Northerner
Admin (Retired)
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 1
The National Health Action party is drawing attention to the most important issue of the day ? the government's plans to destroy the NHS.
During the late 80s I worked as an illustrator for Nursing Times. When Margaret Thatcher's government split the NHS into self-governing trusts and created an internal market for services, I began a regular cartoon called "St Opt-Outs", an everyday story of medical folk struggling under the cosh of managers helicoptered in from the private sector. Adverts for life insurance printed on nurse's uniforms. Hot meals bussed in from Bulgaria. Anaesthetic stopping, mid-operation, when a patient's credit card maxed out.
Year by year it seemed less and less preposterous, because those changes were only the beginning of a relentless process, continued by every subsequent government, that led to the Health and Social Care Act of March last year.
If you don't know the contents and consequences of the act then you're not alone, and it's not your fault. This act will probably change our lives more than any other piece of legislation created by the present government. It was opposed by the British Medical Association and by all but one of the medical royal colleges. Yet it was never advertised in a manifesto. As Michael Portillo told Andrew Neil on BBC One's This Week in January 2011: "They did not believe they could win an election if they told you what they were going to do."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/19/how-eastleigh-voters-save-nhs
During the late 80s I worked as an illustrator for Nursing Times. When Margaret Thatcher's government split the NHS into self-governing trusts and created an internal market for services, I began a regular cartoon called "St Opt-Outs", an everyday story of medical folk struggling under the cosh of managers helicoptered in from the private sector. Adverts for life insurance printed on nurse's uniforms. Hot meals bussed in from Bulgaria. Anaesthetic stopping, mid-operation, when a patient's credit card maxed out.
Year by year it seemed less and less preposterous, because those changes were only the beginning of a relentless process, continued by every subsequent government, that led to the Health and Social Care Act of March last year.
If you don't know the contents and consequences of the act then you're not alone, and it's not your fault. This act will probably change our lives more than any other piece of legislation created by the present government. It was opposed by the British Medical Association and by all but one of the medical royal colleges. Yet it was never advertised in a manifesto. As Michael Portillo told Andrew Neil on BBC One's This Week in January 2011: "They did not believe they could win an election if they told you what they were going to do."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/19/how-eastleigh-voters-save-nhs