Nurses for Reform Blog

In an attempt to describe to American opinion formers and to the the American public the realities of the NHS I have recently participated in a project by the Centre for Medicine in the Public Interest.

Here is part of an interview I gave them earlier this year.

On Tuesday evening I contibuted to a piece on the BBC flagship programme Newsnight (watch from 12 minutes), commenting on the new Tory proposals on Stroke and Cancer outcome targets.

Sixty Years on: Who cares for the NHS? has also been featured on the American blog Jackie Danicki.

I am very pleased to say that the Libertarian Alliance Blog has coverd my new book Sixty Years On: Who cares for the NHS?

My new book Sixty Years On: Who cares for the NHS? has been featured on the Adam Smith Institute Blog.

This is important because this is one of Europe’s most widely read political blogs.  In the UK it ranks as one of the country’s most popular centre-right blogs.

The Institute of Economic Affairs has today published my book: ‘Sixty Years On: Who Cares for the NHS?’

Significantly, the study lays bare for the first time the private views of a large number of the country’s most senior health politicians, policy advisers, academics, journalists and professionals.

Containing a series of devastating blows to the NHS as it prepares to celebrate its 60^th anniversary, the research shows that when speaking off the record a substantial majority of Britain’s health elite no longer believe in nationalised healthcare.

Instead, an overwhelming majority accept a much greater role for private provision – including private hospitals, clinics, GP services and dentists.

While the NHS is itself now charged with being ‘inequitable’, ‘two tier’, ‘rationed’ and ‘costly’, a majority also believe it is too ‘monopolistic’ and want to see a much greater role for private funding arrangements – which could include personal health savings accounts.

Looking at private funding arrangements versus the state, an overwhelming majority of respondents surveyed (65%) believe that because people’s healthcare is unpredictable, some of its costs will increasingly have to be covered by private sources: ‘government arrangements such as taxation cannot do it all’.

One of the most telling responses to the survey was a question about statutory restrictions on advertising. From the beginning, an important aspect of the NHS has been the use of restrictive practices to reduce information flows to consumers of healthcare – ostensibly for their own protection.

It is clear that opinion formers simply do not believe this justification. An overwhelming majority of the sample – 81% – regarded Treasury Ministers as having the most to gain from the statutory restrictions on advertising because its promotes consumer ignorance. In other words, the banning of advertising of pharmaceutical products is perceived as a measure designed to keep patients in the dark so that they do not demand expensive drugs. This is significant in light of the current controversy about NHS patients not being allowed to purchase additional drugs.

Overall, the results show that the world has dramatically moved on from the 1940s. Opinion formers are now much more aware of the in-built failures of the NHS. As people’s expectations increasingly outpace what the state can deliver, and as nationalised healthcare loses the battle for hearts and minds, behind the scenes opinion formers are starting to seriously consider market alternatives. Already, in many of their minds, the NHS is dead. They won’t go on the record and say as much, but that is privately what they think.

While in 1948 the NHS promised to provide “all medical, dental and nursing care”, today some 25 million people are again going private for various forms of healthcare. 7 million people have private medical insurance. 6 million have private health cash plans. 8 million people pay privately for complementary treatments. More than 250,000 privately self-fund each year for private acute surgery, more than one 1 million people during the life of a Parliament, and many millions more pay privately towards long-term care. This is not to mention a whole raft of other NHS services – such as NHS dentistry – that are collapsing before our eyes.

If the government now allow private top-ups for medicines and treatments without precluding people from the NHS they will only do so because they are playing catch up with what the public have long come to accept as reality. As such, this book illustrates what ordinary members of the public have known for several years. The NHS is no longer a dearly loved British institution. It is a Stalinist nationalised embarrassment that should now be quietly and deftly consigned to the dustbin of history.

Sixty Years On: Who Cares for the NHS? is available from the Institute of Economic Affairs, price £10:

Alternatively you can download the text here.

…Particularly as 25 million people already go private.

Nurses for Reform (NFR), the free market think tank run by nurses, welcomes today’s decision by the government to allow cancer tsar Professor Mike Richards to up-date the rules and allow private top-ups for NHS patients in England. NFR Director Dr Helen Evans RGN said:

Once Richards and the government explicitly allow private top-ups the NHS will be over and NFR welcomes this. First, supply was reformed with the use of the high quality and more efficient independent sector. Now, politicians and their appointees are turning to the demand side: funding. Health Secretary Alan Johnson was right to say that co-payments would breach the basis of the NHS. Today the government is preparing to essentially consign the core principals of the NHS to the dustbin of history.

Private sector floodgates: 25 million go private with more to follow.

