The rhetoric of all political parties is always that “the NHS is safe with us” and that they are fully committed to maintain the NHS as a free public, nationalised service. Early in this General Election, as reported in The Times and elsewhere, Boris Johnson even said that as far as rumours that the Tories would privatise the NHS, there was “more evidence for the Loch Ness monster and Bermuda Triangle”. But there is plenty of evidence from the government that Boris Johnson consistently supported.
What should concern objective commentators and voters is that under the Coalition Government of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats and under the Conservatives since 2015, there has been extensive privatisation – real evidence of intentions, as documented in my recent book, Plunder of the Commons. Although it began under New Labour, privatisation was substantially accelerated by the Health and Social Care Act of 2012, which in all but name abolished the government’s obligation to provide a comprehensive health service beyond emergency care and ambulances and which opened up NHS contracts to unlimited privatisation.
Even excluding the partial privatisation of GP work, dentistry and community pharmacy, the NHS now contracts out over £9 billion a year (8% of the NHS budget) – a figure rising steadily – to private companies, much to US multinationals and their subsidiaries, the most conspicuous being Optum, which now provides services and medication management inside the NHS. Since 2015, Optum’s owner company, United Health (the biggest healthcare company in the USA and world), has been on the NHS Committee overseeing the award of contracts to private firms. The chief of NHS England, appointed by David Cameron, was previously Vice President of United Health. All of this is legal, but surely does not look good.
Under the Conservatives, Aspen Healthcare, acquired by US Tenet Healthcare in 2015, has been bidding successfully for NHS contracts. US insurance company, Kaiser Permanente, has been given lavish contracts to provide management services to the NHS. And Health Corporation America is running private medical services from NHS hospitals. These are just examples.
Boris Johnson has consistently voted for the policies that has produced this privatisation. As a journalist, he was dismissed for making up stories. Perhaps we should start looking out for the Loch Ness monster.
Photo credit: Flickr/Paolo Margari.