NHS BILL GUIDE

As a lot of people don't understand what the Heath Bill means, I thought that I would put this togther to expalin some of the key points.

- 49% of the income from each NHS hospital will be able to come from private health companies. There is to be no investment to expand NHS hospitals to cope with the extra private patients. The result is that there will be far less capacity for NHS patients.

- Private health companies and the NHS will be bidding against each other for contracts. This means that the NHS will have to spend a fortune on marketing, presentations, advertising, consultants etc. etc. (which means less money spent on actual healthcare).

- There will be no candour (transparency) throughout the NHS so they won't be required by statutory law to tell you if, and how they may have harmed you, how your child may have died etc. Conservative Lords defended this in the House of Lords by saying they didn't want the NHS to be sued for negligence so it was better that people didn't have legal rights to know the truth when things go wrong.

- Private health companies used by the NHS won't require indemnity insurance should things go wrong.

- GP surgeries will no longer be limited to patients in their own area. This means that some GP surgeries will go bust or merge so people will have to travel further to see a GP.

- Patients may not have such a wide choice of where to have treatment. Instead you will be limited to the health companies that your GP practice has contracts with. If you want to go to a different hospital then you may need to change your GP to one in another practice outside of your local area.

- It will be back to the postcode health lottery with different treatments available in different areas.

- GPs will be rationing healthcare. Can you be confident that you will be receiving impartial advice, being given treatment that you actually need, not being given treatment that you need, or whether the GP is receiving perks for sending you to a particular healthcare provider of which they might even own shares?

- The govt has said that NHS hospitals won't be saved should they fall into financial difficulties. They will have to be given to private companies or close.

- NHS hospitals are regarded as cheaper to run than private hospitals, so some private hospitals may close and use NHS hospitals as and when required.

- The govt say that GPs will be doing commissioning, but the truth is that GPs will have to put it in the hands of others to do it for them. US health companies are already bidding.

- NHS PCTs (who currently do the commissioning of healthcare) are to close by April 2013 with the loss of many thousands of NHS jobs. The cost of redundancies is estimated at about a billion pounds, and the cost of setting up the GP consortia to replace them is estimated at more than 2 billion pounds. Billions of pounds could be saved by simply putting some more health professionals on the boards of NHS PCTs.

- Private healthcare companies will be able to challenge every commissioning decision. The legal cost to the NHS will be truly enormous.

- On the Boards of every GP Consortia will be local councillors and they are to be paid ?80 per hour.

Posted By: Larry Hagman, Feb 23, 12:20:38