THE SHOCK-HORROR revelation by the Mirror (April I 1) that the Tory leadership has developed a masterplan to scrap the NHS as a tax-funded service would be more sensational and surprising if it had not been preceded by months of right wing journalists arguing precisely the same thing. Browne, for one, has and more private way to inject more resources into health care. However the cynical scheme hatched apparently behind closed Dr Death - Liam Fox doors by lan Dunkinlaunch of Nye Bevan's new, nationalised NHS. The Observer's Anthony been conducting a pro- funded from taxation.
longed crusade arguing that the NHS is a hopeless basketcase: the Sun, the Sunday Times, Daily Mail and other right wing rags have also regularly added their two-pennyworth of bile and prejudice arguing for more charges, more private three years in office. sector involvement, insurance as the only own savings". Doughnut's sidekick Dr "Death" does seem to represent a concerted move by the Tories back to the reactionary ground last occupied by the Tories early in 1948, when Winston Churchill, in disgruntled opposition and in alliance with the most grasping elements of the BMA mounted a last-gasp effort to prevent the Churchill marched his minority of Tory backwoods- ways. men through the Commons lobbies for a final, futile time to vote against the principle of the NHS: a few weeks later a delighted electorate was signing up by the million for a health service free at point of use, Since then successive Tory and Labour governments - even including Margaret Thatcher - have felt obliged to defer to the principle of a tax-funded service, which the Wanless Report commissioned by Gordon Brown has again confirmed is the most cost-effective way to share risk and finance an equitable health care system. According to the Mirror's edited highlights of Dr Fox's secret speech to Tory doctors in Harrogate, his plan involves convincing the public that the NHS is not working properly - a project made easier by Labour having stuck foolishly to Tory cash limits for its first The next step is to persuade them that it cannot be repaired. Then comes a process of floating ideas for insurance-based schemes, centred on branding the NHS as a "monopoly" against which the Tories will pit the notion of the "individual" and the "consumer". The good doctor is convinced that there is a popular market out there of people wishing to opt out of the NHS and pay for health care and treatment "from their Finally the Tories would move in for the kill with a suitably phrased manifesto commitment to finish off the NHS - and hope to persuade people to vote for it. The plan at least has the merit of being relatively honest, and will begin in earnest this month. with the publication of a Tory study of 20 countries around the world which finance their health care services in other But they have a huge problem of credibility to get over. For even as IDS wades into the attack on Gordon Brown's Budget by demanding increases beyond Labour's planned increases in health spending, it is obvious that any insurance-based scheme is going to require most, if not all, people to pay more for health care out of their own pockets. The tax-funded option is the most cost-effective and the best way of sharing risk: any other scheme is likely to wind up with a succession of costly market failures like those in the USA, where insurers increasingly "cherry pick" the lowest risk patients, and where 40 million poor people lack any health insurance. The privatised US system hoovers up a massive 14% of the country's GDP, compared with around 7% in Britain. The bureaucracy involved in administering insurance-based schemes in the USA and Europe dwarfs the admin costs of the NHS, even after Thatcher's crazy, costly, market-based "reforms". But as the Tories set course for the electoral wilderness, the question is whether Gordon Brown's budget will seek progressive or regressive ways of raising the additional cash that ministers now admit must be funnelled in to enable the NHS to meet demand - and whether New Labour has left it too late to rescue morale after two decades of demoralisation. class politics which seal off the rotten opportunists of the Liberal Democrats and Tories. If DCH continues to function locally in the future a radical transformation of its activities will be needed.
Proper debate must be permitted inside any ongoing campaign and not frowned upon as was the case in the run-up the ballot. Similarly, minutes of each meeting must be properly kept and adhered to. More tenants and active trade unionists need to be involved ensuring everything done to secure a massive injection of public money for social housing investment.
And the Party must abandon the petty secit displayed in effectively boycotting the campaign in the ten months which preceded the ballot.
Similarly, the SWP must be challenged to break from its quite scandalous cosying up to the Lib Dems and groups such as Socialist Outlook and Workers' Power need to recognise that they were both seriously mistaken in limiting their involvement in the campaign thus far to some relatively belated estate leafleting.