Conservatives begining to privatise Medical Care in the UK?

[SJBarley]

This is copied and pasted from the liverpool echo's website -





PREGNANT women in Wirral will be cared for by a private company rather than the NHS.
The borough’s primary care trust (PCT) approved an application from a company called One to One to provide a “community midwifery service”.
But the move was branded “sinister” and privatisation “by the back door” by Wirral’s Labour group leader Steve Foulkes.
The new company would look after women throughout their pregnancy and be responsible for delivering babies at home. Community midwifery services are currently provided by NHS hospitals including Arrowe Park and Liverpool Women’s.
Today unions told the ECHO they were watching developments closely and had some concerns about the effect on NHS staff already working within the community.
Frances Day-Stirk, Director of Learning Research and Practice development at the Royal College of Midwives, said: “The RCM has no objections to relatively small-scale provision of services by non NHS providers. However we would be deeply concerned if a tendering of services out to a private organisation led to job losses among NHS staff.”
The company has already completed a pilot scheme in Wirral caring for 150 women focused on deprived areas and teenage mums. The service was secured under the Government’s new “any willing provider” contracts.
An NHS Wirral spokesman said: “Arrowe Park is working with One to One to ensure patients who book with them receive appropriate services when access to hospital-based maternity services are required.”




So guys, is this an iscolated incident or does this mark the beginning of an attempt to privatise medical care in the UK?

[flobdob]

The Conservatives are not beginning to privatise the NHS.

Labour did that.

[Pretty Flaco]

Hope you don't get things as privatized as the US over there. I remember talking about the protests over rising college prices in the UK and my class laughing because of how substantially higher US prices are... what is it, like 4x to 5x higher over here?
But that's a bit off at a tangent.


How does medical care in the UK work?

[SJBarley]

Well i'll do my best to explain in simple terms taxes are higher here and part of this goes towards the NHS, they then provide medical care to everyone free of charge though you do have the option to pay for care through private institutions such as Bupa (provided your bourgeousie and have the money to waste) and yeah the main reason we were up in arms against the cuts were due to the fact we had been told by the man who is our deputy primeminister that they would not change (and most of us have no way of paying for univeristy until many years after we leave)

[flobdob]

Ostensibly on a very basic level people contribute to National Insurance, which entitles access to medical care on point of need.

The reality is somewhat more complicated, however, after sweeping reforms made by the last Labour government began the bit-by-bit privatisation of the system. Most notably, the PFI system started by Labour and the creation of Foundation Hospitals made severe inroads into them. The recent white paper by Andrew Lansley merely builds on this. (http://revolutionarycommunist.org/index.php/health-matters/2157-kill-the-bill--not-the-nhs-frfi-220-aprilmay-2011)

If you want an insight, have a look at Allyson Pollock's excellent book NHS Plc - it's a great primer on some of the politics of healthcare in Britain, and a warning shot to all around the world who face attacks upon health systems where they exist.