Doctors to launch public campaign against proposed NHS reforms
According to this article:
“The government faces a summer of discontent over its NHS reforms after doctors voted to launch a public campaign against the health bill, and one of the UK’s internet campaign groups raised £10,000 in three hours after emailing members to pay for expert legal advice over the bill.
The British Medical Association’s council, the executive committee of the union, voted to pass a series of motions critical of the government’s bill – and crucially accepted that doctors “start a public campaign to call for the withdrawal of the health and social care bill”.
Put forward by NHS consultants Clive Peedell and Jacky Davis, the motion will ratchet up the pressure on ministers over the summer break who had hoped that the bill’s third reading in early September would be an easy ride.
The BMA, which represents 140,000 doctors, voted to “reject the idea that the government’s proposed changes to the bill will significantly reduce the risk of further marketisation and privatisation of the NHS” and “agreed that the government is misleading the public by repeatedly stating that there will be ‘no privatisation of the NHS'”.
I am not against market reforms per se. It seems to me the nature of the challenge facing the ongoing delivery of good health services for rural communities needs to be properly discussed and understood, in the face of the impact of the recession on rural areas and the rural demographic time bomb. I don’t hear enough of that debate in the current emotive exchanges about this important issue. I fear the emotive headlines concerning the “selling off of the NHS” have clouded the scope for a more detailed debate on the real challenges facing rural communities in terms of health over the next decade.