----- Original Message -----
From: Rowley Cottingham
> The funding of the NHS is still inadequate, and to think there will ever
be enough in the last Marxist outpost in the world
> is to delude yourself. The sooner the NHS is abandoned and income
generation is at the point of care so that an
> Emergency Unit is seen as an income generator rather than a waster the
better for all concerned, /particularly/ the patient.
> Health care will never improve in the UK unless this break is made.
I do see your point Rowley, and it is a valid one, notwithstanding your
position towards the Right of the political spectrum and my own position
towards the Left!! But we currently have a publicly funded health service,
like it or not. Although many aspects of this country have become right wing
since 1979 e.g. the market economy, erosion of union power, inequality etc,
the Welfare State is very much intact as you acknowledge, and there is other
evidence of the Left slowly re-asserting itself since 1997. And as long as
health care continues to be publicly funded then we can never be income
generators, we will always simply be utilisers of resources. Realistically
all health care workers/units are the same in this respect although the last
government created a quasi-market to make it appear as if some workers/units
were income generators. Thatcher's mistake however was to make a public
institution "business-like" by introducing false competition, purchasers and
providers etc, but this can't work unless you go the whole hog and become
totally private as you suggest. I'm a pragmatist rather than a Marxist
however, and I could live with a private system if it worked; I could live
with any model as long as I had decent resources to do my job properly, and
as long as the underprivileged are not disadvantaged.
Finally your observation about PCGs is very worrying. I don't know enough
about our local ones yet, but I'm meeting some of them soon. I'll report
back if I notice a similar trend...
Regards
Adrian Fogarty
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