A few recent news articles about the UK’s Conservative and Liberal-Democrat(Conservative) coalition government – the ConDem’s – brutal attack on the National Health Service.

 

The British Medical Association’s general practitioners committee has agreed a motion opposing the ConDem government’s Health and Social Care / Destroy the NHS Bill. The resolution represents a hardening of the BMA’s opposition to the bill. The letter can be read here. Here is the resolution that was passed.

“That the BMA’s general practitioners committee, which represents all GPs in the UK:

• Formally reaffirms its opposition to the NHS health and social care bill

• Believes that if passed the bill will be irreversibly damaging to the NHS as a public service, converting it into a competitive marketplace that will widen health inequalities and be detrimental to patient care

• Believes the bill will compromise the role of GPs, and could cause irreparable damage to the relationship between GPs and their patients.

• Believes the bill to be complex, incoherent and not fit for purpose, and almost impossible to implement successfully, given widespread opposition across the NHS workforce.

• Believes that passing the bill will be an irresponsible waste of taxpayers’ money, which will be spent on unnecessary reorganisation rather than on patient care, as well as increasing the running costs of the NHS from the processes of competition, and transaction costs

• Believes that GPs’ participation in CCGs does not equate to support for the bill, but that GPs are there to defend their patients’ interests and mitigate the adverse impact of the bill

• Supports clinically led commissioning believing this will lead to improvements in patient care in the NHS, and believes this can be more effectively achieved within existing legislation

• Calls upon the coalition government to withdraw the bill and instead enter into productive dialogue with the BMA to agree a way forward for clinically-led commissioning.