PFI = Profit from Illness, drive profiteering out of our NHS!

Private finance initiative has been crippling our NHS for decades now. With many hospitals now a certain hospital trust in south London facing difficulties it’s time to end this profit mad system and re nationalize the NHS and kick out the profiteers from our health care once and for all.


The South London Healthcare NHS Trust has already lost £150m

The trust runs three hospitals and has run up deficits of more than £150m over the past three years. It is thought to be on course to lose between £150m and £375m by 2017.
Our staff has worked hard for patients and in spite of significant financial issues we are extremely proud we now have among the lowest mortality and infection rates in the country

Its chief executive was informed on Monday night that the trust is likely to be put into the "unsustainable providers regime", which was introduced by the last Labor government but never before used.

The administrator will take over the board and recommend measures to the Health Secretary to put the trust's finances on a sustainable basis. Which to me means nothing but cuts and a contraction of services offered and a round of redundancies for the staff.

Hospitals run by the trust include Queen Mary's in Sidcup, the Queen Elizabeth in Woolwich and the Princess Royal in Bromley.

It is clear to me to save the NHS PFI must be rejected out of hand and all services brought back into proper democratic public ownership. With a trade union lead campaign with local communities and the mass of the working class behind a campaign to save the NHS we can save it only if we act now. Each day a further piece of our NHS is lost if we don’t act now it’ll be gone in a few years time. A distant memory.

PFI was begun in the early 1990s by the then Tory government. It was attacked by Labour when in opposition, but then massively accelerated under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown's governments. Today there are hundreds of PFI projects covering hospitals, schools, roads, bridges, police stations and prisons.
Instead of a public body building a new facility using public money, albeit through a contract with a private builder or developer, PFI involves a private sector developer or consortium doing the whole job. It borrows the money (often at higher rates of interest than the government would), builds the project and then charges a fee for 25 to 40 years for maintaining the buildings and usually also providing various services.
Labour spokespersons such as Patricia Hewitt and Alan Milburn condemned such PFI projects as 'backdoor privatization' when in opposition. In government, however, as health secretaries, they claimed it was the 'only game in town'. And curiously, after government, they (and many other Labour ex-ministers) got lucrative private sector jobs and consultancies, many in the same areas where they had been ministers.
The Financial Times estimated in 2007 that, after ten years of New Labour, the total capital value of PFI contracts across the UK was £68 billion - but that the total which would be given to the private companies involved in those contracts, by the time they were finished, would be £215 billion!
Three years later, in November 2010, the total payment obligation for PFI contracts in the UK had rocketed to £267 billion. And in the first year of the Tory/Lib Dem coalition a further 61 PFI schemes, with a capital value of £7 billion were approved. PFI has become a 'milch cow' for big business in the public sector.

In the week the NHS is 63 years old fight must be stepped up to save it

SO on the 5th of July, tommorrow one of the greatest institutions celebrates its 63rd birthday.

But this is no time for sentiments as this fantastic organisation is under threat from this tory government . The planned health care reforms plan to open up the NHS to further privatisation building on what the last labour government started with their PFI schemes.

The NHS which is famous the world over and well known for its excellent free at the point of use health care.

Its staff work endlessly for long hours and poor pay in alot of situations.

The battle to save the NHS must be stepped up combining NHS workers in the public sector general strike in the autumn. There will be march's to save teh NHS but i think industrial action is needed now to save it.

I like many others value what a great service the NHS gives. Tories and the rich do not appreciate what a great job the staff of it do. This is down to the fact few of them use it. Most of the rich use private health care as they can afford it.

I worry that the ideas the tories have which was to end the National Health service within 5 years of them coming to power which is what one tory was quoted as saying before the election last year. I fear we will end up with a american style health care where if you need a operation or to see a doctor you must pay before you get seen.

This is not the sort of country i wantto live in where how much you can afford determines if you can and cant be seen and what standard of treatment you can get.

The NHS should always be free for all. It can be funded properly if the tax evaded by rich corperations is properly collected.

The NHS should be under worker control with no privatisation at all. It should be there to provide first class health care for all not to provide a service or a product which people buy into.

So i urge you all now who value this great instittution set up for the benifit of the many not just the few to stand up and defend your NHS.

In its 60 years of existence the NHS has undergone reform after reform by government after government. It is time we say keep your grubby hands off our NHS and properly fund it and keep out private money.

This was a organisation made by the people for the people, lets keep it this way!

In who's hands is the NHS safe ?

As we sit here listening to David Cameron plead with us all to believe in his latest NHS reforms we are left wondering in who's hands is the NHS safest with ?

The tories plans to hand more power to doctorsa nd consultants giving them the power to over see budgets and letting them make decisions on where teh money is spent. They aim to bring in consortiums with groups of doctors and medical profesionals making the decisions for us. People who are not trained in dealing with big budgets and management are being asked to do just that.

Apparently this is now in the national interest according to call me Dave. Where have we heard this before ?

But the question is would this all be even possible if new labour hadnt opened the door to private investment.

Back in 2001 Tony Blair introduced a scheme called PFI. Privately funded iniccitive in other words.

This key decision which lead to private money filtering into the NHS like a poisonous toxic threat is about to have its door rammed open by these tory reforms.

So when people in the labour party say the NHS would be safer under them and they set it up so understand it best we do have to question their history with the organisation.

No doubt waiting times came down under labour and satisfaction levels shot up but as a consequence this has opened up the door to privatisation which in all honesty the tories have always wanted to do.

With the health secretary Andrew Lansley financially backed by private health firms clearly there are alterea motives at play here.

As much as the tories and David Cameron like to spin this bill it is clear what their eventual goal is.

We all realise that the NHS cannot stand still whilst our population grows and grows, especially our elderly population but selling parts off will not solve this.

A big re think by all needs to happen now. Not just a pause in proceedings of the bill but a total scrappage and a starting again with it all.

I believe the best people who know how the NHS should be run are the patients. If they are happy with how it is right now then leave it alone. If it needs e xtra investment then do that but always always keep it publically funded for the benifit of all not just the few.