The CEO of the English National Health Service, Sir David Nicholson, sent out a stark warning in the Guardian today:
“Public support in this country for our healthcare system is greater than in almost any other country in Europe, and that’s so important for a taxpayer-funded system. My worry is that if it gets worse, before you know it you get to a place where a minority of the people support it and then people who can afford to [do so] will go elsewhere for their healthcare. In those circumstances the question of how sustainable the NHS is becomes a much more difficult one to deal with. That’s my worry.”
Various aspects of what Nicholson has said have in the past made me conclude Nicholson is definitely a Socialist, and not merely a Social Democrat.
At the end of a recent interview with Jeremy Paxman, Nicholson referred to how a private insurance system based on complicated genetic diagnoses would simply not work for the healthcare system, referring to imminent issues such as the growth in prevalence of the dementias.
Some even say that the private healthcare companies do not wish themselves a private insurance system; in that, they currently benefit from having some of the work outsourced to them in a controlled manageable way.
Ed Miliband said two highly significant things yesterday.
One was that he would take NHS policy out of the claws of EU competition law.
That is going to be essential if Labour is to have a manageable approach to ‘whole peson care’ or integration.
“We recommend that the benefits are considered of a single regulator covering issues of both care and economics, whilst recognising that is not feasible at present. We believe that the Office for Fair Trading’s role in reviewing competition decisions should be withdrawn.”
With an eye-watering contract having been put out to tender only this week, it is going to be essential that the Government tightens up the law in this area, as integration might offend EU competition law.
The second thing which Miliband said, about electoral priorities in 2015, was equally interesting.
Miliband said he wanted the 2015 election to be about ‘the cost of living crisis’ and the NHS, and not whether he would hold a referendum on EU membership.
Whether or not the media will allow this to happen is another matter, but there has been considerable concern over NHS issues during the course of the parliament.
Firstly, Andrew Lansley against all the odds enacted his vanity project, now known as the Health and Social Care Act (2012); only this week, Jeremy Hunt managed to bring in his ‘fast track to hospital closure’ mechanism in the Care Bill.
As long as contracts continue to go out to the private sector, Miliband will be unable to pledge no further privatisation of the NHS. Labour can pledge to repeal the Health and Social Care Act and Clause 119, but this is different.
If the Labour government wishes to pursue ten-year contracts using the ‘prime contractor’ model, it is likely that many of these contracts will subcontract to the private sector.
The NHS ‘preferred provider’ plan, which Andy Burnham has been advocated, may indeed have limited scope if the TTIP (EU-US free trade mechanisms) are negotiated in the favour of the multinational corporations.
The bungle over #caredata has further demonstrated the need for politicians to be transparent with the public.
Angela Eagle may wish to talk up the progress she is making in overcoming the ‘democratic deficit’, the millions of lost votes and so forth, but essentially Ed Miliband’s Labour will rightly come under some scrutiny in the election leading up to May 7th 2015 regarding the NHS.
David Nicholson is a true socialist. He has spoken his mind about the public’s affection for the NHS. Hunt never talks about the Lansley legislation.
If Labour is unable to pledge much on this, it might at least pledge a term of government where the NHS is free at the point of need and paid for entirely through general taxation.
