Link to this page: http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/issue/546/6363
From The Socialist newspaper, 3 September 2008
NHS 'surplus' = cuts in care
HEALTH DEPARTMENT officials have announced that the government's spending policies will result in an expected NHS budget surplus of £1.75 billion by the end of the financial year.
Dave Carr
But patients denied life-saving drugs and treatments and NHS workers and communities facing cutbacks, (including ward and A&E closures), are fuming over this massive budget underspend.
The 'surplus' comes two years after the then health secretary, Patricia Hewitt, banned health trust chiefs from 'rolling over' any deficits to the next financial year.
(Many NHS trusts are cash-strapped, mainly because of funding financially punitive privatisation schemes.) This policy resulted in 23,000 nursing jobs being axed in England and Wales and widespread hospital ward closures.
The surplus announcement coincides with news that NICE (the quango that approves the use of drugs in the NHS) has vetoed four new drugs for treating kidney cancer (despite their use elsewhere in Europe and North America) because it deemed them to be 'not cost effective'.
Although Primary Care Trusts aren't legally obliged to accept NICE recommendations, inevitably its decisions lead to a postcode lottery of treatments for patients.
The chief executive of NICE also had to publicly apologise after NICE took two-and-a-half years to evaluate the drug Lucentis for treating an age-related eye disease. During this time thousands of patients lost their sight.
So when the government boasts of achieving an NHS budget surplus, it really means cuts to patient care.
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In The Socialist 3 September 2008:
'Them and us' economy hits the rocks
Inequality - the world's deadliest disease!
Socialist Party editorial
Russia / Georgia war exposes limits of West
Socialist Party workplace news
Trades Union Congress: Building a real leadership against the bosses
John Mc Donnell MP protests at Unison witch-hunt
London buses: Strikers pack picket lines
Fight threat to Ford Transit plant jobs
Coastguards strike over bank holiday in pay protest
Socialist Party feature
Building a new workers' party: trade unionist initiative needed
International socialist news and analysis
Poland: Biggest workers' demo since the 1990s
Socialist Party campaigns
Arrested for selling The Socialist
Winners and losers at the Beijing Olympics
Water quality threat to health
Adding colour to The Socialist
Socialist Students
School and college students fighting back!
Socialist Party review
Inside Egypt: the land of the Pharaohs on the brink of a revolution
Socialist Party NHS campaign
Swollen profits, suffering patients
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