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Simon Stevens, until recently a vice-president of the US health giant United Health – and ersthwhile Blairite health adviser to New Labour – took over this week as the NHS chief executive. It can hardly have been by chance that his arrival coincided with two new reports recommending the introduction of up-front charges for NHS care –one from the King's Fund, the other from an unholy alliance between the former Labour health minister Lord Warner and the rightwing thinktank Reform.
Both reports start from the unchallenged but erroneous assertion that the NHS is "unsustainable", and are padded out with a plethora of platitudes about more care in the community and the merging of health and social care services. But at their heart are radical recommendations for the introduction of upfront charges for the NHS. In the case of Reform, this would be a "suggested" £10 "membership fee" a month.
Research is clear that charges of this sort deter the poor and the elderly – the very people who need the NHS most – and as a result they present later with more advanced illness. To Warner and the pundits at Reform £120 a year may not look much, but it will feel like the last straw to those already struggling with the consequences of austerity. The public understand this and, as a recent survey shows, are overwhelmingly against upfront payments.
http://www.theguardian.com/commenti...-nhs-charges-health-industrial-complex-budget
Both reports start from the unchallenged but erroneous assertion that the NHS is "unsustainable", and are padded out with a plethora of platitudes about more care in the community and the merging of health and social care services. But at their heart are radical recommendations for the introduction of upfront charges for the NHS. In the case of Reform, this would be a "suggested" £10 "membership fee" a month.
Research is clear that charges of this sort deter the poor and the elderly – the very people who need the NHS most – and as a result they present later with more advanced illness. To Warner and the pundits at Reform £120 a year may not look much, but it will feel like the last straw to those already struggling with the consequences of austerity. The public understand this and, as a recent survey shows, are overwhelmingly against upfront payments.
http://www.theguardian.com/commenti...-nhs-charges-health-industrial-complex-budget