NFR has long argued that the NHS is an essentially Stalinist, nationalised abhorrence and that Britain can do musch better without its so called ‘principals’. NFR has also consistently argued that the inexorable rise of people going private for their helthcare renders the Richards review long overdue.

While in 1948 the NHS promised ti provide “all medical, dental and nursing care”, Dr Evans says that “in 2008, 25 million Britons are already going private”:

As the NHS hits 60, politicians are increasingly mindful that 7 million people have private medical insurance; 6 million people have private cash plans; 8 million people pay privately for complementary treatments, more than 250,000 privately self-fund each year for private acute surgery (more than 1 million in the life of a parliament) and many millions more pay privately towards long-term care. This is not to mention that a whole raft of other NHS services – such as dentistry – that are crumbling before our eyes.

Evans concludes:

In 2008, at least 25 million people are now paying privately for things that the state once said it would cover. Allowing private top-ups for medicines and treatment means that government is finally attempting to catch up with what the public have already come to endorse.

- End -

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Editor’s notes: Nurses for Reform (NFR) is a growing pan-European network of nurses dedicated to consumer-orientated reform of European healthcare systems. In Britain it already has more than 100 subscribers. Its director, Dr. Helen Evans RGN, is a senior nurse with nearly twenty years experience in the National Health Service. Over the year her careerhas seen her work in some of Britain’s leadng hospitals including Senior Infection Control Nurse, Princess Akexandra Hospital NHS Trust; Infection Control Nurse, the Royal London Hospitals NHS Trust; Operating Theatre Sister, St. Bartholowew’s Hospital. Helen trained at Whipps Cross Hospital in London’s East End and holds a degree in Health Management from Anglia Ruskin University. In November 2006 she was awarded her Ph.D in Health Economics from Brunel University and has also been a guest lecturer at Anglia Ruskin University.

…Particularly as 25 million people already go private.

Nurses for Reform (NFR), the free market think tank run by nurses, welcomes today’s decision by the government to allow cancer tsar Professor Mike Richards to up-date the rules and allow private top-ups for NHS patients in England. NFR Director Dr Helen Evans RGN said:

Once Richards and the government explicitly allow private top-ups the NHS will be over and NFR welcomes this. First, supply was reformed with the use of the high quality and more efficient independent sector. Now, politicians and their appointees are turning to the demand side: funding. Health Secretary Alan Johnson was right to say that co-payments would breach the basis of the NHS. Today the government is preparing to essentially consign the core principals of the NHS to the dustbin of history.

Private sector floodgates: 25 million go private with more to follow.

NFR has long argued that the NHS is an essentially Stalinist, nationalised abhorrence and that Britain can do musch better without its so called ‘principals’. NFR has also consistently argued that the inexorable rise of people going private for their helthcare renders the Richards review long overdue.

While in 1948 the NHS promised ti provide “all medical, dental and nursing care”, Dr Evans says that “in 2008, 25 million Britons are already going private”:

As the NHS hits 60, politicians are increasingly mindful that 7 million people have private medical insurance; 6 million people have private cash plans; 8 million people pay privately for complementary treatments, more than 250,000 privately self-fund each year for private acute surgery (more than 1 million in the life of a parliament) and many millions more pay privately towards long-term care. This is not to mention that a whole raft of other NHS services – such as dentistry – that are crumbling before our eyes.

Evans concludes:

In 2008, at least 25 million people are now paying privately for things that the state once said it would cover. Allowing private top-ups for medicines and treatment means that government is finally attempting to catch up with what the public have already come to endorse.

- End -

—————————————————————————————

Editor’s notes: Nurses for Reform (NFR) is a growing pan-European network of nurses dedicated to consumer-orientated reform of European healthcare systems. In Britain it already has more than 100 subscribers. Its director, Dr. Helen Evans RGN, is a senior nurse with nearly twenty years experience in the National Health Service. Over the year her careerhas seen her work in some of Britain’s leadng hospitals including Senior Infection Control Nurse, Princess Akexandra Hospital NHS Trust; Infection Control Nurse, the Royal London Hospitals NHS Trust; Operating Theatre Sister, St. Bartholowew’s Hospital. Helen trained at Whipps Cross Hospital in London’s East End and holds a degree in Health Management from Anglia Ruskin University. In November 2006 she was awarded her Ph.D in Health Economics from Brunel University and has also been a guest lecturer at Anglia Ruskin University.

As this article in Saturday’s Daily Telegraph demonstrates, in future the NHS will not be there for the seriously ill.

More soon on this from NFR.

This tragic story speaks for its self. Two beautiful young women who should have their whole lives before them are dying of a preventable disease because the NHS is rationing smear tests.

Any Americans who think that the NHS system is one worth emulating beware. If you try to develop an NHS style health care system you will be reading home grown stories such as this in a few short years.