Alan Johnson and Health in England
I have just read an interview with Alan Johnson, the Health Secretary in England.He comes across for the most part as a model of reasonableness.
He believes in making proper use of the private sector in delivering health care within the NHS. So do I if it means better patient care and an improved NHS and all the signs are that it does. He is unwilling to dogmatically rule out the use of the private sector ;quite the reverse. Would that were the case in Wales.My fear being realised is that health care in England will continue to outstrip the performance of the NHS in Wales because of the naive closed-minded approach of the administration in Cardiff Bay.
I know that devolution enables us to do things differently in different parts of the UK but here we have a fundamental philosophical divergence of approach between Labour at Westminster and Labour in Wales. I would not mind were it not for the fact that Wales will lose out.
Dr Julian Tudor Hart said on January 16th, 2008 at 5:34 pm:
I’m not surprised that you agree with UK minister of health Alan Johnson about using the private sector to provide NHS care, as New Labour adopted Conservative policies for the NHS only months after it was first elected in 1997, and Labour’s first minister of health Frank Dobson promised to renationalise the NHS.
Have you any evidence at all that bringing private sector providers in to compete with NHS hospitals in England has either saved money or improved services? All over England,but not Wales, NHS hospitals have been forced to compete with privately owned diagnostic and treatmetn centres operating for profit. These do whatever they find profitable, leaving the most difficult work to the NHS, as well as their numerous failures, depending as they do on less experienced and less stable staff. A typical consequence is a report in the Wimbledon Guardian on 6 December 2007. Kingston Hospital has lost so much of its elective surgery to commercial competitors that its CE now proposes to bring in another private company to run its elective care, to compete more successfully, and to make over the hospital’s private wing to another company, sharing consequent profits to try to get out of the red. So people in Kingston will end up with all hospital services operating for profit.
Did they ever vote for this? No, they’ve never been asked. No public opinion poll has ever shown a majority even of Conservative voters in favour of shifting the NHS from a non-profit public service into a competitive marketplace. People generally know too much about market failure in USA to want their healthcare companies to take over the NHS here, but that is what is now going on in England, pushed by New Labour at Westminster. This is supported in principle by the Conservative Party, but you will of course be the first to criticise its consequences.
Thank God the Wales Assembly has resisted these policies, and we still have an NHS distinct operating as a public service distinct from business. Even in England, New Labour’s programme for more company-owned surgical treatment & diagnostic centres to compete with NHS hospitals is set to be cut by almost two-thirds, because they have threatened the solvency of so many hospitals without replacing them for work which can’t be so easily industrialised, although cancelled contracts are estimated to cost at least £200m (according to the Financial Times). This will still leave about £2bn of NHS work being done by for-profit companies, but if value for money really is the test applied by government, this retreat will continue.
Speaking for an overwhelming majority of UK doctors, including those in Wales, the editor of the British Medical Journal has concluded that despite a threefold rise in NHS spending in real terms since 1997, this market has failed (British Medical Journal December 1, 2007). Despite the best efforts of the Western Mail, most broadcasting, and your Party in Wales, people still have more faith in NHS Wales as a public service, than any of the companies so keen to take whatever they can make profit from, leaving its carcass to be funded by taxpayers.