Health Secretary Alan Johnson and Prime Minister Gordon Brown have announced a new NHS constitution which will mark the July celebrations for its 60th anniversary. Johnson says that this would commit the NHS to providing ‘equal access to care, available at the point of need, regardless of ability to pay, personal to the individual patient and achieved within a tax-funded system that demonstrates value for money’.
Johnson has also declared that competition is good for the NHS and that he intends to continue the expansion of the private sector into primary care with plans for 250 GP-led health centres, many run by private organisations with GPs as employees. Such business opportunities were discussed at a recent meeting with representatives of 400 private companies, of which Richard Branson’s Virgin group was one.
‘I am convinced that the decisions [on competition] I have taken would have been taken by Patricia Hewitt’, Johnson said. No doubt he approves of former Health Secretary Hewitt’s new jobs. She has been employed as a special consultant for pharmacy group Alliance Boots and as a senior adviser to the private equity firm Cinven. A few days a year of her time, and yet she will alleg edly pocket over £100,000. Alliance Boots has been given the right to open GP surgeries in its shops and Cinven has recently taken over 25 BUPA hospitals in Britain.
With devolution there are now distinct differences in health provision in England, Scotland and Wales. The Welsh Assembly has so far resisted the involvement of big business in their public service. In Scotland there has been much more opposition to the opening up of GP services to large corporations. No commercial contracts have yet been awarded in Scotland and public campaigning has prevented the Harthill practice in Lanarkshire from being contracted out to PFI giant SERCO. However, when Tayside Health Board refused an application by a GP practice in the remote area of Kinloch Rannoch to stop providing out-of-hours service, the practice appealed and won. When a local resident applied for legal aid to appeal against this decision, they were turned down. Residents are now travelling miles to seek health care out of hours. Grampian NHS Trust has set up G-Med which in turn subcontracts agencies such as Cherry Tree Medical which has recently moved to Poland to recruit Polish doctors who travel to Scotland to do out-of-hours GP work for £80-200 per hour.
Ama Sumani
The barbarity of the government’s decision to abolish free NHS treatment for failed asylum seekers was demonstrated by the case of Ama Sumani, who was de ported to Ghana in early January in the middle of life-saving treatment for terminal cancer in a Cardiff hospital. This will not be available to her in Ghana. Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights forbids degrading and inhumane treatment. Judicial rulings have found that deporting those undergoing medical treatment does not amount to inhumane treatment. Lin Homer, chief executive of the Borders and Immigration Agency defended the decision to deport Ama: ‘it is one of the things that makes being a caseworker in the agency an incredibly difficult job’. Down with privatisation! Health care for all!
Hannah Caller
