Your NHS needs You

It seems a shame to be blogging about politics in the Christmas break, but I am sure you care about keeping the NHS as much as I do.

Have you heard of the Health and Care Bill 2021/2022 that is currently being pushed through Parliament? 

It entrenches privatisation within the NHS, harms patients and doctors, and increases profits for private healthcare corporations, especially from the United States.

My Aging Hippie friend Karen 

The Aging Hippie and me in California

Face-timed me on Christmas Eve. She was going to dinner at a friend's house and was going to take a lateral flow test before she went. I asked her how you get tests in the USA. She said you buy them from the pharmacist  - a pack of 2 tests costs $26.  That is £19.34 GBP.

Can you imagine?

In September 2015 when I arrived in Colorado, my always healthy heart felt weird, and Isaac took me to the Emergency room to get checked out. I was there for a couple of hours having tests. I got the all clear but the bill came to $12,000.*

Can you imagine?

We must not let our NHS be destroyed by the government.

There is a campaigning group called Your NHS Needs You which wants to renationalise the NHS.  In order to counter the Health and Care Bill they have gathered together research from some of the country’s leading experts on the NHS, which taken together, shows that the Bill:

• Reduces access to medical services and emergency services
• 
  
• Enables closures of services, pushing those who can afford to do so into paying for their healthcare.
• 
  
• Enables more public money to be diverted from patient care to private corporations and their shareholders.
• 
  
• Enables private companies to make decisions on allocating public healthcare budgets.
• 
  
• Completes the legal framework underpinning the transition of public healthcare assets into the private sector.
• 
  
• Moves us towards the United States model of privatised healthcare.
• 
  
• Abolishes the universal care guarantee long enshrined in the NHS.

You can find more specific research findings here which appear under the ones I have listed.

Please find time to write to your MP, and a Lord, and tell your friends about what is happening.

Don't assume that if you have a Labour MP you don't need to write. The Labour Party leadership has failed to make the arguments the public need to hear, or to come out in favour of renationalising the NHS. Added to this, Keir Starmer recently stated his support for ‘partnering with the private sector to deliver healthcare.

Please - do something this week. It's urgent. 

*My travel insurance paid the bill