Thank you Colin. I have just sent this to my MP.

Fascinating and clear exposition. I had thought that health policy under Blair was just a mess, but but it sounds like the combined New Labour/Cameron approach is much more sound than I had thought.

Labour first tried throwing money at the NHS, and found it didn't work. Then it understood instinctively - if it wouldn't admit it in public - that real reform was needed. Permitting private provision and competition, with public funding, is a good approach.

Send this article to your MP (as Clare has, below) especially if he or she is a marginal seat-holder or a Lib Dem

A sly and bloodles coup detat, a corporate take over of government. What a democracy. A Government of spivs and chancers (any of those consultancy firms) itching to line their pockets at the expense of the people. Aint ya just sick of hearing about McKinsey et al Shame on ALL of them!
Anna

http://triggerpointeconomic...

Myths Regarding Privitisation of the NHS. Unfortunately, I don't think the system is anything near a true free market system. And the US system is far from a free market system with Uncle Sam responsible for 70% of the costs. I offer in my article linked above, the true reason why we don't have a private system, or anything like it.

"They were asked if they thought the NHS was really going to become ‘a mere franchise’. Butler replied, quite casually, ‘It’s been 20 years in the planning. I think they’ll do it.’"

can't be worse than what we have now.

I'll read the book, but on the basis of this article a couple of things seem missing:

- the extent to which provider interests have always informed NHS policy, going right back to 1948

- the role of the NPfIT in the idea of unraveling the NHS

This is tragic and outrageous in equal measure. Colin Leys and Stewart Player are to be thanked for their clear charting of the betrayal by both New Labour and Tories - and now Lib Dems, with honourable exceptions such as Shirley Williams.
Every MP should see this, as suggested below. And hang their heads in shame.

God this is nauseating, the NHS is just about the only thing in this country I have any pride in any more, and to covertly rip out it's core principles just enrages me, I'll email my mp, but knowing Nadine Dorries the only way I'd get anything through to her would be to go out to her office in person.

</liberal>

If the government wants to save the NHS, they would get rid of the middle management, it worked quite well before, just a qualified nursing officer, who would step in and help out on wards when they were needed. I have worked for the NHS and private, private nursing is about profit, not the patient. These days in the NHS, there are not enough nurses left on the wards to care so much for individuals. Our matron always said. care is about the individual, mind and body. These days nurses havent got time to find out underlying problems. Not because they don't care but because there isn't enough nurses. We never had the accidents on wards or people being left to dehydrate, because there was at least2 nurses to a bay of 6 patients. This was up until 1979 when good old Maggie Thatcher took over and started the demise of the NHS. Maggie was of course Camerons hero. When he asked how the public thought he could save the NHS, I wrote on the tory website, get rid of middle management, employ more nurses and doctors. Charge visitors if they require medical treatment the same as we would be charged if we went abroad. My comments were deleted, so so much for the tories listening.

The move to turn the NHS into a market from 2006 has had a major influence in the increase of medical negligence claims in the NHS.

Figures from the NHS Litigation Authority show that claims rose 32% over the 3 years from 2007/8, with the result that 8055 claims were handled in 2010/11. As claims take years to be settled, I predict that the full scale of the damage will not emerge until 2012/13.

The effects of PFI hospitals and Foundation Trusts is now apparent with failing standards at Basildon, Stafford and the Queens Hospital in Romford. The PFI contract at Queens Hospital includes supply and maintenance of medical devices, which the Care Quality Commission cited ias a concern due to persistent shortages.

The whole ethos of New Labour has been to line the pockets of private companies while blackmailing trade unions into silence due to reduction of waiting times to 18 weeks. The unions in the health service also accepted the logic due to increased employment,although only a 2% increase in nursing and medical staff as opposed to 12% increase in managerial and admin staff according to Kings Fund figures. Many of those additional posts are now being lost lost under Coalition cutbacks. The collective conspiracy betweent the unions and New Labour has laid the foundation for Andrew Lansley to finish what Labour started.

This is the reason why it's so important to discredit GP's, hospital doctors, nurses and other health care professionals to the public and then introduce regulation - or rather control- of these professions under the guise of revalidation as improving standards. This ensures these workers who can see first hand the way things are going, are silenced into not saying anything as no one will be willing to listen to them and they will have to toe the line or their licence to practice will be taken away from them. They are also in the depressing state of being so vilified in the press that going to work in the NHS is a chore - where they do plenty of unpaid overtime that never gets talked about, or struggle with unacceptable workloads and chronic understaffing ( in wards/ AE/ GP) with no lunch breaks, and in the past decade no appreciation or respect from the public, they are all too willing to pack it in and work for the private sector. This is not about improving waiting times or standards it's about submission and slowly dismantling the 'unfixable' NHS.