Looney tunes

In the crazy world otherwise known as the NHS, routine surgery is now being frozen to save money! This is not the first time this has happened either.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23385381-details/Three-month+freeze+on+routine+surgery/article.do

This is no isolated incident; this is common practice around the country and it gets worse. It has also become routine for surgeons who operate on patients too quickly, in order to keep the waiting list short, to be fined for their efficiency! Barmey! Here are just a couple of examples I've rooted out:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=398704&in_page_id=1770
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/08/02/nhs02.xml

And yes it gets worse, now some hospitals are taking out their lightbulbs to save cash!

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/voiceofthemirror/tm_headline=dark-day-for-nhs%26method=full%26objectid=18619681%26siteid=89520-name_page.html

Everyone has their opinion as to why the NHS is going wrong from the government trying to pin blame locally to some who think anything run by the state is doomed to failure.

I believe neither of these two theories. The government's chronic mismanagement and abuse of the NHS are the reason for the state it is in today.

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/allyson_pollock/profile.html
http://libr.org/isc/issues/ISC%2014%20Final%20Version.pdf

In my opinion Alyson Pollock is a woman who has hit the nail on the head concerning this subject. Her books are absolutely unparalleled in their objective destruction of government policy.

The creation of the internal market by Thatcher was the beginning of the end. Since then endless reorganisations and reforms have reduced a remarkably efficient locally controlled service into an inefficient top down dictatorship. Ideology and the pursuit of myths has led to more and more privatisation and a ridiculous situation where the NHS is becoming more a funder of private corporations than a healthcare provider!

PFIs/ISTCs/PBC/C&B/CATs/WICs are examples of hair-brained schemes that have been forced upon a public by the dictators in power via the Department of Health. There are many more of these schemes than I can be bothered to mention, but they have been imposed upon us with only one aim; that is the privatisation of the NHS.

The privatisation has also been aided by the quite deliberate bullying and victimisation of the medical profession via several means such as training reform (MMC), regulatory reform (the CMO) and the empowerment of other quango-practitioners. The government would not be able to push through its deliberate program of corrupt privatisation if the medical profession was strong and united; hence the reason for their multi-pronged attack on the medical profession.

So the NHS is left with a dysfunctional top down management structure where DOH orders must be obeyed or the fires of hell will be unleashed. The good will that kept the system running has been lost and healthcare professionals are losing their moral and will.

The politicians pin the blame locally even though the DOH has total authority and control and the media ignore many billions wasted on centrally funded initiatives and PFI, instead they concentrate on an NHS deficit of less than a billion that has built over many years.

It make one think why do the politicians want to wreck things and privatise the NHS? I'll leave that for a rainy day.