fantastic community. We have raised the money. We will go to court. But is it not crazy that here I am praising, and I will be voting for, the Queen’s Speech and against Labour’s amendment, when I am saying that the £400 million being offered by the Government is going to the wrong place?”

Those voters local to me might be interested to know that despite assurances to support our health and care services, Mark Jenkinson MP also voted not to increase funding for the NHS and Social care last week.

James Davies MP is a Conservative. He’s also a doctor. He seems less than confident that the concerns of his profession will be met sympathetically by the Secretary of State for Health.…

“I have outlined not only interesting statistics, but sadly an indication of unnecessary loss of life and of harm to real patients. At the very least, there is a need for UK-wide patient safety mechanisms and rigorous inspection regimes, underpinned by comparable statistical data on performance and outcomes. I urge the Secretary of State seriously to consider that when progressing the initiatives outlined in the Queen’s Speech.”

Barbara Keeley, Shadow Minister for Mental Health and Social Care may have made the most direct appeal, whilst calling out Boris on his lies about a ‘clear plan’ before the General election…

“Proposing a solution to the crisis in care should be the Government’s top priority, as we have heard in many of the speeches this afternoon. However, despite the Prime Minister’s earlier pledge to fix the crisis in social care once and for all, and with a clear plan we have prepared, he now says only that he will do something ‘in this Parliament’. After 10 years of inaction, is that the best the Prime Minister can say, alongside a vague offer of cross-party talks?”

But for me it was the many Conservative voices highlighting the inadequacy of their own government’s funding strategy that resonated the most. If only these people would vote with their consciences. But hey ho – they are Tories, after all!

The bastards still voted not to increase it though!

Taking up the slack

Saffron Cordery is the deputy chief executive of NHS Providers, the membership organisation for NHS hospitals, mental health, community and ambulance services. These guys really do know what they’re talking about.

According to Cordery, writing in The Independent just after the general election, Boris’ government, for all its fine words is setting the NHS and Social care up to fail, not least in respect of older people.

Not that this comes as any great surprise to those of us who’ve been watching developments since 2010. The Tories, with the help of their LibDem enablers, have been stitching up our NHS, ready to sell it off to the highest bidder for years.

“Although quality of care once you’re in the system has held up remarkably well, timely access to treatment in the NHS has been slipping for years, despite frontline staff working harder than ever – so hard, in fact, that they’re in danger of burning out. Demand has been steadily outstripping supply; gaps in the workforce have widened substantially; our assets have deteriorated; and financial investment has been lower in the past decade than at any point in the NHS’s 70-year history.”
For all his fine words, Mr. Johnson is well aware that his promise of funding falls way short of the amount currently provided to our country’s flagship health service. Even if he restored funding to previous levels the backlog of neglect and decay, of equipment and buildings upgrades would mean a significant cut in comparative terms.

Last July Boris promised the nation that he had “a clear plan we have prepared to give every older person the dignity they deserve“.

“clear plan we have prepared to give every older person the dignity and security they deserve”.

The tories may be promising money but they’re hardly making much of an effort.

Of course, they can’t make too big an effort because the money’s already earmarked for tax cuts and perks for big corporations. Which is why the health, mental health and social care sectors are to be left to pick up the slack.

If you thought the last 10 years were bad, just watch this space. There’s far worse to come.

The NHS is not safe in their hands

A few days before the general election I found myself increasingly frustrated as I tried (and ultimately failed) to get a family member to understand the threat to the NHS from privatisation. He had 2 lines of argument that I just couldn’t break through.

1. Boris has said that the NHS won’t be privatised
2. Even if it is privatised that’ll just make it more efficient.

Trying to get him to understand the contradiction between his two points was as useless as attempting to make chicken soup from a brick. He just wasn’t prepared to listen, preferring instead to flood my Twitter feed with American alt-right memes equating socialism with totalitarian communism and countering any attempt to provide reasonable balance with accusations of Marxism or just plain accusations that I was lying to him.

Well, it’s now a little under 3 weeks since the election that gave Boris Johnson an overall majority and carte blanche to do as he pleases with Britain’s economy, with the country’s approach to rights and of course with our precious public services like the NHS. So let’s review the situation, shall we?

