The NHS is officially doomed

I posted in September about the Tories determination to destroy the Health Service and open it up to privatisation. I am in debt to the Guardian newspaper who published an article today outlining how the Health and Social Care Act, passed last March, is designed to do just that. In other words, the NHS is doomed, and its official.

The Tories plans were never published because as the Guardian shows, Michael Portillo, an ex Tory MP and Cabinet Minister, told Andrew Neil on BBC One's This Week in January 2011: "They did not believe they could win an election if they told you what they were going to do." The Guardian goes on to show how an article in the British Medical Journal warned us that

"Entitlement to free health services in England will be curtailed by the Health and Social Care Bill currently before parliament. The bill sets out a new statutory framework that would abolish the duty of primary care trusts… to secure health services for everyone living in a defined geographical area".

But of course nobody was listening or believed them at the time, because after all that nice David Cameron assured us that the NHS was safe in the Tories hands and he wouldn't lie would he? And here is the opening of a report by Harrison Grant solicitors and the specialist barristers Stephen Cragg and Rebecca Haynes:

"The bill will remove the duty of the Secretary of State to provide or secure the provision of health services which has been a common and critical feature of all previous NHS legislation since 1946."

There you have it, the Secretary of State for Health no longer has a duty to provide or secure the provision of health services, and the primary care trusts no longer have a duty to provide services to everyone in their area. In other words, two of the fundamental founding principles of the NHS have been abandoned, its universality, in that everyone who needs medical treatement will get it, and its comprehensiveness covering all areas of health care. I trust the Guardian will excuse me if I simply quote what they say about this

We know how this works because we've seen it happen with NHS dentistry. If you're well-off you go private. If you're poor and there are no NHS dentists in your area willing to take you on, then you simply don't have a dentist. Imagine this happening with oncology, or cardiac medicine, or care of the elderly.

This is not some kind of warning, it has actually been placed on the statute books. This is of course, primarily aimed at immigrants and foreigners who take ill in this country (I am saying this, not the Guardian). But what about British citizens moving from one area of the country to another? What about if you are on holiday and you take ill, will you be refused, or handed a bill for any treatment you receive from another health trust?

Do you still think my description of our government's as evil is a bit over the top?

Your Servant

Doktor Kommirat