ELINO grifters will destroy the NHS
Get out now, Scotland
If you need more proof that English Labour in Name Only (ELINO) is full of grifters, look no further than its shadow cabinet. The 2022/23 Parliamentary Register of Members’ Interests reveals that Wes Streeting took in £193k from private health companies. He was bested by Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper’s £295.2k haul. Sir Keir was 3rd with £157.5k and Dan Jarvis wasn’t far behind, receiving £137.5k.
Private health money is already paying dividends and ELINO isn’t even in power! Sir Keir’s mother, not exactly a ‘middle-class leftie,’ believed it was wrong to profit from ill health but that’s exactly what ELINO is planning to do - funnel public money to for-profit companies rather than invest in the NHS.
Using the private sector to cut waiting lists won’t work because it uses the same NHS doctors - there aren’t any others unless ELINO plans to clone them. Private companies are cannabalising NHS England by doing 10% of elective operations, and cherry-picking the easiest ones. But when something goes wrong, they turn to the NHS to fix it. 6k patients a year have to be transferred from a private to an NHS hospital when complications arise.
Streeting’s other bright idea, to make the English NHS staff work overtime when they already are doing so, shows how profoundly out of touch and ill-informed he is.
England already has a two-tiered health system dictated by wealth. ELINO is pushing Scotland’s NHS in the same direction, violating the NHS’ five founding principles: a comprehensive service, universally available, based on clinical need, free at the point of need, and funded through collective contributions.
ELINO’s perfidy is boundless. Wake up, Scotland.
Yep, I heard a BBC (yes them) radio programme many years ago about the NHS and how Thatcher desperately wanted it sold off, then after her, there were neoCONS who were taking the NHS sell off to the US, they were desperate to get the job finished. It's just been stalled for a few years and looks like England is in the final stages of the sell off of their publicly paid for NHS. I knew someone whose father in law in the US was very ill with terminal cancer some years back, by all accounts, he was being kept alive with masses of drugs and treatment that just was not going to save him. The private healthcare system, like some, (I have known friends and a family member to have terrible experience at their vets, resulting in chronic illness not being treated and in one case a cat who was in agony having been poisoned, when it shoudl have been euthanised, it was VERY expensive for the pet carers!) can actually prolong an illness or not treat the person (or animal) as appropriate to their needs, whether that be pain relief or end of life care. It's profitable to have people who are ill and/or not quite be cured, it's very cruel.
I found this article I'd saved a while back, tip of the iceberg I'm sure. Scotland must not allow their NHS to be sold off, used for private profit, the people paid for it, for all of it, buildings, infrastructure etc, as with other services and utilities, and the English 'government' are selling off public assets, it's abhorrent, how dare they!
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-12-private-equity-acquisition-hospitals-adverse.html
I cannot express how angry this betrayal of the people and of their founding principles makes me. :-(