Privatisation and Debt are dragging the NHS into Crisis!
Over the past 40 years every government has gradually brought private companies into our public health services. To achieve this they have:
Outsourced more profitable clinical procedures and “ancillary” services like cleaning and catering
Used PFI – the private finance initiative to build and maintain hospitals. This loads hospitals down with debt to the banks and has reduced bed numbers
Constantly reorganised the NHS
Slowly squeezed NHS funding
Private providers are now rampant in the NHS and can be seen running, for instance, ambulances, Urgent Care services, GP practices, all sorts of testing, on-going care like muscular-skeletal and sexual health services. In mental health they operate over half the inpatient beds for children and teenagers. A US firm, Palantir, has huge contracts to integrate all NHS patient data.
Recently a firm owned by Virgin Health won a £1.8billion contract to become the monopoly provider of community-provided services for Somerset and Wiltshire.
Last year Lewisham and Greenwich Trust paid out to private companies £34million on its two PFI contracts. On a borrowing of £154m it will repay a total of £1billion.
Private healthcare companies are making £10 million a week from the NHS. The UK spent a total of £125 billion on non-NHS providers since 2012-13.
For years the NHS worked brilliantly without the private sector and it can do so again!
We say:
Healthcare must be based on need not profit. It must be publicly provided by an NHS which pays living wages to all staff and insists on high standards.
Kick private profit out of the NHS! Bring all services and operations back in house! What you can do: