A socialist programme for the NHS

  • Bring the NHS into public ownership and rebuild it as a publicly funded service free at the point of use, with immediate cash to end the crisis of under-funding.
  • Remove the trusts, abolish the internal market. Representatives of NHS workers, trade unions and health service users should make decisions about how the NHS is run and what its priorities are.
  • No to health privatisation and ‘the market’.
  • Abandon the Private Finance Initiative (PFI). No more profiteering by construction companies and banks. All new hospitals to be built with public funding, not for private profit. They should also use direct labour.
  • Nationalise the pharmaceutical industry, the pharmacy chains and medical supply industry under working-class control and management to end the massive subsidy these parasites drain from the NHS. Integrate these services into a democratically controlled NHS.
  • A socialist programme to eliminate poverty and inequality – the biggest killer and cause of ill-health.