NHS Reform: Democracy is for the Elite! So is Health Care!

Is it really that difficult to grasp! Our democracy is for the ELITE. Why pretend? So is Health Care!

Most people in well paid jobs (including those at the GMC) have health insurance. GPs have traditionally been gatekeepers and asked for specialist help when needed. If we are honest about private insurance it is not about Primary Care, that most of us have quick access to; it is about Specialist Care, from IVF to Caesarian Section ( and there are no Nurse Specialists doing that yet), from Appendectomy to Colonic Cancer treatment (and Bare Foot doctors in the Mao era cannot do the latter either), from keyhole knee work for Cricketers to full hip-replacements, from Stents to Heart Transplants, from Anorexia Nervosa to Schizophrenia, from Trigeminal Neuralgia to Multifocal Glioma, from prostate cancer to kidney transplant and I could go on and on.China realised in 1986 you need well trained Specialists to do those. We do not seem to learn from the mistakes of others.

When there are not enough specialists to go round in any country money is used to ration care.

So we are going to but in a peculiar manner as the NHS used to be state run and free. Reform is needed!!! Enter GP commissioning. If it is your GP doing the rationing it is no longer the State's problem.
Some very clever people indeed are working for the government. 

Is it Conspiracy or Cockup? You decide.

But strangely they thought there is still money to be made.

That is why many GPs in the consortia have links with private providers.

It is a sure way of directing patients to secondary care.

Great Barracuda waiting / ©2009 Am Ang Zhang

Rationing & Redistribution

Rationing of Health Care is unpopular at the best of times and different ways have been tried by the previous governments first through Fund Holding and later PCTs.  

It would have been very unpopular for PCTs to continue to ration health. They have been doing it one way or another and it has been a costly exercise for some PCTs. 

It has even caused unnecessary deaths.

The current concern for the NHS Reform is perhaps too focused on privatisation.

The main aim by some very clever people in government is that somehow there must be a way to limit health spending.

The first obvious way is to find someone that could do it without the blame coming back to the politicians who needs to worry about the next election or next job.

GP Commissioning was thought to be the answer as the blame would now be on the GPs.

Integration of Health Care

Integration of Health Care now carries a new meaning: integrated as long as it is all within the remit of Primary Care and not between Primary and Secondary Care. Yet there is only so much that Primary Care can do unless they started employing their own consultants and running there specialist hospitals. That is one way of saving money.

The other way is to refer to Any Qualified Provider, the new NHS speak for Private Providers. Better still if these are owned by the same organisations that own some of the GP practices. Believe me, it is already happening and it will spread.

How could this be done? Simple, NHS Foundation Hospitals will not stand a chance if they have to continue with the expensive and unprofitable conditions or expensive dialysis and Intensive Care that many private insurers will not touch. In the new world order, they will fail and be closed or be bought by private companies. We have the regulator called Monitor that will see to it.

Again it will not be the politician’s fault: just bad management.

The new structure of HSCB is perfectly geared towards failing FT Hospitals. Some will survive through high levels of private work for those from wealthy countries. There is only a limited number of specialists to go round in England and in fact in most countries.

Which means that there will be a long waiting list for NHS patients!!!

Rationing by any other name.

It really does not need a genius to work out that Foundation Hospitals if they fail will be bought up by private firms.

So there are not enough Consultants and shortage creates demand and you can name your price. Consultants do not really want to waste time in consortia arguing about the price of hips or knees. 

Privateers

A big portion of the NHS money will now be spent in the counting houses of the new Commissioning Offices. Gradually more and more of that money will be re-distributed to Privateers.

Those who could afford to will now get their own Health Insurance and when the Insurers refuse to cover some conditions you may have to return to the NHS. But who knows, it might just be too late then as those hospitals may no longer be there

In Health Care, death is irreversible.