DEFEND THE NHS – DEFEAT LANSLEY’S BILL

DEFEND THE NHS – DEFEAT LANSLEY’S BILL
Organised by Keep Our NHS Public and Coalition of Resistance
Wednesday 16th February, 7,30pm,
Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, WC1, Holborn tube

Speakers:
Dr Jacky Davis
Frank Dobson MP
Wendy Savage, Keep Our NHS Public
John Lister, Health Emergency
Teresa Delaney, Coalition of Resistance
Dot Gibson, National Pensioners Convention

Meeting organised by Coalition of Resistance and Keep Our NHS Public

TEN REASONS TO OPPOSE THE NHS BILL

1. Andrew Lansley’s Health and Social Care Bill will encourage “any willing provider” to cherry pick profitable slices of NHS services. It’s the biggest-ever privatisation of health care anywhere in the world,

2. The Bill will turn the NHS into a free market, cost billions to implement, and be far more unequal in its provision of services than the current system.

3. GP consortia, with their budgets squeezed to create £20 billion of savings will have to restrict access to hospital care.

4. GP consortia will have to employ private management consultants, who are the only people to have welcomed Lansley’s plans.

5. Patients will be even less informed as existing public bodies are replaced by local GP consortia, that function in secret sessions, and a remote national NHS Commissioning Board.

6. Health care services are to be privatised, with EU competition laws forcing GPs to put any service out to tender.

7. All limits on the money Foundation Trusts hospitals can earn from private medicine are to be scrapped. Hospitals will then prioritise attracting wealthy private patients

8. Price competition is to be introduced in clinical services, despite warnings that this will undermine the quality of care.

9. The limited “scrutiny” proposals are a fraud: GP consortia and the Commissioning Board will take their decisions in secret, and are not even obliged to go through the motions of consultation.

10. The Bill is opposed by the health unions and the TUC, the majority of GPs, and virtually every organisation of health professionals, including the Royal College of GPs and the BMA.
That’s why Lansley must be stopped. It’s time for urgent political action to Kill Lansley’s Bill.