Great Britain opts to privatize hospitals

For the first time in 62 years, the National Health System (NHS) will see hospitals, private healthcare provides and GPs competing for patients who will now be able to choose treatment and care. Under the
new plans, that are still very controversial, more than 24,000 management staff could be cut.

With a population of over 62 million, the UK is a great power with a leading economic, cultural and political influence on the world stage. As the world’s first industrialised country, today it is the world’s
sixth largest economy. So why isn’t this affluence reflected in it’s health system? Why do 45,000 people write to the the UK government’s department of health a year complaining about the horrific treatment
they received a a public patient?

Well since the UK’s Health Secretary Andrew Lansley took office in the middle of 2010, his principal aim was to shake up the current health system. And last week the UK government unveiled its brand new
health bill on NHS reform.

The main measures of the bill are the following:

- Giving new consortiums of GP’s across England the job of commissioning the healthcare they feel is appropriate for their patients.

- Giving GPs much more responsibility for controlling the budget.

- Setting up a new independent body called Healthwatch- this would look into complaints and monitor the performance of local health providers.

- Setting up a new body called Public Health England to improve public health and reduce health inequalities between the richest and poorest.

- Make all hospitals in England become foundation trust hospitals (semi-independent- in this case hospitals could earn money by treating a certain amount of private patients).

- Cutting the red tape of the NHS but getting rid of over 150 primary care trusts(PCTS) and 10 strategic health authorities by 2013.

- Cutting management costs by 45%

- Reducing quangos like the Health Protection Agency and Human Fertilisation etc.

So although perhaps on paper, the proposals sound good as usual, when the UK government takes out it’s scissors to introduce any type of cutbacks, it is the poor people who are always affected. And in the case of this radical NHS revamp, not only will the poor get poorer but it could actually favour the rich as they will be mobile enough to travel in search of the best medical deal unlike poor, immobile patients. According the Laurence Buckman, the Chairman of the British
Medical Associations GP group, the new reform could see ‘the poor, elderly, infirm and terminally ill losing out to richer patients who can shop around and demand the ‘right’ to see a doctor’.

At the moment, the UK spends around 8.4% of its GDP on healthcare, 0.5 percent below the Orgaanisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development average and one percent below the EU average.