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The UK Labour Government is about to give the Private Healthcare sector a £1 billion boost enabling it to forge a major wedge into the NHS under Wes Streeting's plan using the NHS funding crisis to further ensure the incursion of the US healthcare system that both the Health and Social Care Act 2012 and the Health and Act 2022, has taken over what was a national system of healthcare; and turned it into the American based system of Accountable Care Organisations by splitting it up into 42 autonomous Integrated Care Systems headed by a Board (ICB) consisting of local councillors, business leaders and some clinical leads. Streeting, who has taken over £193,000 donations from private healthcare and private equity fund interests, has made it clear he wants to go further than any Labour Government has done in embedding the private sector, including US companies, into the NHS with the intention of their eventual running of public healthcare in the UK by purely privatised healthcare system akin to the that of the US! Under the proposals, which have been discussed with private healthcare sector leaders and their welcomed free placements of personnel within the Labour Party's think tanks and policy makers; the independent sector would expand its role, treating up to 2.5 million NHS patients annually through private hospitals. This would include offering cancer checks, surgeries, and intensive care. The plan, submitted to the Treasury ahead of the October 30 budget, aims to address the growing NHS waiting list, which currently stands at 7.64 million. Private healthcare providers, represented by the Independent Healthcare Providers Network (IHPN), have pledged to invest more than £1 billion into the NHS by building diagnostic centres and expanding surgical and intensive care facilities. These would be staffed with employees recruited from abroad, including Physician Associates from the US, and those who have left the NHS, and apprenticeships, with no draw on the existing NHS workforce it is claimed. However, with the lack of expertise, and the 'profit before patient care' model of the private sector, we will see even further medical interventions needed by the NHS when patients suffer botched treatments and surgery similar to the breast implants saga of a several years ago whereby no private practice has to pick up the harm done to patients by privately trained staff who have not had the degree of training given to NHS clinical staff. The plan also includes building new community diagnostic centres for NHS patients, addressing delays in critical services like cancer diagnosis which will see clinical expertise and current standards being slowly removed from the NHS, transferring assets, medical equipment and staff to the private sector. In addition, the poaching of NHS nurses, doctors and other clinicions will increase. A perfect example of this being of the UK's biggest private healthcare company, HCRG Healthcare, that has just been given the contract to run NHS services in Bath and North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire; with the NHS being sidelined. In reality, for the people of Bath and North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire; the NHS no longer exists! Also we must not forget that when Circle Health and other private healthcare companies took over NHS hospitals in the past, they have had to hand them back because they were not making any profit out of running them! The biggest example being of the Circle Health Group's takeover in 2009 of Hinchingbrooke Hospital only to being forced to handed it back to the NHS in 2015 after being put into special measures for a significant drop in care standards. See BBC Report at that time. Despite this and other major healthcare standards lapses by the private sector, this expansion of private sector involvement would surpass measures taken during Tony Blair’s government, which first introduced private sector partnerships with the NHS. Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, has expressed strong interest in these proposals, pledging to reform the NHS by building on Labour’s previous approach to use private capacity. The proposal comes as the NHS struggles with a severe lack of resources, including too few diagnostic tools and hospital beds. Lord Darzi’s recent independent review of the NHS concluded that it was “starved” of investment, impacting its overall productivity. The government has stressed that any partnership with the private sector would maintain the founding principles of the NHS, ensuring that care remains free at the point of use for patients. However, critics of such partnerships often raise concerns about the balance between private and public healthcare in the UK and the long-term implications of increased private sector involvement. In effect, Blair's smoke and mirrors much quoted '... free at the point of delivery' deliberately misleading punch-line that hides completely, the source of the mechanism of delivery and the huge amounts of tax payers money which will go direct into the pocket of the private sector as they take over healthcare services and provision of the UK. Claiming as he and his friends such as Allen Milburn do, that the public don't care who delivers the healthcare in the NHS as long as it remains free!! Be in no illusion, all this could have been developed within the NHS, but the political decisions were taken to de-fund the NHS on the way towards abolishing it and replacing it whether the US system of profit and healthcare denial resulting in the worst medical outcomes of any country of cancer survival rates amongst many other forms of illness and disease. As stated by campaign groups fighting to save the NHS, the US is a very bad example of how to care for a nations health:
The NHS no longer exists. The National Health Service was split into 42 areas by the Health and Care Act 2022, a profiteer’s charter. Remember it is those US companies responsible for their privatised system that are now over here wanting to make huge amounts of profit from the NHS. Source: The Independent / Commonwealth Fund / KNOP / Save Liverpool Women's Hospital Campaign / HCRG / Corporate Watch
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