The NHS and “junior doctors”
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The government is doing its best to dismantle all state services and the NHS is no exception. There have been some good articles on this subject in The Canary recently.
Also, I don’t know if anyone listens to James O’Brian on LBC, but he has spent a lot of time on his radio phone in to discuss this, with many “junior” doctors interviewed. A “junior” doctor is nothing of the kind, it can be a hospital doctor with 20-30 years’ experience – it just means that he or she has not reached consultant level. They are the backbone of the hospital service, and are the doctors we all come into contact with when we visit hospital.
From The Canary, re the new contract that have just been forced on doctors (http://www.thecanary.co/2016/02/11/heres-gaping-hole-contract-jeremy-hunt-just-forced-junior-doctors/):
“The contract redefines Saturday work from 7am-5pm as ‘social hours’- with no pay increase, but offers a 30% premium for junior doctors who work more than one in four Saturdays. Hunt also announced he would lift basic pay from an 11% rise to a 13.5% rise. However, junior doctors called the rise a “cynical attempt” to “manipulate the figures”, claiming it would in fact amount to a real-terms pay cut of 26%, because of extra hours worked.”…….
“However, there is a gaping hole in Hunt’s claim that his imposed contract will bring safer services for patients. The NuffieldTrust thinktank has found:
While the number of patients attending hospital as an emergency is growing by 3.6% a year, hospitals are only receiving 1% more money a year to treat them.
This is entirely unsustainable. The Conservative government’s austerity programme is a threat to the safety of patients, and the imposed contract does nothing to address the gaping hole in funding.
The Department of Health just received an emergency bailout of £205m, but even this is taken from the budget for 2016-17. The Tories are deliberately setting the NHS on course to crash and burn, so the private sector can swoop in and ‘save the day’. Indeed, public dissatisfaction levels with the NHS are at the highest level for 30 years. This is all part of the plan.”
All this is very frightening, combined with the attack on trade union rights, access to legal aid and increased court fees, etc., etc.
The cattle voted to carry on with the slaughterhouse in the last election; but the figures I saw recently were that only 66% of the electorate voted, with only 24% voting for the Tories.
Some democracy.
A clever amusing videohttp://i100.independent.co.uk/article/all-the-people-who-have-accidentally-mispronounced-jeremy-hunts-name-on-live-tv-or-radio–WkqapAC0ag?utm_source=indy&utm_medium=top5&utm_campaign=i100
Should we really comment or get involved in the real world of the class struggle Real workers standing against real downward pressure of capital.I'm sure a famous rock star died recently. Let's have a diversionOr better still let's invite some arsole onto the forum to discuss whether or not the earth orbited the sun before the science of the bourgeoisie convinced us it did
VinMy thoughts exactly! :o)Meel
Smack bang in the middle of the impending general crisis in the NHS, is the mental health issue.· 25% of us in any year can expect to be diagnosed with a mental health issue· 10% of children and young people have a diagnosable mental health problem· Yet the average waiting time for a child to see a mental health practitioner is 21 weeks· Suicide is rising following many years of decline(http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/feb/13/mental-health-services-crisis-britain-revealed-leaked-report)With the deliberate dismantling of the NHS “as we know it”, these conditions can only get worse.I have no doubt that the worsening mental health of the population is a result of the double pincer movement of a) an increasingly pressurised, ruthless and isolating capitalist system and b) the running down of the services that used to be there to pick up the pieces.
