The Professional Case for Withdrawing The Health and Social Care Bill from Daniel Saul on Vimeo.

It is now clear that though Accident and Emergency services will remain free at the point of delivery, everything bar sexual health services will not be statutory and may end being available in your local area. An excellent report by Allyson Pollock which details this, can be found here.

Key points:

• It paves the way for a legal move away from a wholly tax-funded national health service to a mixed (part-tax, part service-user-charging) funded services.
• The new Clinical Commissioning Group (replacing the Primary Care Trusts) have very little statutory provision, they can choose to not provide an range of services that are currently free:  vaccination, immunisation, therapy services for stroke or cancer patients.
• The Secretary of State will have the legal power to EXCLUDE people from access to health and social care (originally devised for excluding Scottish residents) – this can be extended to a whole lot more
• Advertising budget caps is lifted so tax-funds can be used to an unlimited amount on advertising health services that may not be free at the point of use.

This is violence, a destruction of institutions, services and values of a system that saves and protects life.

Can we trust a parliament that endorses workfare as a solution to youth unemployment, punishes the disabled children and adults alike by withdrawing modest benefits to have the humanity to protect the sick?

The reason we are seeing this destruction isn’t for efficiency, there is no evidence that efficiency will increase in the health service. It is an attack on the last bastion of the Welfare State:

The National Health service and the Welfare State have come to be used as interchangeable terms, and in the mouths of some people as terms of reproach. Why this is so it is not difficult to understand, if you view everything from the angle of a strictly individualistic competitive society. A free health service is pure Socialism and as such it is opposed to the hedonism of capitalist society.

– Aneurin “Nye” Bevan

One disagreement I have with the participants of this video, rather than petitioning your MP (they fear the party whips not you), prepare for more direct action as parliament appears powerless to stop this bill.