It is worth repeating that Andrew Lansley is being bankrolled by Care UK in the week that the privatising White Paper is released for all to see. The fact that Mr Lansley's personal office was funded by 21,000 pounds from the chairman of Care UK stinks.
A great problem with the new system as imposed by the new White Paper is the fact that GPs will not actually have any power to select the best treatments for patients, even though the government are pretending this is the case so they can blame GPs when it goes tits up.
The new 'commissioning board' will force GP consortia to purchase the cheapest services, irrelevant of quality or sustainability. Essentially despite the government's pretence that clinicians will be in control of this new 'local' process, it will be a top down centralised process controlled by this Stalinist commissioning board. Even Polly Toynbee understands how damaging this whole process will be.
If you want a good service, for example a house built or your car serviced, going to the cheapest provider rarely makes sense. In fact as a consumer to make a sensible choice you need the insight to know who is trustworthy and reliable, so that you know that get the best service possible for your money. The government's new system is a joke, the cheapest services will have to be purchased by the consortia, and as we have seen with ISTCs the private firms will frequently provide a shabby dangerous service for the money.
If this system were to have a hope of working then the GP consortia would have to be free to make their own informed choices, sadly they are not, they will be told what to do from on high. This is no sensible bottom up market, it is a top down Stalinist shambles that is designed to hand lots of money to Mr Lansley's generous friends in the private sector, and in the process our hospitals will be destabilised and destroyed.
1 comment:
Grannie always used to say that "You get what you pay for".
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