Tory think tanks went into Oerive They churned out ideas for privatisation of ever-wider ranges of services; for 'hotel charges' on hospital beds; for compulsory private health insurance, voucher systems 'medicards' to enable NHS money to be diverted and 'topped up' in payment for private treatment; for internal markets; and for charity funding or even a lottery to pay for the NHS Stave off cuts Yet the 1987 clection again ing that the NHS was safe 'only in our hands, and vigorously denying any intention to priVaNe.
The government - as they are doins now around the country doling out one-off payments to stave off cuts and closures until after the election. Yet at the same time they agreed a 9% pay increase for nurses which they then refused fully to fund.
This was to create the huge 1987-88 winter crisis in which 5,000 NHS beds closed across the country.
This in turn helped trigger pay and cutbacks. With the election already in the bag. Thatcher was able to come out nto the open and deciare in anuary 1988 her intention to 'review the NHS.
A back-room cabal of right wing fanatics dreamed up the which appeared the January 1989 White Paper, which was irrogantiy pushed hrough Parliament by Health Secretary Kenneth Clarke.
Key features of the NHS Act are:
• ine separaton bereor purchasers 'and 'providers' of health care, to create an 'internal market in which hospitals compete against each other for Pateris, • the opting out of hospitals That will do nicely, Sir! No. 19 '92 HEALTH Marbe f liocied? the docr i could become den more naccamtabie! from health authority control to become selt-contained businesses (Trusts);
• the imposition of restrictions and cash limits on GPs as the sock to force larser prac tices into becoming independent rund-nolders Also included in the NHS Act but immediately shelved by the Tories until after the Election ( were sweeping changes in the system of community care, switching it from the NHS to local government, which will subject all long-stay elderly. patients to means-tested charges, forcing many to sell their homes or raid their life-savings to pay for their OSTE CaT Many health authorities have already begun closing all their long-stay elderly beds, leaving no choice but private nursing homes.
Though most of the NHS Act has yet to be implemented, unlike 1987 the Tories are no longer concealing a hidden ахелав on the NHS. Their policies are clear for all to sec. A fourth term would mean:
• More opt-outs • More privatisation of care and more means-tested charges • More privatisation of sup port services • More bribes to take out private insurance • The full fury of the internal market, triggering cuts and All these policies are already under way. And from the new market system, with its expensive pricing and billing of cach item of treatment, would be relatively simple for a Tory government to introduce means-tested charges for mtre propicto tokcout medy patient care, forcing cal insurance.
Even the most incompetent Labour efforts at defending the NHS must be better than another Tory government deter mined to avenge Churchill's defeat and break it up!
PRESCRIPTIONS
April 4, 1992 "sentamun ind a token assomm gn. . e25: 2л. 32) e.ti den invei паті с3prose clasi SiEE dås ins as per мес s the of te wre , Gi• io:tt