NHS reforms will return health service to 1930s
NHS reforms will return health service to 1930s
The government’s NHS reforms will return medical care to the standards of the 1930s and 40s, a leading doctor has warned.
He claimed that for patients in some parts of the country, care would return to “what we thought we had left behind when we founded the NHS in 1948”.
Private healthcare firms could “cherry pick” patients with the simplest conditions to treat while local hospitals could face closure if they are forced to compete with independent, profit-driven healthcare providers, he said.
This would leave the NHS as a “provider of last resort” for patients denied treatment by private practises because their conditions are too expensive to deal with.
His comments will increase the pressure upon ministers over the health and social care bill which still needs to be passed through Parliament.
Dr Porter said in an interview with The Guardian: “Very deliberately the government wishes to turn back the clock to the 1930s and 1940s, when there were private, charitable and co-operative providers of healthcare.
“But that system failed to provide comprehensive and universal service for the citizens of this country. That’s why health was nationalised. But they’re proposing to go back to the days before the NHS.”
Dr Porter said the “inevitable effect” of the bill would be “patchwork provision” of services across the UK with the most vulnerable unable to get the treatment they need or having to travel long distances to do so.
He warned that the UK’s healthcare system could resemble the United States where there are “quite big geographical disparities” in the care available and where “tens of millions of people can’t get access to high-quality treatment”.
Last week the BMA published a poll which it said showed that most GPs opposed government plans to give them control over £80billion of NHS budgets.
About 65 per cent of family doctors believe competition between providers, including NHS and private companies, will reduce the quality of patient care, while 61 per cent said the Government’s reforms mean they will spend less time with patients.
The Department of Health denied that patient care would suffer under the reforms and criticised the BMA for the attack.
A spokesman said: “We are modernising the NHS so we can offer patients high-quality care and improved health outcomes.”
“The BMA have historically opposed giving patients a choice of voluntary, independent and public sector services. But it is not in the interests of patients to bow to their demands.”
Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, last week amended his NHS bill to prevent hospitals from undercutting prices charged to treat patients amid fears that the sick would receive low-quality cheaper care.
