Nurses for Reform Blog

There have been a number of articles in the press over recent days about the leaking of government plans to abolish almost 200 Quangos. For me the most interesting is this article from the Daily Mail debating whether the quangos will really go or whether this is just a public relations exercise.

We know that the government have already bottled out and not followed through with plans to abolish the Food Standards Agency.  Will we find in the months and years to come that many of the quangos have merely been absorbed in to other bodies and that the only casualties will have been a few little groups that meet a couple of times a year and cost almost nothing, as predicted by Dan Lewis of the Economic Policy Centre?

I know for a fact there are people who work for organisations like the Health Protection Agency (one of the quangos supposedly under threat) who are confident that nothing bad will happen to them and that at most they will be merged in to some other public health body.

Only time will tell if this government really has the will to reform the quango system or whether they will bottle out and provide us with more spin and no real cost cutting.

This report from Daily Telegraph, details the decision on health and safety grounds, to make appropriate provision for smokers in the Royal Bournemouth Hospital grounds.

I am not here to debate whether people should or shouldn’t smoke, but people do have the right to make their own life style choices and this is not something that they should be persecuted for by state bodies such as the NHS.

I was listening to a discussion on this subject on the radio yesterday and what struck me about the sanctimonious comments, complaining that smokers were taking NHS resources, was that no-one stopped to consider just how much smokers contribute to the government coffers given the amount of tax there is on a packet of cigarettes now.!

Last Friday I spoke at the 2010 European Resource Bank, organised by the Taxpayers Alliance.

This is my speech.

I would like to begin by thanking Matthew Elliott and the staff of the Taypayers Alliance for inviting me to speak at this year’s European Resource Bank, and also to congratulate them on its success.

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I am the Director of Nurses for Reform.

I am also a Senior Nurse with more than 25 years experience working in both the NHS and the UK’s private healthcare sector.

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In addressing the subject of this session “Campaigning for healthcare reform” I would like to make several key points.

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In its campaigning, Nurses for Reform aims to influence opinion formers – academics, journalists and politicians – who in turn inform and influence the voting public.

This is done by placing articles in the press.

Media interviews.

Blogs.

Speeches.

And by networking at events like this one today.

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As a libertarian organisation, for NFR healthcare will only truly respond to consumers and customers, ageing or otherwise, when we get the state out of medicine.

When Margaret Thatcher was prime minister she privatized telephones.

Back then, no-one had ever heard of the mobile.

But look at the glories of where we have got to today.

The market is a process of discovery.

And NFR wants to unleash its potential across health and medicine.

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Today, sadly, there is no country in the world that has a great healthcare system, because there is no system in the world that is built on a genuine free market.

People talk of state and private medicine.

They talk of state and private healthcare sectors.

Yet, all these systems rely on professions that themselves rest on monopoly legislative favour.

In this country, to be a doctor you have to be registered with the General Medical Council.

To be a nurse, you have to be registered with the Nursing and Midwifery Council.

These are the underlying monopolies that we find in all countries.

These are the state monopolies that stifle training.

That lower standards.

That undermine innovation…

…This is the statism that kills people and that means our all healthcare systems cannot be as good as we want them to be.

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When it comes to America, not to mention other countries, Nurses for Reform is clear.

Demonopolise the professions.

Open up the whole system so people can voluntarily co-operate and coordinate better.

Deregulate insurance.

Move away from an imposed, employer based system.

Bring down barriers to entry.

Scrap the pseudo-science of State Sposored Health Technology Assessments.

I could go on…

In America, as in all other countries, we have got to stop the communism!

If the people in this room really are really serious about wanting good and glorious healthcare in the 21^st century, then we have to be clear ourselves what it will means to talk about a genuine, free market.

Thank you.

A report this month has shown that the number of complaints against the NHS has risen to its highest level yet at more that 101,000.

What astonishes me is that while seeing this and other evidence of NHS failure bodies like Unison are still claiming that the NHS is successful and that more money will solve all of its problems.

The truth is that money has been poured in to the NHS for decades and it has gradually and systematically failed its customers.

Standing in opposition to the principals of of life, liberty and property local government minister Grant Shapps has decided to introduce a busybody tyranny that will benefit many anti-freedom minded activists and campaigners.

If this press release is anything to go by David Cameron’s talk of a non-coercive big society will be still born.  When will these fools learn that what we want is less national and local regulatory interventionism? When will they learn that to build a truly free society you want less politics?

Those with an interest in the provision and funding of healthcare should definitely add this book to their reading list.

It is one of the best books written about health, science, politics and the medical establishment.

Or as The Times review put it ” An astute critic of modern medical humbug… devastatingly accurate”