Stop the profit privateers
Socialist Organiser1982 1982-04-29Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 9 →
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taken away. By calling for strike action (with workers defining emergency cover) and by staying out until we win our demands, we can begin to halt the cuts and start to rebuild the NHS. By 1980 3.3 million people were covered by private health insurance schemes. The largest of these operations, BUPA, had an income of £82 million in 1978, of which i paid back £52.7 million in benefits.
Since then private medicine has further expanded. The Tories have scrapped the Health Services Board whose task had been to limit private hospitals and phase out pay beds in NHS hospitals. They have made it obligatory for AHAs to provide pay beds where there is a demand for them' and given increasea scope jur expuresion of private hospitals.
The cuts in the NHS - with a national waiting list of over 700,000 in 1979have nelpea persuaae many to seer privurt anst nainato cover. But BUPA-style schemes are no answer to workers: they are not cheap -as much as £40 per month: and they do not cover geriatric or mental illness, conditions requiring long stays in hospital or chronic conditions such as asthma, arthritis, or diabetes.
They feed off the NHS, which alone trains doctors, nurses and technicians, and whose resources are milked by consultants Other lucrative sources of profit from the NHS are drugs - £125 million profits