Exclusive: Labour’s NHS ‘reform’ = treat yourself

Reality of Labour’s plans for the NHS shows up in party conference session

Keir Starmer’s and Health Secretary Wes Streeting’s plans for the NHS have already been exposed to a considerable degree by their promise to increase privatisation and their approval of the longstanding Tory plan to ration NHS care through the continued roll-out of so-called ‘integrated care systems’ (ICS), which used to be called ‘accountable care organisations (ACOs) after the US corporate care model on which it is based – until that name became so toxic because of US healthcare scandals.

ICS involves incentivising healthcare providers – already fragmented and extensively run by private corporations – to not provide care, by giving them a share of any money they don’t spend on healthcare. The plan, in place for over a decade now, has seen the NHS broken up, the profitable parts sold off or contracted out, and a massive increase in waiting lists and difficulty accessing timely treatment or even a GP appointment.

ICS is designed to make it opaque and hard to understand, reducing the extent to which the public realises what is being done to it and the outrage ordinary people feel at the theft and destruction of what was before 2010 considered the most efficient and one of the best-performing health services in the world.

But an official session being held at Labour’s annual party conference this week, sponsored by profit-driven private health giants, gives the game away in terms anyone can understand. Thisi morning, Labour held a conference seminar revealingly titled “How to Save 25 million GP Appointments: The role of self-care in delivering an NHS fit for the future“:

Haleon, the session sponsor, is Glaxo Smithcline’s ‘consumer healthcare company’:

‘Self-care’ – DIY treatment – is not a new idea for the people pushing health privatisation, but it’s rare to see it stated so nakedly. It’s not the first time, though. John Oldham, appointed in 2013 by Labour to strategise so-called ‘integration’, was already a big advocate, as NHS campaigner Caroline Molloy noted shortly after his appointment:

‘Self-care’ ‘integrated under private management’ has always been an aim of the Labour right for the NHS and now it is being pushed through under a ‘Labour’ government every bit as Tory as Cameron, Thatcher and Blair.

Diagnose and treat yourself before bothering your GP or hospital (if you even have one near you) – what possible harm could arise from that?

Meanwhile, Labour is continuing and fully supports the Tories’ project to replace fully-trained (and therefore expensive for businesses and harmful to profit margins) doctors with ‘physician associates’ and ‘anaesthetist associates’ so that if you survive ‘self-care’ and ever get an appointment, you might think you’re seeing a doctor but are not. People have already died as a result.

The trusting might think that Labour wouldn’t do this if it will kill people, but this is a party that has just cut the Winter Fuel Allowance despite knowing it will kill at least 4,000 people a year, is keeping 1.5 million kids in poverty even though it would be cheaper to lift them out of it – and is pushing the ‘physician associate’ role even though it knows that it poses a high risk to patients.

Welcome to the future of the NHS, unless we – you – fight it. The arrogance of the new government is so towering that they’re scarcely even bothering to hide it.

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