Nurse’s group welcomes review to usher in private top-ups…

…Particularly as 25 million people already go private.

Nurses for Reform (NFR), the free market think tank run by nurses, welcomes today’s decision by the government to allow cancer tsar Professor Mike Richards to up-date the rules and allow private top-ups for NHS patients in England. NFR Director Dr Helen Evans RGN said:

Once Richards and the government explicitly allow private top-ups the NHS will be over and NFR welcomes this. First, supply was reformed with the use of the high quality and more efficient independent sector. Now, politicians and their appointees are turning to the demand side: funding. Health Secretary Alan Johnson was right to say that co-payments would breach the basis of the NHS. Today the government is preparing to essentially consign the core principals of the NHS to the dustbin of history.

Private sector floodgates: 25 million go private with more to follow.

NFR has long argued that the NHS is an essentially Stalinist, nationalised abhorrence and that Britain can do musch better without its so called ‘principals’. NFR has also consistently argued that the inexorable rise of people going private for their helthcare renders the Richards review long overdue.

While in 1948 the NHS promised ti provide “all medical, dental and nursing care”, Dr Evans says that “in 2008, 25 million Britons are already going private”:

As the NHS hits 60, politicians are increasingly mindful that 7 million people have private medical insurance; 6 million people have private cash plans; 8 million people pay privately for complementary treatments, more than 250,000 privately self-fund each year for private acute surgery (more than 1 million in the life of a parliament) and many millions more pay privately towards long-term care. This is not to mention that a whole raft of other NHS services - such as dentistry - that are crumbling before our eyes.

Evans concludes:

In 2008, at least 25 million people are now paying privately for things that the state once said it would cover. Allowing private top-ups for medicines and treatment means that government is finally attempting to catch up with what the public have already come to endorse.

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Editor’s notes: Nurses for Reform (NFR) is a growing pan-European network of nurses dedicated to consumer-orientated reform of European healthcare systems. In Britain it already has more than 100 subscribers. Its director, Dr. Helen Evans RGN, is a senior nurse with nearly twenty years experience in the National Health Service. Over the year her careerhas seen her work in some of Britain’s leadng hospitals including Senior Infection Control Nurse, Princess Akexandra Hospital NHS Trust; Infection Control Nurse, the Royal London Hospitals NHS Trust; Operating Theatre Sister, St. Bartholowew’s Hospital. Helen trained at Whipps Cross Hospital in London’s East End and holds a degree in Health Management from Anglia Ruskin University. In November 2006 she was awarded her Ph.D in Health Economics from Brunel University and has also been a guest lecturer at Anglia Ruskin University.

 

Gordon Brown Set To Abandon Core NHS Principals

As this article in Saturday’s Daily Telegraph demonstrates, in future the NHS will not be there for the seriously ill.

More soon on this from NFR.

 

Young women dying because of NHS rationing

This tragic story speaks for its self. Two beautiful young women who should have their whole lives before them are dying of a preventable disease because the NHS is rationing smear tests.

Any Americans who think that the NHS system is one worth emulating beware. If you try to develop an NHS style health care system you will be reading home grown stories such as this in a few short years.

 

Fewer people with NHS Dentists

This story from the BBC shows that NHS dental services in the UK are in free fall.  Even with all of the government’s healthcare reforms it shows that nearly 1 million people less are able to get an NHS dentist than before the reforms started!

 

Private Firms could run NHS Hospitals

This story is great news.  It shows that the government is prepared to move yet further away from the old fashioned view that the NHS can do it all i.e. has to fund and provide health care in the UK.

In announcing its willingness to allow the private sector to run NHS hospitals this government is really showing that it has the courage to face the fact that the market can deliver services, treatment and care in a better, more efficient and cost effective way than the state.

I have already heard on the news this morning the BMA and the NHS confederation complaining that the provision of health care is not about profit and that that is all that the private firms are interested in.  However, it is important to remember that many of the so-called private providers of healthcare in the UK are not-for-profit organisations.  BUPA is a mutual and Nuffield is a charity.  Also, everyone is interested in profit.  No Doctor or Nurse goes to work every day out of sheer altruism, they all have to earn a living (make a profit) from their labour and human capital to live.

 

Another day, another story of NHS neglect…

It is difficult at the moment to pick up a daily newspaper without reading yet another story of the NHS neglecting its customers.  This story today tells of an elderly lady left in agonizing pain for many hours before being seen by any medical or nursing staff.

 

Again the NHS falls short of its promises

This article demonstrates how the NHS is prepared to treat you, or not, if you dare to try to help yourself rather than dutifully adhere to its sometimes substandard regimes.

 

Yet another story of neglect from the NHS

This appalling story speaks for its self.

A sad indictment on a service that nearly sixty years ago promised that  all medical, dental and nursing care would be provided for everyone.

 

Why the British would never tolerate an NHS for their pets.

Life in the Evans household has been a little fraught of late.  Basil, the eldest of our cats, and in truth the person in charge of the family,  prolapsed his bowel three weeks ago.  He was rushed to the vet, had a small procedure and some biopsies taken and then hospitalised over the weekend.

The following Monday we had the diagnosis of bowel cancer.  However, the good news was that it was operable.  On Tuesday he was checked out for secondaries (no three month wait for a CT Scan!) and was given the all clear.  On Thursday he had a bowel resection and was then hospitalised for a few more days - in 24 hour intensive care like facilities - he then came home on the Tuesday.  During his stay the vet telephoned me twice daily to discuss Basil’s progress and if I wanted to call them there was always someone polite, helpful and knowledgeable ready to talk to me.  At no stage did I have to ring back when his nurse gets back from coffee/lunch etc.

Thanks to Tesco’s pet insurance Basil is now back to normal and, hopefully, has may years ahead of him lazing in the sunshine.

The interesting comparison here is with the care that the human population at the mercy(!) of the NHS recieve.  Basil was in hospital for 10 days, had 24 hour nursing, had an ultrasound scan to check his surgical site for infection and the staff going out to buy him fishy flavoured cat food to tempt him to eat post-op.

How many people reliant on the NHS would recieved that standard of care in that short period of time?

 

All sorts of success for Nurses for Reform

I am sure that you will have noticed that activity on this blog has been somehwhat light of late.  However, that does not mean that there has been no NFR activity.

I have spent the past few months editing a major piece of NFR research that will be published later this year by the Institute of Economic Affairs.  This report is the centre piece of a major NFR campaign that will coinside with the sixieth anniversary of the NHS.

I have also been made a health fellow at the Adam Smith Institute and will speak at one of their major bi-annual Independent Seminar on the Open Society conferences on 1st July.

Finally, as part of the NFR transatlantic programme I will be participating in some recorded interviews that will be used to describe to American opinion formers the real problems of the NHS.