Quote:
Originally Posted by DemolitionRed
And there was me thinking the sell off was common knowledge. 
Whilst you may believe nothing has changed because we still get free health treatment at the point of delivery. The truth is, Foundation Trusts and most GP practices are now semi-independent business models. That means they are privately owned.
The way the government got away with this (and we are talking from Thatcher, through New Labour to now) is, they started to under invest to the point where the NHS started under performing. The government could then start claiming the NHS is no longer affordable/viable and desperately needs modernizing. This smear campaign, the brain child of Thatcher and Ken Clarke has worked magnificently.
The 2012 Health and Social Care Act removes the Government’s responsibility for the NHS, passing it down to a series of other bodies instead. Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) are forced to open contracts to unlimited privatisation. Private companies are “cherry-picking” lucrative contracts leaving NHS trusts with even less money. CCGs are set to be privatised. It is difficult to believe but CCGs are now legally obliged to provide only emergency care and ambulances; the rest is up to their discretion. This translates into unlimited rationing. See here http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/...-10474075.html
So how does this end. Our health service will have clinical commissioning groups acting as insurance pools, buying care from private companies. The NHS will become a state insurer along the lines of Medicare in the US.
We are nearing the point of losing universal healthcare for each and every one of us. Bit by bit we will be told that certain extras are no longer free and we will be offered a cheap (to begin with) insurance to cover those extras. Slowly but surely, that list will get bigger. |
That sounds very much the same as the EU plan to do - and personally I would rather have no NHS outside of Europe than inside.