The Socialist 4 August 2010

Con-Dem cuts mean: we need ‘biggest movement since poll tax’

We need 'biggest movement since poll tax'

'Radical' cuts require serious action

Waltham Forest's Labour council faces opposition

Coventry campaigners fight cuts of £140 million

Swansea trades council leads battle for services

Campaigners answer Bristol's 'Big Conversation'

Cuts news: Mental health services facing the axe

NSSN pledged to fight cuts

Troops out now!

Afghanistan: US strategy in disarray

Oppose divisive academies policy

Talks resume at British Airways

Angry workers strike over pay freeze and bosses' bonuses

Fighting fire service cuts

Witch-hunted Unison activist wins tribunal

Unite general secretary election

We won't be a lost generation, fight for jobs and education!

No to privatisation of our universities

For real jobs, not slave labour

Profiting from wrecking the environment

Stop the Cardiff incinerator

Save Wanstead Flats

Daily Mail admits guilt over smearing Tamil hunger striker

Campaigning at Leeds Pride

Book now for the summer camp!

Socialism 2010 - a weekend of discussion and debate

Love Parade catastrophe was entirely preventable

Garment workers demand a living wage

Asda profiting from low pay

Tories put profits before patients

Rich just carry on getting richer

Fast news

The howlers' world and ours

How the banks rip us off

Previous issues, etc

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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.

In this issue

We need 'biggest movement since poll tax'