NHS hospital chiefs have sparked fury by charging for operations that were free, and now Warrington and Halton Hospitals Trust will offer you a new hip for £18,143 amongst a list of 71 other expensive private treatments, and this is a total disgrace because desperate patients are being left in agony because they can’t afford the private operations on offer at an NHS trust that were once free.
Vital procedures such as hip and knee replacements cost up to £18,143, cataracts £2,368 and hernias £7,719, way outside most ordinary people’s resources, and now patients will only get free treatment if they meet certain guidelines, including how severe their condition is, which means that many will have to wait in agony while they get worse before surgeons will act, and Warrington and Halton Hospitals NHS Trust was accused of exploiting the sick after it advertised the operations.
It comes as Tory cuts have left the NHS rationing what it can carry out for free, and WHH is considered to be the first trust to brazenly welcome privatisation of many services, and the list of 71 treatments, recategorised as Procedures of Low Clinical Priority has sparked anger, and this shows you everything you need to know about the Tory NHS, as they squeeze funding, impose cutbacks, force more all-embracing rationing of treatments, increase waiting lists and then tell patients in agony they can pay if they have deep pockets.
And there are numerous ways the appendages of private interests envelope our health service, but this rationing of access to health care on the NHS is one of the most glaring ploys, and it’s utterly shameful.
The Medical Technology Group, which monitors NHS rationing, called the private list “alarming”. It said 20 of the trust’s 71 procedures are those that were axed from free treatment when the NHS conducted a review last year.
And many, such as cataracts and hip or knee replacements are proven, evidence-led treatments that have been favourably used for decades, and to categorise them as a low priority is unacceptable.
Angela Walsh had a bunion removed on the NHS at the trust’s Warrington General Hospital 10 years ago but another one is now growing on her other foot, and now she’s been told she can only have it operated on privately because the surgeon said it wasn’t serious enough, and to come back when it got more serious.
Some people because they’ve not had their operations done then find it impossible to walk, and instead of a straight-forward removal it then becomes a bigger operation that’s not cosmetic or low priority and have a substantial impact on people’s lives.
The hospital doesn’t determine which procedures are available but they’re certainly profiting from it, and most people haven’t got the money to keep paying for these procedures that should be free, but with the growing number of procedures now classified as Procedures of Low Clinical Priority (PLCP), they’re now extending patients an affordable option should they be refused procedures on the NHS.
They further prey on the sick and vulnerable, telling them that the procedures that were once routinely offered on the NHS are no longer available, and the Tories had better sort this mess out because people won’t and are not going to pay for things twice.
This is shameful but not shocking that the Tories have let this happen due to creeping privatisation of a public service funded for by tax-payers.
The philosophy behind our NHS was that it was to be “Free at the point of need”, and Aneurin Bevin said that our NHS would endure as long as the people were prepared to fight to keep it, and that’s what we need to do because the Tories never wanted it in the first place, therefore they can’t be trusted to preserve it as it was meant to be, but then people who paid into the NHS through their National Insurance Contributions should demand their money back.
This is the future of Britain under Boris Johnson, Jeremy Hunt with input from Nigel Farage, all before it’s sold off to the Americans, giving Donald Trump a slice of the profits, and we all have to pull together as a country to prevent this from happening because the privatisation of the NHS is not acceptable.
And Boris Johnson, Jeremy Hunt and Nigel Farage are all advocates of privatisation and the slippery slope has already been well lubed by these bloodsuckers.
