Kill Health Bill call from Sid Valley retired medic

A WEEK after the British Medical Association advised its officers to call on Health Secretary Andrew Lansley to withdraw the Health and Social Care Bill, now going through Parliament, a SW representative at the BMA’s special meeting urges people to contact their MP to “Kill the Bill”.

From the Sid Valley, but unwilling to be identified, the retired member of the medical profession who attended the special BMA meeting, says Sidmouth people should contact East Devon MP Hugo Swire to urge him and other MPs to stop the Bill in its tracks.

“It is not economic or good for patients. I am concerned everyone gets on to their MP to tell him to Kill the Bill. We must keep our National Health Service publicly owned,” she said.

“Yes we need changes in the way things are administered and managed, but we don’t want to lose national ownership of the NHS.”

Privately owned, the NHS could operate like the US system through insurance and, says the SW representative, this was failing many poorer people in America unable to afford insurance.

In Germany the government pays insurance bills for treatment but this, she claims, leads to hospitals carrying out unnecessary tests and treatments on patients “and consequently it is vastly more expensive than the NHS.

“Lansley is selling the Bill to the public by saying you will have free choice of where you can go (for treatment) but any change will be governed financially by commissioners for your service. Finance will dictate in the end.”

Doctors are expected to do this commissioning.

The emergency BMA meeting in London that she attended, was the first of its kind in almost 20 years.

While stopping short of a vote of no confidence in Mr Lansley, the association wants him to halt his plans to reform the NHS and condemned his failure to act on its concerns.

Successful, effective commissioning could only occur through close collaboration between GPs, hospital doctors and public health doctors it agreed.