The NHS is being privatised and the British public just sit on their arse and let it happen. http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/how-the-nhs-is-being-dismantled-in-10-easy-steps-10474075.htmlI would love to see all public sector workers in Britain walk out for a day in support of the doctors. The doctors are loathed to take full on industrial action themselves as it would hurt the public, the government know this. So it's up to the public to fight on behalf of the doctors and the NHS.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/youssef-elgingihy/want-to-know-why-doctors-_b_7917074.html
Quote:Now if I told you that we have not even got to the most remarkable part of this story then you'd probably think I was lying. But you'd be wrong. Pretty much everything in this narrative was hatched in a series of think-tank documents from the 1980s–that something can be so faithfully executed over 25 years is a testament to Machiavellianism.Dr Lucy Reynolds and Professor Martin McKee have charted this journey:'[In the late 1980s]… a conference attended by Conservative politicians, NHS senior managers and think-tank advisors set out a seven-step plan to alter the NHS… In 1988, the pro- market Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) published a series of short studies exploring this agenda… One study was published as a pamphlet entitled "Britain's biggest enterprise" by Conservative MPs Oliver Letwin and John Redwood'.Here is an excerpt from 'Britain's biggest enterprise':'Might it not, rather, be possible to work slowly from the present system towards a national insurance scheme? One could begin for example, with the establishment of the NHS as an independent trust, with increased joint ventures between the NHS and the private sector; move on next to the use of "credits" to meet standard charges set by central NHS funding administration for independently managed hospitals or districts; and only at the last stage create a national health scheme separate from the tax system'.It is worth noting that, around this time, Letwin and Redwood headed NM Rothschild bank's international privatisation unit and that Letwin had published a book called Privatising the World with a foreword by Redwood.The point is the service is currently free at the point of use: whetehr firms are called in to do the work or if it is state directed is neitehr ehre nor there. If capitalists want to rob the tax payer, that's fine, no concern of ours.
It may not be free at the point of use for much longer, YMS.If we need to go to hospital and are met by overworked, stressed out doctors – is that no concern of yours – or of "ours"?This aggressive privatisation and underfunding in the NHS is having a major impact at the point of use. Doctors are leaving the profession or contemplating suicide. Waiting times for hospital appointments are increasing.Only this lunch time I talked to a colleague who is seriously worried about his depressed teenage son. He cannot get him into counselling with a NHS attached mental health team – such is the pressure on services. My colleague and his wife have had to turn to a mental health charity instead. This charity is also overrun with people seeking help – the result being the young man has to wait 12 weeks to get any counselling.It is increasingly the case that charities are picking up the pieces where a state run service was fulfilling some kind of service before, employing people who had relevant qualifications.Closely allied to the way the health service is being run down, is the DWP's attack on the rights of disabled people:"The most severely injured survivor of the 7/7 bombings has slammed the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) after they interrogated him for ‘proof’ that he is disabled. This is the latest example of prejudice against the disabled, a problem that’s already familiar to the DWP.Daniel Biddle, who lost both legs, an eye and his spleen in the 2005 attacks, suffers from post-traumatic stress and is now being asked to answer intrusive questions about the extent of disability. He may even be forced to undergo a face-to-face test if he wants to keep receiving his Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) of £416 per month."http://www.thecanary.co/2016/02/17/interrogation-77-survivor-shows-exactly-discriminatory-dwp/These actions by the government are putting a downward pressure on people's living standards, and so should concern us as much as a downward pressure on wages.I don't understand your breezy dismissal of the changes going on in the NHS. Perhaps I misunderstood.
Young Master Smeet wrote:The point is the service is currently free at the point of use: whetehr firms are called in to do the work or if it is state directed is neitehr ehre nor there. If capitalists want to rob the tax payer, that's fine, no concern of ours.You said the magic word there YMS, "currently". It's the aim to introduce an American insurance based health care system. Meaning a two tier health system, whereby if you don't have insurance, or you have limited cover, you'll get the bare bones of health care.It's a drip by drip process. Every accepted change gets the public ready for the next one until it's done. Then it's too late.I guess the question for us socialists is what concern is it of ours other than as one part of the whole anti-worker package that is capitalism? We want to change society so that everyone on earth has access to quality health care.
Ooh, missed these. the bottom line is that, since workers have no property, the only way we get health care is if the capitalists pay for it. Whether they pay for it through our paypackets or via the state is, I'd suggest, for us a secondary considration to the actual use-value of medical care received, i.e. the quality of the care. Obviously, if they reduce the cost of healthcare, that lowers the exchange value we receive, and means lower wages as a share of the total propduct.So, in the UK, they decided that allocating health care through the NHS was the most cost effective way for them (and it was, and still is), but that means a vast market where profits could be made, but aren't. Obviously, those capitalists who employ fewer workers feel the burden of the tax to pay for healthcare more, and so they want to pass the cost off into wages (and thus onto those capitalists who employ lots of workers).We shouldn't allow ourselves to be blinded by loyalty to the NHS badge, what matters is the care we receive, and we need to be aware that it is a bargain between us and the capitalists.
