Anger erupted as campaigners accused Brighton and Hove health chiefs of enabling the privatisation of the NHS at a meeting this morning (Tuesday 5 November).
The outbursts resulted in two people being removed from the chamber at Hove Town Hall during a special meeting of the Brighton and Hove City Council Health and Wellbeing Board.
Protesters shouted out their criticisms of the Brighton and Hove Clinical Commissioning Group saying that the CCG had not consulted people properly about its response to the government’s NHS Long-Term Plan.
The CCG said that it had consulted several organisations and had had more than 4,000 conversations with Brighton and Hove residents about its response, known as the Sussex Health and Care Partnership Strategic Delivery Plan.
An NHS worker and the father of a GP criticised lack of funding, staff shortages and privatisation by stealth before being asked to leave the meeting after several interruptions.
And members of Sussex Defend the NHS protested outside Hove Town Hall before the meeting.
One of them, Madeleine Dickens, led a formal delegation to the Health and Wellbeing Board which is made up of five councillors and five CCG representatives. It also includes six “non-voting” members, including a representative of the statutory watchdog Healthwatch Brighton and Hove.
The campaigners said that they were concerned about “integrated care” and said that the NHS was adopting an American approach, adding: “Integrated care is the natural successor to nine years of underfunding.”
They highlighted a paragraph of particular concern in a report to the board which said: “A significant proportion of contracts are already ‘aligned incentive’ contracts for 2019-20 and we are exploring risk-sharing models to stimulate delivery of our new models of care.
“The partnership is committed to identifying innovative and benefit-sharing options to engage both providers and commissioners.”
Ms Dickens said: “In recent years all government NHS policies have had one unspoken primary objective – to bear down on funding.
“All initiatives must save money. With integrated care, healthcare will be restricted by a fixed population budget.
“‘Clinically effective commissioning’ has already removed access to 110 NHS treatments.
“Integrated care systems or partnerships will not only restrict NHS budgets. Institutional altruism will be replaced by institutional denial of care.”
She quoted historian Professor Peter Hennessy as saying that the NHS “is the nearest Britain has ever come to institutionalising altruism”.
Ms Dickens added: “That’s why the NHS is loved. It’s why nurses, doctors, porters and cleaners work in it.
In a US/UK trade deal the NHS is OFF the table. The NHS has just secured the Cystic fibrosis drug deal. We have a Commonwealth. We are NOT totally dependent on the US for our properity. The EU is still open after Brexit, trade will continue to flow as big business will insist that politicians sort it quickly or political funding will dry up. Truth gets to the end of the street lies go around the world.
The NHS is safe!
Private medicine is the bedrock of the NHS. Every single GP practice in the country is a PRIVATE business. GPs are NOT NHS employees, they run PRIVATE business that provide excellent services to the NHS, via a contractual arrangement. Other pracitioners and providers also proivide excellent services to the NHS via contractural arrangements. Retention of GPs is a HUGE problem in this country, yet the policy cancelling all private NHS contracts will destroy the General Prartice model and drive even more GPs out of practice. Please leave medicine to clinicians – politicians should stay out of it.
Didn’t Labour under Tony Blair encourage outsourcing to reduce costs? https://nyebevannews.co.uk/blair-was-the-man-who-accelerated-the-privatisation-of-the-nhs/