The Internet is a funny thing – very useful as a research
tool at times, sometimes weird.
Last week Google News threw up something spooky from
leftfield – I homed in on it because I thought it was another new privatisation,
then I realised it was a very old article from 2006 and it seemed to have been
put out by the Guardian by accident. I’ve put my comments at the end;
A secret
plan to privatise an entire tier of the NHS in England was revealed prematurely
yesterday when the Department of Health asked multinational firms to manage
services worth up to £64bn.
The
department's commercial directorate placed an advertisement in the EU official
journal inviting companies to begin "a competitive dialogue" about
how they could take over the purchasing of healthcare for millions of NHS
patients.
The
advertisement should not have appeared until after ministers announced the
policy next month.
Unison
called on the TUC to convene an emergency meeting to respond to the
government's "fundamental breach of trust". Frank Dobson, the former
health secretary, said: "If this is not privatisation of the health
service, I don't know what is. It is about putting multinational companies in
the driving seat of the NHS."
Lord
Warner, the health minister, defended the policy in a statement to the Guardian
at 3.46pm yesterday but had changed tack at 6.05pm. He said he was withdrawing
the advertisement to correct "a drafting error", but insisted the
contracting out of NHS management would go ahead.
The
advertisement asked firms to show how they could benefit patients if they took
over responsibility for buying healthcare from NHS hospitals, private clinics
and charities. The plan would give private firms responsibility for deciding
which treatments and services would be made available to patients - and whether
NHS or private hospitals would provide them.
Under the
present system, this commissioning work is handled by local NHS managers
employed by primary care trusts. Under the new system, the PCTs would contract
out the commissioning to big healthcare management consortiums with greater
purchasing muscle.
Contenders
for the contracts are likely to include big US companies such as United Health
and Kaiser Permanente. They may be joined by British insurers such as Bupa and
PPP and their EU rivals.
The
advertisement, in the Official Journal of the European Union, said the NHS was
making a "step change from a service provider to a commissioning-led
organisation". The PCTs would be able to contract out procurement,
financial management and human resources. Initially there would be a four-year
framework agreement covering the whole of England, but the value would depend
on how many PCTs agreed to the scheme. It was not clear last night how much
pressure there would be on them to do so.
Karen
Jennings, head of health at the public service union Unison, said: "This
is such a fundamental breach of trust that we are asking the TUC to get
together a meeting of all health unions to thrash out a strategy. It is a
contract to privatise the whole of primary care across the UK.
"There
is a real danger that contracts will be awarded to the bidder promising the
largest savings. It is a fundamental change in Labour party policy. It is a
disgrace that jobs of health visitors, community midwives, occupational
therapists and district nurses are under threat or may be transferred to the private
sector."
Lord Warner
said: "The government has no plans to privatise the NHS." He added
that the contract advertised in the official journal would give PCTs access to
expert help to improve commissioning of services, without going through
expensive and time-consuming local tenders.
Now, I would never have searched this out unless it had been
thrown out randomly. What’s interesting is that the policy (as far as I know)
was never carried out by the then Labour Government of Tony Blair, it was
drowned in protests.
What is interesting is that, with a bit of tweeking, this is roughly
what happened this year; the Primary Care Trusts were abolished at enormous
expense and with the loss of all those years experience in organising medical
services. In their place came the CCG’s – commissioning groups of local
Doctors’s but, in reality controlled by central guidelines and forced to put
all NHS services out to tender.
Which in effect, is the privatisation of that segment of
healthcare revealed by accident in 2006 – it’s just that it won’t be managed by
efficient multinationals but by amateurish groups of busy doctors.
Different government, slightly different proposals, same
effect. The common theme is the civil servants of the Department of Health and
the bureaucrats of the NHS – like Sir David Nicholson. And that nobody ever
voted for any of this.
Everything changes yet everything stays the same.
(Proust)
Neil Harris
(a don’t stop till you drop production)
No comments:
Post a Comment