Young Master Smeet wrote:We shouldn't allow ourselves to be blinded by loyalty to the NHS badge, what matters is the care we receive, and we need to be aware that it is a bargain between us and the capitalists.Not sure who's blinded by loyalty to the NHS. The whole point is the care we receive and it is slipping as we speak, it has been for some time now. It's not slipping because the people in the NHS don't care, from my extensive experience of the NHS, most of the staff are dedicated to the well being of their patients. The problem is the funding. Good healthcare within the current economic system is extremely costly.Medical expectations in Britain are high. An ageing, disease ridden population being kept alive beyond economic usefulness is very expensive. From a economic perspective it makes no sense for capitalists to provide costly, long term health care to unproductive workers. That's why the changes are taking place.The issue is what should the British workers do about it. From an SPGB perspective the junior doctor strikes are another example of industrial action, workers fighting to maintain a certain level of financial protection. If the junior doctors use the tactics that are necessary to apply serious pressure on the government, then it will cause serious harm to fellow workers. The government know this would cost the doctors public support. Therefore it is an industrial action issue that involves us all.Does the SPGB support workers struggles in industrial action? Is the NHS a reformist measure that has been of huge benefit to British workers?
Is the NHS a benefit? It's hard to say, we can look at other European an d industrialised countries, and their health outcomes, and we're about par, I'd expect. If we look at the value side of it, I'd say it probably doesn't amount to a big expansion of the social wage or wages generally.We naturally support workers in struggle, on general principle that the alternative is that they are slaves. But we can also show how the wages system itself harms health care, as, under labour, lots of extra spending went to those sections of the workers with the most industrial muscle. Also, it's worth pointing out that important as Doctors are, they are only as good as the support staff around them, and that the porters and recptionists and cleaners need support as well.
Young Master Smeet wrote:Also, it's worth pointing out that important as Doctors are, they are only as good as the support staff around them, and that the porters and recptionists and cleaners need support as well.Indeed and the Doctors particularly and directly depend heavily on their office colleagues. I have a friend who works as a gastro-intestinal secretary in the local general hospital and regularly tells me of the trials and tribulations she and others suffer on an almost daily basis in the NHS, most of which are related to funding, or lack of it.
Young Master Smeet wrote:Is the NHS a benefit? It's hard to say, we can look at other European an d industrialised countries, and their health outcomes, and we're about par, I'd expect. If we look at the value side of it, I'd say it probably doesn't amount to a big expansion of the social wage or wages generally.We naturally support workers in struggle, on general principle that the alternative is that they are slaves. But we can also show how the wages system itself harms health care, as, under labour, lots of extra spending went to those sections of the workers with the most industrial muscle. Also, it's worth pointing out that important as Doctors are, they are only as good as the support staff around them, and that the porters and recptionists and cleaners need support as well."Is the NHS a benefit?"Not sure what planet that statement belongs to. For an answer I guess we'd have to go back in time to a place before the NHS was set up and try to compare health care provision for us working class?I see this issue as one in which it could be possible for the SPGB to connect more with the public, via an issue important to us all. Yet statements like "Is the NHS a benefit?", shows how disconnected the SPGB are with other workers. If the British government came out directly and told the public the aim was to copy the healthcare system of France, there probably wouldn't be a problem. But the fact the government squirms and wriggles, claiming it's safe in their hands, blah blah blah, while slashing funding and opening up the wound to the private sector to feast on, I think says it all really. It looks to me like the present government, along with the last Labour one, are under funding the NHS into the ground, to allow them to claim once more that nationalised models always fail. Then they can proclaim an American model to be the way forward. A multi-tiered health care system, where you get what you can afford.According to various sources I've come across regarding the best healthcare systems in the world, it's probably a tie between the UK and France. However under current circumstances I expect France to come out on top. France spends more GDP on healthcare than the UK. Provides healthcare for everyone and is apparently very much defended by the public. It's essentially a national health service.I've also never claimed that doctors are the only important aspect of a health system. All levels of staff are vital. And as I've already stated and Gnome has confirmed, funding is the issue. [edit]
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