Health service is being handed to private sector (From Gazette Series)

Health service is being handed to private sector

THE Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt's announcement of Government plans to double the use of private sector involvement in NHS operations is bad news for the health service in Gloucestershire.

This essentially means the Government is handing the public health service to the private sector on a plate.

Labour's "vision" for the NHS seems to be about reducing it to little more than a funding body for the private sector. The plans defy all economic and business logic, and force the public sector to use its' own revenue to invest in its competitors!

It is ludicrous to set the NHS vying with the private sector for scarce funds, when the private sectors' guaranteed income and ability to cherry pick the most lucrative operations give it such a monstrous competitive advantage. The British Medical Association , unions, and doctors have all stated that private treatment centres are bad value for money and take work away from the NHS, yet the Government's neo-liberal tinted specs, blind it to all views but private business.

Similarly various reports have condemned the government's private finance schemes to build hospitals, like the new buildings of our Gloucestershire Royal Hospital. Such schemes mean profits for companies and more expensive or poorer services for us.

The fact is that there is enough money to fund a good quality, universal and sustainable public health service, without any private sector involvement (v). There is just a complete lack of political will to do so.

Philip Booth, Press Officer, Gloucestershire Green Party Lark Rise, Bread Street, Ruscombe, Stroud