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From: The Socialist issue 634, 4 August 2010: Con-Dem cuts mean: we need ‘biggest movement since poll tax’
It's a "them and us" world...
Tories put profits before patients
ONE PART of Tory health secretary Andrew Lansley's brutal scheme to privatise the NHS allows NHS foundation trusts to abolish what he called an 'arbitrary, ill thought out' cap.
The cap is on how much income the trusts could gain from selling services to sick people who can afford to buy them.
The Guardian reports that the ten most 'successful' trusts in attracting private income have all got plans for new hospital wings and wards for private patients.
Will cash be able to buy you health? That's what the coalition government wants - a clear choice between public waiting lists and private care - again for those who can afford it.
HCA, one of the world's largest private health care groups, already runs six hospitals in London. It will soon pay £14 million for a new private cancer centre at the NHS Christie hospital in Manchester.
Other NHS trusts are shopping round the world for rich private patients. Moorfields eye hospital plans to open another private hospital in Abu Dhabi.
Royal Brompton and Harefield, Britain's largest cardio-respiratory centre, runs a worldwide service offering patients a city guide and suggesting trips to nearby "high-end shopping facilities" such as Harrods.
If you (or your NHS Trust) don't live a Harrods lifestyle, however, things will be very hard.
We must fight to ensure there is no return to the pre-NHS situation where money determined whether a person could get treated or not.
Letting profit rule puts at risk everything the NHS was set up to achieve.
Join us today!
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