By Steve McKenzie (Unite Community member)
The masterplan of the private healthcare industry is, and always has been, to turn the NHS into a US style healthcare service based on the ability to pay. As a result of their growing influence on successive British governments the NHS has been undermined, underfunded and systematically privatised for decades.
The present crisis in the health service, from the corridor care in overcrowded Accident and Emergency departments, to lack of beds on the wards, the unacceptable waiting times for surgery, the lack of doctors and nurses, and the inability to get a GP appointment – all of this has been brought about by the strategy to defund and privatize the NHS, a process which has bled the service dry over the last 40 years.
Private healthcare companies (particularly US ones like UnitedHealth) and successive British governments have implemented a step-by-step plan to transform the NHS into a US style, insurance based private healthcare system based on ability to pay.
The need for a national campaign to defend the health service properly, and counter this process, is clear to anyone who scratches beneath the surface. It is something that is long overdue. An effective and efficient, broad based national organisation needs to be urgently set up, involving all interested parties. For all genuine activists fighting to defend the health service, this has never been more obvious.
There are a large number of organisations, local and national, fighting to defend the NHS as a publicly funded and publicly provided service free at the point of need.
Many trade unions in the NHS
There are the health service unions like the BMA and the RCN, Unison, the GMB and Unite. There are a whole host of other royal colleges like the midwives and the radiographers and so on.
There are also a number of campaigning organisations like Keep Our NHS Public, (KONP), SOS-NHS, Reclaim the NHS, Just Treatment, Everydoctor and many others.
They are all doing fantastic work to defend the NHS in their own way, in their own fields of expertise, but are all fragmented and isolated from each other. They are up against the financial power of the private healthcare giants and their pliant, bought-and-paid-for tools in successive governments. Fragmented, isolated campaigning organisations and the health service unions are no match for such high level organised corruption.
It is quite clear that there is an overwhelming need for an effective national organisation, properly funded, and capable of employing one or two competent officers and administrative workers that could counter, on behalf of the private healthcare providers, every duplicitous move that the government is making.
United front to save the NHS
Such an organisation should have the NHS trades unions, in a united front to save the NHS, as its core. It could counter the duplicitous arguments of the private healthcare sector and the political puppets in Parliament.
Campaigning material could be developed at a national level. Social media could be used to its full effect to build the campaign to rebuild our health service. Leaflets could be produced that could be downloaded to local groups, who in turn could ensure that local hospitals and town centres are regularly leafleted with relevant and up-to-date information, countering the duplicitous and dishonest spin that is constantly put across by the private healthcare providers and their facilitators in government.
Building strong local organisations to make this a reality is entirely possible given the public support there is for a properly funded publicly provided healthcare service.
These are the kind of policies that lefts in all of the NHS trade unions should be fighting for, in a united front to save the NHS from privatisation and eventual abandonment of its core principles.
