Tory NHS Privatisation and its Labour Advisors

Which political party do you trust to save our NHS?  or is it too late to be saved?

Lord Patrick Carter, a Labour peer, is advising Tory Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt on how hospital budgets can be better spent.

Carter (Baron Carter of Coles) co-founded private nursing home company Westminster Health Care in 1985 with Martin Bradford. And now, he's just suggested that bed-blocking in NHS hospitals could be solved by sending patients awaiting discharge to,,,, you guessed it,,,,, private nursing homes.

In an attempt to recoup losses in the NHS brought about by his previous leader, the warmongering, NHS privatising 'Tony Blair'; Lord Carter has joined forces with NHS England boss Simon Stevens, a former Labour Councillor for Brixton, in advising Hunt on how to privatise the NHS.

Ironically, Stevens who also advised Tony Blair on health policy, also advised New Labour on how to get the private sector more involved in the NHS.
He supported Andrew Lansley’s NHS reforms which led to the Health & Social Care Act 2012 passing through parliament resulting in opening up the NHS to private companies, formulation of CCGs, and the STP plans we are seeing now across England.

Oh, and while we're at it, Simon Stevens wants the Conservative Michael Gove’s free school policy applied to the NHS.

The NHS must be really be in the sh1t if they are taking advice from a former president of American healthcare company UnitedHealth, the largest private health insurance company in the US.

Stevens' previous experience seems to be coming useful in preparing the NHS for privatisation, and for the introduction of a US-style healthcare system.

Times of austerity gives the Tories just the opportunity they need to implement allsorts of policies they otherwise wouldn't.

Remember austerity in the 80's amid the recession?
The Tories then began to propose privatisation as a potential panacea. Conservative MP Geoffrey Howe extolled the "discipline" of the marketplace in the NHS via commissioning.

The emerging doctrine was that privatisation would make the large utilities more efficient and productive, and thus make British capitalism competitive relative to its continental rivals. In this period, the government sold off Jaguar, British Telecom, the remainder of Cable & Wireless and British Aerospace, Britoil and British Gas. The focus had shifted to privatising core utilities.

But now, after being elected in 2015, they're back, they're bad, and this time they're after privatising our NHS. And it seems they have the support of Labour peers and former Labour councillors to nudge everything along!

They all more or less seem to support the same disastrous policies for dismantling our NHS.

Well, considering the UK electorate generally votes Tory or Labour 'cos their dad did' it seems we need to make a decision on which laughable party would better protect the NHS at the next election.

I don't trust any of the mainstream parties, but there are rumblings in the Labour movement that a bloke with the initials JC would uphold his promises when elected to government, to reverse the damages done to the NHS since the Blair years.

Yet time is of the essence, and the next election is a long way off.
Not heartwarming considering the tories are currently steaming ahead with plans to make full use of the previous coalitions H&SC Act and fully open up the market to privateers and implement Simon Steven's 'five year forward view'.

Between now and the next election in 2020 the only hope we have of saving our NHS is for the people to come up with their own ideas, their own 'plans' to prevent the private sector onslaught.

If you do have any ideas on how to save the NHS from privatisation, it might be wise to keep them to yourself. At least for now...

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Lord Carter's plans for saving the NHS £5bn a year
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34589128

What's Stevens doing running our NHS?
https://leftfootforward.org/2014/04/4-things-you-should-know-about-new-nhs-england-chief-simon-stevens/

NHS internal market - a history of privatisation

A moment of honesty is required - New Labour began the dismantling of our NHS