DISGRACEFUL BRITISH HOSPITAL CLOSURES

At a time when there is a vast unmet demand for medical services in Britain. A private business would be EXPANDING facilities to cope with rising demand

If we had any proper democracy in this country, Patricia Hewitt would now be explaining to Parliament and the public why there is an undeclared war on local community hospitals, everywhere from Yorkshire to Suffolk to Wiltshire to Hampshire to, yes, Oxfordshire. Now that the election is over, and now that Gordon Brown is running out of money, we find that in towns across England, the Government is threatening to close local hospitals, in defiance of every promise they have made.

Did I say the Government? Forgive me: of course, the Government, when asked about this, denies all responsibility. Not me guv, say ministers, when you inquire why a loved and valued community hospital faces closure. It is, say ministers, entirely a decision for the local strategic health authority, or the primary care trust, and so the Labour people wash their hands of it.

It will not do. It is in the first place wrong that these hospitals are facing closure, when we all know that the biggest problem in the NHS is the waiting lists, made far worse by bed-blocking in the acute sector.

Why on earth are we proposing to close community hospitals, when they are not only relied upon for immediate treatment by local people, but when they also provide a place for recuperation, and so relieve the pressure on big general hospitals?

And then there is the second and more important point. Even if there were a case for closing these hospitals — which there is not — it should be made by Patricia Hewitt. It should not be the job of some worthy health service hierarch, some beleaguered quangocrat, to explain this baffling and outrageous decision. These hospitals were, by and large, built and funded by local people. They have been loved and used by local people for generations.

They were nationalised by the Labour Government in 1948; in other words they were taken away from the care and control of local people, to be run by national politicians. It is not good enough for those national politicians now to say that they have no responsibility for whether those hospitals stay open, especially since they have created the quangos.

It is not good enough for them to direct angry locals to write letters of protest to the strategic health authority, or to invite MPs to get in touch with the primary care trust. Apart from anything else, the Labour Government, having created the primary care trusts only three years ago, now proposes to abolish half of them. With whom are we supposed to be dealing, if we want to keep a hospital open?

No one seems to be in charge. No one is accountable. It is infamous. Instead of wasting everybody’s time and money with politically correct gerrymandering of public sector appointments, Patricia Hewitt should recognise that she is presiding over a massacre of local hospitals, and that it is her job — and her job alone — to justify the actions of her appointees

More here

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL hospitals and health insurance schemes should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the very poor and minimal regulation. Both Australia and Sweden have large private sector health systems with government reimbursement for privately-provided services so can a purely private system with some level of government reimbursement or insurance for the poor be so hard to do?

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