UK BANNED Press TV: Britain’s National
Health Service (NHS) has been a bone of contention between a government
trying to reduce national health costs and a public struggling to
survive, but perhaps the time is ripe to give up on the overly
scrutinized, indebted and plagued hospitals.
As UK Prime Minister David Cameron eyes up the financial gain in privatizing more of the NHS, this review looks at the failures of the organization from staff shortages to gross misconduct that led to tens of thousands of deaths.
The proposal to initiate the NHS came through disguising the health tax that “would be regarded as a profitable form of insurance,” a medical dentist and author, Lawson Dodd, wrote in 1911. The aim was to reduce national health costs through prevention and sanitary control.
However, this was simply not the case. Annual budgets faced black holes since the launch of the NHS on July 5, 1948 as pre-launch budget estimates for 1946 to 1947 stood at £110 million, which proved to be heavily underrated.
The actual cost in 1948/49 was £328 million, which grew to £430 million in five years.
The government, shocked by the gross underestimation of the NHS expenditure, was quick to increase the hidden costs of so called “free medical treatment” in Britain.
On top of the tax on health costs, an additional levy was introduced in 1952. For each prescription, patients had to pay one shilling, equivalent to £0.05 only to skyrocket to £7.85 in April 2013.
Around 97,000 public workers went on strike in 1972 as the government loosened its grip on the trade unions and NHS workers became livid over small pay and high inflation.
The NHS took matters into its own hands and started to reserve beds for private patients who could pay for the care, which reduced the availability of healthcare to the most needy and impoverished.
The strikes and scandals in public-funded hospitals led to calls for the Conservative government to step down leading to a general election in which Labour won by only 3 seats in 1974.
Labour incurred more public displeasure in 1979 in the so called “Winter of Discontent”, when NHS ancillary workers formed picket lines and blockaded the entrances to hospitals.
In recent years, more cost-cutting measures have hit the NHS with David Cameron’s administration forcing the NHS England to increase efficiency savings by £20 billion.
Misconduct at the NHS was swept under the rug, until pressure built up and reports of deaths from surgeries came out.
At least 29 babies were found to have died within 30 days after a heart operation at the Bristol Royal Infirmary between 1988 and 1995.
The inquiry found three doctors guilty of medical negligence leading to their sacking.
The government-commissioned inquiry, however, refused to investigate deaths or brain injuries of 150 other children despite street protests, featuring chanting of their names.
Reports of misconduct rose from 1,000 claims in 1995 to over 4,000 five years later, which then quadrupled to over 16,000 by 2013.
Reports of the NHS removing and dissecting body parts of deceased loved ones started to boom in the late 90s, with an internal inquiry revealing hospitals had kept and experimented on more than 105,000 organs, limbs and other pieces of the human body for over 30 years.
It was not until after more than 500 relatives filed for compensation that a law was introduced to make it illegal for doctors to carry out such acts without a relative’s consent.
By the mid 2000s, the whole NHS faced a backlog of malpractice claims that the National Audit Office valued at a debt of £4 billion.
In 2013, more claims have been submitted to authorities as the atrocities of the poor healthcare became public knowledge.
According to a study released in September 2013 by Emeritus Professor Brian Jarman, a senior research investigator at Imperial College London, England, patients in NHS hospitals are 45 percent more likely to die from medical negligence than those in the US.
One of the most heavily-scrutinized failures of the government managing the NHS came to light after claims that between 400 and 1,200 deaths were caused at an NHS hospital in Stafford, due to a lack of staff, adequate equipment and proficient management.
A separate case was also revealed of the so-called “Mid Staffs” scandal at Stafford Hospital between 2005 and 2008.
The hospital faced dire staff shortages while the staff on site were said to be disregarding patients’ needs and relying too much on data records.
An inspection by the independent regulator Care Quality Commission in January 2013 named 17 hospitals that were found to have insufficient staffing levels.
At every pitfall over the past 65-years, the governments of the UK have implemented reforms that promised to revitalize the NHS.
Several regulatory organizations have emerged from the UK’s Department of Health, such as Monitor, the Strategic Health Authority and the Healthcare Commission, to provide feedback on the performance of the UK’s healthcare service.
