Charlie Brooker on the NHS reform bill

Tomorrow's Daily Mirror front page

The front page of tomorrow's Daily Mirror sums up the position we now face with the ConDems voting the Health & Social Care bill through its final stages of parliament.  Tomorrow I will post details of which way MPs voted so you can remember at the general election in 2015, when the NHS is likely to be in a lot worse position than it is now.

Letter to The Press on NHS Drop the Bill petition

In today's Press

ON Tuesday, Conservative and Lib Dem members of the Parliamentary back bench business committee decided to vote against the Drop the Bill petition against changes to the NHS being discussed in Parliament.

This new e-petition site was launched with much fanfare claiming that petitions with more than 100,000 signatories could launch a debate in Parliament; as of today the petition has more than 163,000 signatories.

It is amazing that the Tory-led government continue ploughing on ahead with this misguided Bill despite the mass opposition from NHS professionals and the public. This latest move just shows the disdain the Government has for public opinion, with minister after minister claiming that we just don’t understand the Bill. In reality many people do understand the changes and this is why we are so vehemently opposed.

We are now moving into the final days of the Bill going through Parliament. Please take the time to make your opposition known before it is too late. You can also pledge to take part in the online rally against the Bill on March 7 at goingtowork.org.uk/

An appeal from Michael Moore to support the NHS

Further vandalism of the NHS as Con Dems axe NHS Direct

The Tories claimed in the general election:

"We can't go on like this. I'll cut the deficit, not the NHS"

This may be technically correct, as they have ring-fenced the budget.  But they are using some of the funding for a pointless and dangerous re-organization of the NHS and to pay for it they are cutting services.

The latest example of this is the announcement yesterday in the Guardian that the Con Dems plan to scrap NHS direct replacing it with a new budget service called NHS 111.

Currently forty percent of NHS Direct's staff are trained nurses.  NHS 111 will have one trained nurse to every 25 call centre staff, in other words only 4% of the staff will be professional nurses.  The other call operators will go on a 60 hour training course.

As soon as the public realise that the new call centre is not staffed by health professionals they will start putting extra demand on casualty and out of hour GP services, rather than risk receiving unprofessional advice from call centre operators.

I have used NHS Direct on more than one occasion in the past and was satisfied with the professional advice I received to save me having to put demand on other NHS services.  I would not use the proposed new service for health advice.

The biggest risk could come from a member of staff offering poor or incorrect advice to a caller which could result in them not seeking professional medical advice when they do require it.

The cost to the public of NHS Direct is £123 million a year.  This is money well spent, which reduces the demand on other areas of the NHS.  We must fight to defend this and you can start by signing the petition at http://www.savenhsdirect.co.uk/

There is no need for these cuts.  The government would not need to be looking for cuts if it was not for their expensive and dangerous re-structuring of the NHS which is going to cost the tax payer £1.8 billion a year.

We have to fight the cuts and the Con Dem vandalism of the NHS before it is too late and see all the improvements of the past 17 years thrown away.

A short video explaining why the ConDem plans equal the privatisation of the NHS

Letters in local press opposing Lib Con NHS "reforms"

I got the following letter in The Press today, there was also letters from York Labour councillors James Alexander and Ruth Potter, which you can read here

THE Tory/Lib Dem coalition has obviously never heard of the saying: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. Last month, the Commonwealth Fund judged the NHS to be the second-best health-care system in the world and top for efficiency, yet despite this the Government wish to undo the improvements made over the past 17 years, and fundamentally reform the way the NHS works.
It makes no sense whatever to scrap primary care trusts (PCTs) and put GP groups in charge of funds. Such a move will create a postcode lottery for health, and the fund managers will be less accountable than the current PCTs.

Like many of the other changes and cuts we are going to see over the duration of this Parliament, these are based on Tory ideology, and not what is best for the public sector and its users. The only people who will benefit from these changes will be private health providers, as waiting lists grow and those who can afford to switch to private health care.

It is imperative that we join the battle to save the NHS before it is too late and join the campaign against the proposed reforms.

Andy Burnham on Lib Con NHS reform

In today's Independent on Sunday Andy Burnham writes a very important article challenging the Lib Con reforms on the NHS.   I strongly recommend that everyone who is concerned about the direction the government are taking the NHS in reads this article.  It clearly highlights the major flaws of a plan which could end the NHS as we know it.

Andy Burnham is not my first choice for Labour leader, but he has been excellent on calling the Lib Cons to task over their reform plans.

The end of his article is a rallying call we should all respond to:

So, my message to patients, doctors and staff who hate these plans as much as I do is this – get ready for the mother of all battles. Labour will bring forward a campaign over the summer to show the strength of opposition to these plans before the health Bill arrives in Parliament in the autumn.

We will defend our party's finest creation with everything we've got from a Bill that threatens to unpick its very fabric.

I would also recommend you join the following two Facebook campaigns:

Hands of our NHS

National General Protest Day to Save the NHS