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 21st century, then we have to be clear ourselves what it will means to talk about a genuine, free market.
Thank you.