They have often clashed in their reports and as a result of their findings little has been done to reduce the cost of healthcare or to compensate the British public for the NHS’ gross medical negligence.
Source
As UK Prime Minister David Cameron eyes up the financial gain in privatizing more of the NHS, this review looks at the failures of the organization from staff shortages to gross misconduct that led to tens of thousands of deaths.
The proposal to initiate the NHS came through disguising the health tax that “would be regarded as a profitable form of insurance,” a medical dentist and author, Lawson Dodd, wrote in 1911. The aim was to reduce national health costs through prevention and sanitary control.
However, this was simply not the case. Annual budgets faced black holes since the launch of the NHS on July 5, 1948 as pre-launch budget estimates for 1946 to 1947 stood at £110 million, which proved to be heavily underrated.
The actual cost in 1948/49 was £328 million, which grew to £430 million in five years.
The government, shocked by the gross underestimation of the NHS expenditure, was quick to increase the hidden costs of so called “free medical treatment” in Britain.
On top of the tax on health costs, an additional levy was introduced in 1952. For each prescription, patients had to pay one shilling, equivalent to £0.05 only to skyrocket to £7.85 in April 2013.
Around 97,000 public workers went on strike in 1972 as the government loosened its grip on the trade unions and NHS workers became livid over small pay and high inflation.
The NHS took matters into its own hands and started to reserve beds for private patients who could pay for the care, which reduced the availability of healthcare to the most needy and impoverished.
The strikes and scandals in public-funded hospitals led to calls for the Conservative government to step down leading to a general election in which Labour won by only 3 seats in 1974.
Labour incurred more public displeasure in 1979 in the so called “Winter of Discontent”, when NHS ancillary workers formed picket lines and blockaded the entrances to hospitals.
In recent years, more cost-cutting measures have hit the NHS with David Cameron’s administration forcing the NHS England to increase efficiency savings by £20 billion.
Misconduct at the NHS was swept under the rug, until pressure built up and reports of deaths from surgeries came out.
At least 29 babies were found to have died within 30 days after a heart operation at the Bristol Royal Infirmary between 1988 and 1995.
The inquiry found three doctors guilty of medical negligence leading to their sacking.
The government-commissioned inquiry, however, refused to investigate deaths or brain injuries of 150 other children despite street protests, featuring chanting of their names.
Reports of misconduct rose from 1,000 claims in 1995 to over 4,000 five years later, which then quadrupled to over 16,000 by 2013.
Reports of the NHS removing and dissecting body parts of deceased loved ones started to boom in the late 90s, with an internal inquiry revealing hospitals had kept and experimented on more than 105,000 organs, limbs and other pieces of the human body for over 30 years.
It was not until after more than 500 relatives filed for compensation that a law was introduced to make it illegal for doctors to carry out such acts without a relative’s consent.
By the mid 2000s, the whole NHS faced a backlog of malpractice claims that the National Audit Office valued at a debt of £4 billion.
In 2013, more claims have been submitted to authorities as the atrocities of the poor healthcare became public knowledge.
According to a study released in September 2013 by Emeritus Professor Brian Jarman, a senior research investigator at Imperial College London, England, patients in NHS hospitals are 45 percent more likely to die from medical negligence than those in the US.
One of the most heavily-scrutinized failures of the government managing the NHS came to light after claims that between 400 and 1,200 deaths were caused at an NHS hospital in Stafford, due to a lack of staff, adequate equipment and proficient management.
A separate case was also revealed of the so-called “Mid Staffs” scandal at Stafford Hospital between 2005 and 2008.
The hospital faced dire staff shortages while the staff on site were said to be disregarding patients’ needs and relying too much on data records.
An inspection by the independent regulator Care Quality Commission in January 2013 named 17 hospitals that were found to have insufficient staffing levels.
At every pitfall over the past 65-years, the governments of the UK have implemented reforms that promised to revitalize the NHS.
Several regulatory organizations have emerged from the UK’s Department of Health, such as Monitor, the Strategic Health Authority and the Healthcare Commission, to provide feedback on the performance of the UK’s healthcare service.
They have often clashed in their reports and as a result of their findings little has been done to reduce the cost of healthcare or to compensate the British public for the NHS’ gross medical negligence.
Source
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