P5177726
"March to save the NHS: Kill Lansley’s Bill – Our health service not for sale" : London 17.05.2011
Over a thousand National Health Service professionals and medical students marched today from University College Hospital in Gower Street to rally outside the Department of Health in Whitehall under the event title "March to Save the NHS: Kill Lansley's Bill - Our Health Service Not For Sale", referring to Health Minister Andrew Lansley's 'Health and Social Care Bill', which many within the NHS claim will all but dismantle the NHS, favouring the farming out of many core services to private companies, despite the dreadful track-record of such companies already cherry-picking services such as hip-replacements and many other simple day-surgery proceedures which often go wrong and have to be rectified by NHS hospitals.
Based on the American health-care model, Lansley's reforms would fragment the NHS fatally, setting up hospitals the length and breadth of the country to fail, ushering in privatised health care companies to take over the hospitals, where profit for the shareholders, not quality of care, would be the sole driving force as it is in the USA where there are over fifty million people who cannot afford personal health insurance, reducing our amazing health service to something more befitting a third world country.
There is some hope though, inasmuch as this coalition government has already had to back down several times after their much-vaunted spending cuts reforms have proved to be ill-conceived, often illegal and completely unworkable, and Lansley's bill has already stalled due to public outcry to go through further consultation - though many suspect this is little more than a trojan horse tactic by Cameron's Conservatives to give the impression they're listening to the public mood when actually they have not the slightest intention of turning back from their dogma-driven policies designed to make the rich richer whilst denying basic services to the most disadvantaged sectors of society.
All Photos © 2011 Pete Riches
Do not copy, reproduce or alter any images without my permission
P5177726
"March to save the NHS: Kill Lansley’s Bill – Our health service not for sale" : London 17.05.2011
Over a thousand National Health Service professionals and medical students marched today from University College Hospital in Gower Street to rally outside the Department of Health in Whitehall under the event title "March to Save the NHS: Kill Lansley's Bill - Our Health Service Not For Sale", referring to Health Minister Andrew Lansley's 'Health and Social Care Bill', which many within the NHS claim will all but dismantle the NHS, favouring the farming out of many core services to private companies, despite the dreadful track-record of such companies already cherry-picking services such as hip-replacements and many other simple day-surgery proceedures which often go wrong and have to be rectified by NHS hospitals.
Based on the American health-care model, Lansley's reforms would fragment the NHS fatally, setting up hospitals the length and breadth of the country to fail, ushering in privatised health care companies to take over the hospitals, where profit for the shareholders, not quality of care, would be the sole driving force as it is in the USA where there are over fifty million people who cannot afford personal health insurance, reducing our amazing health service to something more befitting a third world country.
There is some hope though, inasmuch as this coalition government has already had to back down several times after their much-vaunted spending cuts reforms have proved to be ill-conceived, often illegal and completely unworkable, and Lansley's bill has already stalled due to public outcry to go through further consultation - though many suspect this is little more than a trojan horse tactic by Cameron's Conservatives to give the impression they're listening to the public mood when actually they have not the slightest intention of turning back from their dogma-driven policies designed to make the rich richer whilst denying basic services to the most disadvantaged sectors of society.
All Photos © 2011 Pete Riches
Do not copy, reproduce or alter any images without my permission