Churchill and NHS
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An interesting letter in today’s Times from the Conservative Party historian. It’s behind a paywall so I’ve typed it out:
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Sir, Andrew Roberts (letter, May 14) quotes Churchill’s ringing declaration of support for a national health service (a concept backed by the Tory leadership since the 1930s) in answer to the charge that his hero opposed the Beveridge Report. Beveridge dealt with social insurance and employment rather than health. The report stirred unease on the Tory benches. Nevertheless, Churchill declared in February 1943 that it “constitutes an essential part of any postwar scheme of national betterment”. The 1945 Conservative manifesto pledged: “One of our most important tasks will be to pass into law and bring into action as soon as we can a nationwide and compulsory scheme of national insurance based on the plan announced by the government of all parties in 1944”. It is a myth that Churchill and the Tories opposed the welfare state.
Lord Lexden
Conservative Party historian
/unquote
Lew
Pity for them they got pipped by Labour in its actual implementation!
No doubt he has been joining in the weekly state-backed rounds of applause to show just how much he cares for workers who would much rather have a hefty pay rise.
I daresay we’ll be hearing and reading a lot more about how the Tories have been a great friend of the NHS during the pandemic.
On the Party Twitter account, there have been a number of tweets decrying ‘social healthcare’.
I’ve replied: The NHS and the Welfare State, were set up after the horrors of WWII faced by British forces (and the general population). Soldier’s coming home after the end of war, would come back to a country fit for our war heroes.l have told the people saying this about social healthcare, that they are utterly ignorant, when talking about the NHS in Britain.
The sickening case was that of the male who because he’d turned 18, the parents health insurance no longer covered him. Because of his on going illness, he was left to pay for his insulin, which he couldn’t afford, and had to ration what he could afford (which is very common in the US) it led to his death. If this wasn’t enough, the loss of a son, blame was laid squarely on the parents? 😡
But surely the NHS was created as a buffer against revolution? It was an insurance policy for the Capitalist Class. Plus they’d realised by then they could make more money out of us if we had a modicum of education and maintenence.
As succintly put by Courtauld:
Thank you for the link. Yes, you are right.
My point is that what these people are advocating, the best healthcare is privately run insurance based profit driven healthcare.When you’re unwell and fall down in the street. The first thing medics will do is not to check your pulse, breathing, but check your wallet to see you have medical insurance!
The privatisation that has gone on in the NHS has been to pay contractors an amount that allows them to make a profit from providing services to it, not (yet?) to directly provide medical care for profit. In this way health care remains free for patients. Except that dentists have long been allowed to charge and make a profit out of actually providing health care, which NHS doctors are not.
Except that dentists have long been allowed to charge and make a profit out of actually providing health care, which NHS doctors are not.
There are very many NHS specialists and consultants who have their own private clinics, etc. usually in the afternoon off that they get from the NHS as part of their deal. They then have private beds in NHS hospitals, which they pay a fee to the hospital for, so that they can do their private operations etc. meaning you can effectively jump the queue if you are willing to pay.
Strange thing was that when I worked for Local Government we were always told that as salaried staff we were not able to work for any other organisation outside of our contracted hours, because unlike hourly paid staff, our labour was deemed to be the exclusive property of the employer. Funny how the same rules don’t seem to apply to senior doctors, MPs, Senior Civil Servants, etc.
.. and they can make decisions for elderly poor people, such as starving them to death with so called ‘palliative care’, which they wouldn’t make for millionaire paying patients.
I haven’t quite got my head around how these decisions are made by surgeon ‘gods’.
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