Patients before profits

No hospital closures

A QUARTER of NHS trusts are running deficits and ten of them are
running a deficit of £10 million and more. The NHS inspectorate, the
Health Commission, has just revealed these worrying figures.

Alec Thraves, Swansea Socialist Party

This is before the government fully implements its new "payment
by results" NHS funding scheme.

Hospitals will have to provide care according to a fixed national
tariff – and if they can’t they’ll be in more financial difficulty.

Already wards and hospitals are threatened with closure because of
this financial crisis. Charing Cross hospital in west London is even
being threatened with a sell-off to private health company BUPA. Health
secretary Patricia Hewitt is promoting measures like this – she says she
wants another 250,000 patients a year to be treated by the private
sector.

In Wales, Swansea NHS trust is £7 million in the red. It wants to
close wards in Morriston and Singleton hospitals and close or downgrade
community hospitals at Fairwood and Gorseinon. 200 beds are under
threat.

Whatever arguments trust managers use to justify these cuts, people
signing the Socialist Party petition in the city centre ask: "How
will 200 less beds benefit patients in Swansea?"

Dental services have also become a real pain – literally! Thousands
of people across Wales cannot get access to an NHS dentist with many
being forced to go private and others just suffering in agony.

Research by Swansea Citizens Advice Bureau has revealed that 86% of
people surveyed couldn’t find a local NHS dentist. As a result 70% went
without treatment. Swansea CAB claims people living in the city’s
poorest areas are bearing the brunt of the shortage.

The NHS is supposed to be free and accessible to everyone but,
increasingly, working-class people are being denied basic health care
because Tony Blair and New Labour are downgrading and privatising our
NHS.

After the privatisation of hospital cleaning, infections like MRSA
have become rife throughout the health service. In Swansea, according to
UNISON, there are now 50% less cleaners than there were ten years ago.
Patients, the general public and the health unions need to unite to
fight these attacks and ensure we get the health service we have paid
and fought for over generations.

New Labour’s market-driven NHS shouldn’t be run as if it were a
factory in the private sector where profit is the only motivation. It
should be run on the founding principles of the health service where
patients come before profits.