Tuesday 14 June 2011

They didn't pause ... and they didn't listen



Anyone with any real desire/ability to question, will have known all along that the NHS 'listening exercise' was going to be no more than a smoke-screen ... as at the heart of the NHS reforms lies a fundamental strategy to save money (over £20bn in fact) by bribing GP's to ration healthcare ... 

And the reason for this is simple and clear to see - if you want to slash costs in the NHS then the best place to do this is in the GP's surgery, i.e. before GP's recommend / suggest any kind of medicine/treatment to a patient! 


Creating a situation where GP's can profit heavily from not recommending treatment creates a fundamental conflict of interest ... not in the interests of patients, but very much in the interests of their personal, and already inflated, bank balances (nb we already have some of the most highly paid doctors in the World)!


Such a situation clearly conflicts with their duty of care, as well as the hippocratic oath they take, but most people now go into medicine not to 'help people' ... but to make a 'shed-load of money'!

Under attack from the public as well as all the professionals involved in the NHS (nb even from the open, honest and honorable GP's who would themselves profit financially from such reforms), the Government decided to 'pause' and 'listen'. However the Government spent most of their time telling/persuading, and quietly pushing ahead with plans to give GP's responsibility for commissioning (nb and profiting from rationalising healthcare).

The Government also set up a group to run a 'listening exercise',  but they made sure from the very outset that rewarding GP's (for rationing healthcare) was not going to be put at risk ... and doing this was easy - they just selected the 'right person' to  'lead it" ... i.e. Steve Field, a practising GP, and previously the head of the Royal College of GP's!

So why didn't they pick a person with no vested interests to lead the 'listening exercise' ... too much of a risk ... pretty obvious really!