The NHS was created on the belief that it was free for everyone, regardless of means or circumstances, but this is no longer the case because patients at a trust in the north-west of England have been informed they will have to go private if they want treatments that were once customary on the NHS.
Because a disturbing precedent is being installed which threatens to threaten the foundations of our National Health Service, and the consequences of the funding restraint imposed by the Conservatives, and cash-strapped commissioning groups are having to ration operations that were once free.
As a result, people are being turned away, usually in severe discomfort, except if they have the funds to pay for private healthcare, and we’re presently seeing the core values of the NHS being slaughtered by a Tory government which has starved it of funds and then permitted private firms to feast on people’s pain and suffering.
And the empty words of Theresa May were exposed when she was questioned by Jeremy Corbyn on the Government’s response to the Grenfell disaster.
The Labour leader, who praised our Never Again campaign, challenged the Prime Minister to clarify why hundreds of blocks still have unsafe cladding. He further wanted to know why sprinklers had not been retrofitted and why no action was taken to improve tenants’ rights, but Theresa May failed to answer any questions, yet in the wake of the disaster, she promised to do everything she could to keep people safe.
Her record tells a different tale. Fire regulations have not been updated, tenants are still denied a voice and firefighter numbers have been cut. Sympathetic words are just not enough, and the survivors of the fire should not still be waiting for her Government to make good on its word.
One day the Mirror might actually write an editorial about the £1.7 billion the NHS had to pay out due to its workers not bothering to do their jobs properly, or they might do an article about the real cost to the taxpayers of a broken system that hires “disability denial” firms to conduct Personal Independence Assessments, in which 75 per cent of cases are overturned on appeal.
There’s no real saving in using these firms, and the government has to pay the assessment company for their work, then use DWP staff to conduct Mandatory Reconsiderations which are normally rejected, then pay DWP workers to present a case of their decision when it goes to Independent Tribunal, then, when the DWP decision is overturned the taxpayer has to repay all the benefits to the claimant from the time they were wrongly assessed, and continue paying the correct benefit to the claimant.
Wouldn’t it have saved a lot more money to bring all assessments back in- house with real professionals, and doctors doing the assessments? And the government has done its best to destroy the NHS beyond repair, leaving it wide open to privatisation on the grounds that it’s the only way to save it.
And the Tories and Nigel Farage are all on the payroll of the private sector and disaster capitalists because the NHS is just another cherry to pick, and they’re sleepwalking into an abyss, they don’t care about you, they merely care about their bank balance. They’re millionaires already with their private healthcare which is their holy grail, and if the poor can’t pay for their healthcare, you die, but then that would be the Tory mission accomplished.
The Tories did everything they could to hinder the formation of the NHS and have used every opportunity since to wound it. Now they’re going to use Brexit to kill it off altogether by selling it to a greedy and seedy corporate America. The people of the United Kingdom can either have Brexit or the NHS but be warned, we can’t have both.