First some history. It’s not true to say that the NHS won’t be privatised when large parts of it already have been. Private providers are rife, especially in the South of the country where Richard Branson’s ‘Virgin’ owns huge tracts of the service which are run for profit. This is the company that managed not to pay a single penny in corporation tax in 2017! The service may continue to operate under the NHS umbrella but it’s modus operandi is very far from that of the rest of the service.

NHS contracts go to private hospitals, private outpatient departments, private GP surgeries and even private ambulances. Many of these firms are indeed American, by the way so it’s very definitely not true to suggest that US healthcare firms aren’t interested in the NHS. They are and they have been for quite some time.

Almost a quarter of NHS mental health beds are now in the hands of private firms and they are paid handsomely out of the public purse for their efforts. This includes approaching half of the child and adolescent mental health services (whether in the community or hospital). And we all know how hard it is for adolescent mental health services to cope with demand – perhaps we can also see why.

Three private firms, Elysium (Luxembourg), Cygnet (US) and Acadia (US) own and make huge profits from British mental health services and yet they are responsible for fully thirteen of the sixteen mental health units judged “inadequate” by the Care Quality Commission in 2019.

All of these services continue to provide care that is free at the point of delivery but there’s a catch. Well, actually there are several catches…

1. Private companies tend not to provide the less profitable services – they cherry pick the ones they can make most money from, leaving the NHS to carry the cost of the really expensive treatments and procedures. In the past the NHS used money from one pot to subsidise others but that’s no longer possible. The delicate balance of public health care budgeting is being destroyed by private profiteers.

2. Private companies don’t train staff – they let the NHS do that and then they poach them. This may make them look more efficient but that’s only because they’re relying on the public purse to train their staff – staff the private firm then uses to make money for its shareholders. And make no mistake – it is all about profit. The money the NHS ploughs back into research and development is the same money that private firms plough into shareholder dividends. That means for every procedure done privately there will be less money available for treatments next year. It’s an endless spiral, a race to the bottom as we can see…

3. Private companies starve the NHS of funding and resources as outlined above. They leave the NHS impoverished as it struggles to provide the most expensive services with less and less funding. This inevitable results in reduced conditions for staff, run down buildings and equipment, overworked staff and even closures of hospitals and departments. We have seen al this in spades over the last few years, beginning with new Labour but dramatically increased in pace since the ConDem government changed the rules in 2012 to make it easier for private companies to cherry pick work from the NHS. It’s interesting to learn that many of the ConDem ministers involved also hold shares or even sit on the boards of private healthcare companies.

4. It’s not uncommon for private surgeries to go wrong and need to be fixed by the NHS. Private firms still get their money but don’t compensate the NHS for sixing up their mistakes. This cost the NHS £250 million in 2016.

5. The NHS is publically owned. That means it’s an ‘arm of the state’ and as such is bound by human rights legislation, freedom of information and data protection legislation to a much higher degree than private organisations are. If you want to know what’s happened in the NHS you fill in a Freedom of information request and the information is provided in keeping with the Data Protection Act. If you want to know what happened inside a private organisation… well… erm… not so much.

6. Healthcare data is worth a fortune to private companies who sell it to insurance companies, marketers and even political organisations (via third parties, of course). Why wouldn’t they? It’s all about profit in the private healthcare market.

This isn’t the complete list of reasons why private healthcare is strangling our NHS but it may include the most significant. At least the most significant to date.

On December 28th 2019, 15 days after we learned of Boris’ electoral victory the news broke that the government is inviting still more private firms to tender for the right to deliver NHS cardiology, paediatrics, oncology and gynaecology services. Officially this is a way to cot waiting lists but hang on a minute. Given the 6 points listed above is private healthcare really the solution to waiting lists or is it actually the cause?

This government, like the tory and ConDem governments that preceded it is using our health as a political cash cow. We’re the victims, sacrificed to ever increasing lengths of stay on hospital trolleys in A&E, all in the name of profit. Our NHS diminishes in size, in scope and in quality whilst private entrepreneurs profit from providing sub-standard care in its place. And you tell me that the NHS hasn’t been privatised.

Really?

I think you’d better go and give your head a wobble.