Debating Chamber - RIP the NHS?

Under the banner of Liberating the NHS, the health secretary Andrew Lansley this week unveiled a programme of dramatic change, promising to free the English health service from bureaucracy, put family doctors in the driving seat and hand power to patients. What could be more appealing to a workforce and users fed up with bureaucratic directives and corporate managerialism?

In reality, Lansley's health white paper opens the door to the comprehensive privatisation of healthcare and the end of the NHS as a national service. If the plans are taken to their logical conclusion, by 2015 the NHS will be little more than a brand. From a major public service with a million employees, it will have become a central fund with a minimal workforce, commissioning services from a string of private companies in a fully-fledged healthcare market....

With all its imperfections, the basic principle of the NHS is among the UK's greatest achievements. Before it existed, if you were not well off you lived in fear of falling ill and not being able to pay for treatment. And we know how well for-profit healthcare has worked in the US - many can't get the care they need, and some are over-medicated and over-treated in order to maximise profit for the care provider.

Of course there are problems, in some cases very big ones, of inefficiency and redundant management - but bringing in a profit motive is not going to help patients, especially the chronically ill.

With all its imperfections, the basic principle of the NHS is among the UK's greatest achievements

Hear hear

I'm not specially patriotic but, when I think of the social reforms resulting in it being the expected thing, the norm to care for the poor and vulnerable, it really does seem something to be proud of in our country. As it was then rather than the way it's going, alas.

Unfortunately it has outgrown its original aim, which was to provide good basic healthcare to the population. When conceived it would never have envisaged the cost of things like MRI scanners yet alone the burgeoning bureaucracy that it has become. Collossal amounts of money are poured in just to keep the machine that is the NHS running, with little regard for the patients that it was supposed to serve. The targets mentality foisted upon it by the last government was the last nail in the coffin as everyone could see what a farce it had become. For instance, hospital waiting times haven't been reduced at all, instead new lists have been created as a temporary holding area where you waited to get onto the official list, thus doubling the admin staff needed to handle both lists.

Employing countless bureaucrats just to fiddle the targets is not the way to look after the health of the nation.

As for turning the NHS into private healthcare for profit, what on earth do you think the last government was doing with its PPP initiatives?

This government is finally attempting to blow away the multitude tiers of management and get more value for the nation's taxpayers. It's risky but Blair's strategy of merely throwing a heap of money at it hasn't worked either.

I completely agree about what the NHS was meant to be (something to be proud of) and what it has become in recent years.

I love the idea of removing all those redundant 'managers'. This has needed doing for ages.

The trouble is that I think that is just one step in creating an efficient form of healthcare for those who can afford it while going through the motions of providing services for everyone else. Even in the US I understand that some hospitals/doctors do treat the poor - if and when they can spare the time/resources.

Maybe what we need is a Tory/Labour Coalition. Each has some good points but each swings too far their way for the good of the majority

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