Dr Bob Gill explains how privatisation is destroying the NHS as Starmer & Streeting support its takeover by vulture capital
If you want to understand why it is that the NHS was so
unprepared for the COVID pandemic and why it is that we have unprecedented
waiting lists, then watch this 20 minute video of Dr Bob Gill who explains it
all quite succinctly.
The NHS was the greatest achievement of the post-war Attlee
government. Gone were the days when if you couldn’t afford to see a doctor or
pay for drugs you simply had to suffer in silence or hope that a charity
cottage hospital would treat you.
We live in the age of neo-liberalism, which is another way of
saying that everything public is bad (except the Police/Army and Monarchy of
course) and everything private is good.
Dr Bob Gill
Yet we cannot rely on the Labour Party under Starmer to
oppose privatisation. His shadow Health Secretary West Streeting openly
supports the involvement of private companies on the pretext that it will help
cut waiting lists.
Yet this is a lie. The way to cut waiting lists is to train more
doctors and nurses, build more hospitals and transfer the money from our
increasing ‘defence’ (i.e. war) budget to health care. Private firms are
interested in one thing only – profit.
And where does that come from? Money
that would otherwise go into the NHS (and also further exploitation of NHS workers).
Streeting is a brazen liar. Why else would John Armitage, a
hedge fund founder and manager, who has given over £3 million to the Tories,
give £15,000 to Streeting? The Electoral Commission’s register of donations shows that Streeting reported receiving
this donation in January 2022.
Armitage, number 138 on the 2021 Times ‘rich list’, is
co-founder and director of the Egerton Capital hedge fund. Among
its almost £19bn of investments, Armitage’s fund owns shares worth almost £834m in UnitedHealth (UH), a vast US
private health corporation that has spent millions lobbying US politicians for its
interests.
UH has played a key role in the ‘americanisation’ of the NHS
that began under New Labour and continued apace under the Tories. See Shadow Health Sec Streeting takes large sum from Tory donor with huge
private health interests.
Not only
Streeting but Starmer himself has received £12,500 from Armitage. Now
why would this be? The answer is clear. Starmer intends to continue from where
the Tories left off. Nothing could better illustrate the political bankruptcy
of the Labour Party today and yet the ‘Socialist’ Campaign Group says next to
nothing. It refuses to call for Starmer to stand down whereas the Labour Right
had no such problems when Corbyn was the leader.
But the
NHS trade unions have also been pathetic. UNISON and GMB have stayed silent.
Indeed it is difficult to know whether or not the GMB is even concerned about
the effect of privatisation on its members.
UNITE has called out Streeting over his receipt
of Armitage’s donations but it has not done much else.
If anyone
is in any doubt about what a catastrophe a private insurance health system is
they should look to the United States where some 46 million adults don’t have private health care
insurance.That is almost 1 in 5 adults.
What that means is that if you are seriously ill you cannot get treated until
it is classified as an emergency and then you can be admitted via an A&E.
Yet even
if you do have private health insurance you often end up having to pay for extras,
things like drugs and other extra charges. The insurance companies, mindful of
their own profits, haggle over the nature of the treatment and sometimes simply
refuse to pay out if, for example you don’t get their permission for treatment
in advance or if you go to a hospital that isn’t on their list. These are the
benefits of privatisation.
Contrast
this with Cuba, 50+ years under a blockade from the United States. Despite its
lack of resources child
mortality rates (under 5 years, infant and neonatal) in Cuba have been lower than in the USA for many years. WHO
figures for 2016 for under 5 child mortality (U5M) show that Cuba has a U5M
rate of 5.5 per 1000 live births, whereas the USA has a U5M rate of 6.5 and
Costa Rica has a rate of 9.7.1 Cuba has the second-lowest U5M in
the Americas behind Canada with a rate of 4.9.
Despite the fact that one-fifth of its population are
excluded from coverage, the USA spends more per capita on health care than any
other country. Why? Because each stage
of the insurance process sucks up money, the process of billing, accountants etc.
add to the cost plus of course the mega profits at each stage.
So privatisation not only costs more but it is less efficient
all round yet Starmer and Streeting want to increase the privatisation of the
NHS and the trade unions that NHS workers belong say and do next to nothing.
That the GMB says nothing is not surprising. They have been found by the Report they
themselves commissioned to be institutionally sexist (and it implied institutionally racist
too). A corrupt, right-wing union, the main concern of Gary Smith, its General
Secretary and those around him is their own perks and privileges. And defending
the apartheid State of Israel.
We can already see what the future holds for the NHS from the
crisis in dentistry. 9/10 dentists
cannot offer appointments to adults on the NHS and 8/10 can’t do the same for
children. The BBC has revealed that we are at tipping point. The British Dental Association has said that the BBC’s research is ‘the most comprehensive and granular
assessment of patient access in the history of the service’.
People are resorting to pulling out their own teeth without
anaesthesia yet our so-called Opposition
says nothing about this because it’s more concerned with rooting out a
non-existent anti-Semitism.
I recommend watching Bob Gill’s video because what it shows is frightening.
