National Health Action Party

National Health Action Party   (Political party)

The National Health Action Party (NHA) is a political party in the United Kingdom.

The NHA grew out of the movement opposing the UK/2012 Health and Social Care Act and campaigns for renationalisation of the privatised parts of the English National Health Service, reductions in outsourcing, and improvements to NHS funding, service provision and staffing. Despite focusing on health, the party has a range of policies in areas such as the economy, housing and education. These include opposition to austerity and a call for political reform.

Dr Bob Gill GP

Dr Bob Gill GP – Our NHS - from public to private

Bob Gill is a General Practitioner and NHS campaigner who directed the film "The Great NHS Heist" exposing how, over decades, the National Health Service has been packaged up and readied for privatisation by successive governments:

In July 2022, Boris Johnson’s government passed the new Health and Care Act which set up Integrated Care Systems, mirroring an American ‘managed-care’ model. Among its many shortcomings, it introduces greater power to Ministers to make future changes without parliamentary scrutiny, more barriers to face-to-face GP appointments, more private corporation influence over boards, and fewer legal requirements on standards of care.

In this interview, Dr Bob explains how the new Public Private Partnerships, with fixed budgets, will inevitably lead to staff exploitation and denial of care as well as the shrinking of unprofitable areas of the NHS like Accident & Emergency or mental health provision.

Dr Gill exposes how the media have failed to explain the real purpose of changes in NHS structures, and how they are scapegoating GPs, immigrants, the elderly and so on, rather than analysing the root cause of the crisis in the NHS, which is the government’s policy agenda.

The COVID-19 pandemic response was costly, very heavily privatised, and according to the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee a massively expensive waste of money, but it was also a major opportunity to maximise private profiteering.

Insurance companies, private medicine providers and pharmaceutical corporations all stand to profit from further privatisation, and we know that for natural monopolies like healthcare, this can only mean trouble. Bob Gill asks us to consider the water companies – they’ve not built a new reservoir in decades, nor new sewage treatment works, instead maximising shareholder dividends and pumping raw sewage into our rivers and seas. Translate that business methodology into healthcare, and you will have patients being denied care, as well as preventable suffering and death on a large scale, just as we see in the USA.

With the media, unions, and even charities such as Mind, Alzheimer’s Society and Age Concern, for a variety of reasons all failing to shout from the rooftops, Dr Gill is begging the public to wake up, educate your family and friends, get on national talk radio, and join grassroots movements to fight this utter betrayal by our politicians before it is finally too late.

Policies

The NHA has a range of policies on healthcare, political reform, the economy, immigration, housing, education and environmental sustainability.

Health

• To reverse privatisation and restore a publicly run NHS that provides universal healthcare.
• To repeal the Health and Social Care Act 2012, remove the internal market and purchaser/provider split, and end use of Private Finance Initiative (PFI) deals.
• To protect the NHS from involvement in international trade agreements such as TTIP.
• To involve patients and staff in NHS decision processes and reduce reliance on management consultants.
• To improve public health, social care, housing and other matters that affect the nation's health.
• To combat gender inequality in healthcare and the workplace
• To demand a moratorium on hospital re-configurations unless there are evidence-based, clinical reasons with local and staff support and adequate alternatives already in place.

Political reform

• To enact stricter controls on MPs' and Peers' voting when they have a conflict of interest.
• To reform the House of Lords so at least 80% of members are directly elected through single transferable vote, while the remainder are appointed for fixed terms based on expertise in specialist fields
• To review the system of party whips and the practice of voting without attending debate.
• To end the revolving door culture of UK politics.
• To lower the voting age to 16.
• To appoint a commission to investigate a move towards proportional representation.

Economy

• To reject austerity and oppose further public spending cuts.
• To increase spending on key public services and infrastructure with a view to increasing the UK's GDP.
• To ensure taxation is progressive and take actions to reduce tax avoidance and evasion.
• To improve regulation of the financial sector, including separation of the retail and investment arms of banks.
• To introduce a living wage, ban zero-hour contracts and work towards a state of minimal unemployment.

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References

This page imported content from Wikipedia on 9 November 2022.
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