Nurses for Reform Blog

Yet again the Medical profession has the Government where it hurts!  To meet the key objective of getting a high proportion of the UK population vaccinated against pandemic (swine) flu, the Department of Health is having to pay off the General Practitioners

This is no different to the 1948 battle to establish the National Health Service.  When the medical profession in the shape of the British Medical Association (BMA) threatened to derail the process, the then Health Minister Aneurin Bevan claimed that to get the doctors on side he had had to “stuff their mouths with gold”

NFR believes that it is time that the medical profession stopped holding their patients to ransom and using the NHS to broker these special payments for work.  The time has come for doctors to be truly independent and for them to bid in a competitive market for work such as this.  While the government remains the sole funder of the vaccination programme’s and indeed most other healthcare, it must stop being blackmailed by the medical profession and open up all healthcare provision to competitive tender, therefore getting a much better deal for the taxpayer.

I am so fed up with reading negative headlines about  drug companies making profits from swine flu in the UKs National Press.  The Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph seem to have the biggest hang ups about this.

So let’s get a couple of things clear.  First, scientists and drug companies invest vast amounts of money in the development of drugs, it costs them a fortune.  If they don’t make a profit they will not have the incentive or funding to go on to make more scientific discoveries and new products in the future.  The media have to accept this and get over it!

Second, and in my opinion, far more importantly, almost everyone involved professionally in the flu pandemic (or in fact any aspect of health care) will make a profit from it.  Every Doctor, Nurse, Physiotherapist, Social Worker, Porter, Cleaner, Occupational Therapist, Pharmacist and Hospital Manager will earn money from carrying out their jobs, i.e. they will make a profit.  As too will every journalist who has one of these ridiculous stories published, as I doubt very much that they are submitting their copy out of pure altruism!