
The Socialist 17 February 2021
'If you want to stay healthy - you've got to fight back!'

Tory consultation on home-use abortion pills
Tory cladding money will not make us safe
Sham inquiry into 'progressive extremism' will not stop movements against capitalism
Cumbria mine: How can we fight for jobs and stop climate change?
Cryptocurrency bubble: Insanity of capitalism
Online workers' rally: Taking fight to the bosses
SNP's independence referendum 2 'roadmap'
NHS white paper: no solution to failed Tory policies
Boot private companies out of our NHS
Derby Toyota plant Covid crisis
Hackney teaching assistants strike against cruel and unnecessary job cuts
Manchester Go North West bus drivers in all-out strike over fire and rehire dispute
London bus drivers set to strike over pay and conditions
Strike back for free education
Socialist Students conference - Sunday 28 February
Socialist Party Black and Asian caucus
Remembering Mohamud Hassan - continuing the fight against police brutality
How you can amplify the Socialist's voice - Help us build subscriptions to the Socialist
Swarming the London Mayor's question time
Southern new members meeting - a vivid illustration of the appetite for socialist ideas
Doing all we can to fund the anti-cuts stand at the ballot box
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Link to this page: https://www.socialistparty.org.uk/issue/1121/32044
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Boot private companies out of our NHS
Simon Carter, east London Socialist Party
Despite the recently leaked government draft white paper suggesting reversing "controversial privatisation policies" introduced in 2012, private healthcare operators continue to gorge on the NHS.
In January, the US 'for profit' healthcare company Centene Corporation, through its UK subsidiary Operose Healthcare, acquired AT Medics London contracts. This means that Operose now runs 69 GP surgeries in total, the largest GP surgery network in the UK.
Absorbed into Operose was The Patient Group (TPG), which has a history as a failing service provider. In June 2012, TPG walked away from a contract to run the Brandon Street surgery in Leicester. It had failed to recruit permanent GPs for the surgery and a succession of locums was used.
In April 2012, TPG shut its Camden Road surgery in London, bought from United Health. Patients were given very little notice of the decision. Both United Health and TPG were subsequently accused of running down the surgery and there was considerable use of locums.
The closure sparked a public inquiry by Camden Council. The inquiry was, however, abandoned when both United Health and TPG refused to attend. In January 2016, when TPG ended its contract for five surgeries in Brighton and Hove following a funding dispute, some 11,400 patients had to be found alternative GP practices.
In January 2020, Centene increase its stake in Circle Healthcare to 40%. Circle is notorious for walking away from its contract acquired in 2011 to run Hinchingbrooke Hospital in Cambridgeshire - the first privately run NHS hospital in England - when it found it wasn't making the profit expected.
Private healthcare companies cherry-pick profitable areas of the NHS. But when the honeypot runs out so do these parasites, leaving the NHS to clear up the costly mess.
The use of 'any willing provider' to run NHS services was codified into the Con-Dem government's 2012 Health and Social Care Act. This outsourcing was preceded by the Blair/Brown governments' trialling of Independent Sector Treatment Centres and GP commissioning.
Booting private companies out of the NHS is long overdue. These contracts, along with those of the rip-off Private Finance Initiative schemes, should be made null and void and services brought back in-house. The government should fully fund the NHS, with the public healthcare organisation run democratically involving trade unions representing the workforce and representatives of user groups.
In this issue
News
Tory consultation on home-use abortion pills
Tory cladding money will not make us safe
Sham inquiry into 'progressive extremism' will not stop movements against capitalism
Cumbria mine: How can we fight for jobs and stop climate change?
Cryptocurrency bubble: Insanity of capitalism
NSSN meeting
Online workers' rally: Taking fight to the bosses
Scotland
SNP's independence referendum 2 'roadmap'
NHS
NHS white paper: no solution to failed Tory policies
Boot private companies out of our NHS
Workplace safety
Derby Toyota plant Covid crisis
Workplace News
Hackney teaching assistants strike against cruel and unnecessary job cuts
Manchester Go North West bus drivers in all-out strike over fire and rehire dispute
London bus drivers set to strike over pay and conditions
Socialist Students
Strike back for free education
Socialist Students conference - Sunday 28 February
Campaigns
Socialist Party Black and Asian caucus
Remembering Mohamud Hassan - continuing the fight against police brutality
How you can amplify the Socialist's voice - Help us build subscriptions to the Socialist
Swarming the London Mayor's question time
Southern new members meeting - a vivid illustration of the appetite for socialist ideas
Doing all we can to fund the anti-cuts stand at the ballot box
Readers' Opinion
Home | The Socialist 17 February 2021 | Join the Socialist Party
Related links:
Social care: End privatisation and let workers decide how it's run
Tory consultation on home-use abortion pills
NHS white paper: no solution to failed Tory policies
Overwhelmed, underfunded, underpaid, and still fighting for safe PPE
Protect the NHS - Funding, Pay, PPE, Public ownership
Review: Friedrich Engels - Condition of the working class in England
West London Socialist Party: The fight for women's health to be a trade union issue
Tories admit market failure - we want our NHS back!
Facebook v Australian government: nationalise the bosses' media!