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Tories wreck our NHS
Save our NHS demo 4.3.17, photo Mary Finch (Click to enlarge)
Caroline Vincent, Leicester East Socialist Party
The NHS crisis is escalating as the Tories continue their mission to 'slash, trash and privatise' our health service.
Thanks to sustainability and transformation plans (STPs), hospitals are facing a bleak winter. Alarmingly, despite the fact that there are already too few inpatient beds for hospitals to cope, proposals have been made to cut back even further.
Last winter saw major alerts called across the country, with accident and emergency departments forced to close, as they could not endure the strain placed on underfunded services. Further cuts will be catastrophic.
Unbelievably there are now half as many hospital beds as there were 30 years ago.
A reason given is that patients with mental health issues can be cared for in their communities. Yet mental health services are another area in crisis, having faced devastating cuts.
And provision for care in the community to patients who are leaving, or at risk of going into hospital is woefully insufficient, only meeting half of demand.
This dire situation is compounded by closures of GP surgeries throughout the UK, with 202 practices having closed or merged in the year to June 2017.
There is now a serious shortage of GPs as a result of under investment in primary care.
Stress and rising workloads have led to an exodus of family doctors, which in turn puts pressure on A&Es, as people who can't get a doctor's appointment don't know where else to turn.
Patients, doctors and health workers all deserve better than this. The Tories see the NHS as an opportunity to line the pockets of their fat cat friends. That's why we need to fight back - for public health, not private wealth!
Socialist Party demands:
- No cuts, closures or job losses in the NHS
- Stop STPs and demand all councils refuse to cooperate with the plans
- End the pay freeze! Decent pay for all NHS staff
- Renationalise our NHS! Scrap PFI and privatisation schemes. Cancel all PFI debt
- For mass action to defend the NHS with co-ordinated strike action at its heart
- Reverse council cuts to social care to relieve the beds crisis
- Nationalise the profiteering big drugs companies
- For a comprehensive, high quality NHS, under democratic control, with care free at the point of use - a socialist NHS
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The coronavirus crisis has laid bare the class character of society in numerous ways. It is making clear to many that it is the working class that keeps society running, not the CEOs of major corporations.
The results of austerity have been graphically demonstrated as public services strain to cope with the crisis.
The government has now ripped up its 'austerity' mantra and turned to policies that not long ago were denounced as socialist. But after the corona crisis, it will try to make the working class pay for it, by trying to claw back what has been given.
- The Socialist Party's material is more vital than ever, so we can continue to report from workers who are fighting for better health and safety measures, against layoffs, for adequate staffing levels, etc.
- When the health crisis subsides, we must be ready for the stormy events ahead and the need to arm workers' movements with a socialist programme - one which puts the health and needs of humanity before the profits of a few.
Inevitably, during the crisis we have not been able to sell the Socialist and raise funds in the ways we normally would.
We therefore urgently appeal to all our viewers to donate to our Fighting Fund.
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