??????????????????????????? PHOTO: Andrew Wiarc CHOICE -{GA Loved, defended - but closed to inpatients - Elizabeth Garrett Anderson hospital In these conditions to expect GPs and community services to make any significant difference to levels of hospitalisation is completely utopian.
As the Black Report pointed out before it was largely suppressed and ignored by the Tories in 1979), a systematic alternative would begin by tackling the roots of ill-health.
Poverty
This means eradicating poverty -especially among children and the elderly, who are the main consumers of health care - and taking action to remedy poor housing and inadequate diet. Only if these steps are taken at the same time can real progress be made with community-based services, expanded GP services and improving health education.
On the basis of a real improvement of living standards, further progress can also be made through developing preventative medicine and establishing an occupational health service to look after people at work.
With adequate funding of NHS services, and immediate steps taken to treat the one million now on waiting lists, a socialist government could legislate to give patients for the first time a legal right to treatment - and establish again for the first time a network of elected health authorities to carry through the planning and allocation of services.
These elected authorities should include not only representatives of local communities and councils, but also elected representatives of health workers, many of whom have valuable expertise to offer With this kind of accountability and control, the NHS could prove a model of socialist planning on which other nationalised industries could be modelled.
But don't just sit dreaming. The fight starts now - to save the NHS we have from the Tories!
No. 31 7 Nov, 1992