Dewsbury Keep Our NHS Public invites everyone to JOIN THEM on Saturday 25th July in sunny Dewsbury, from 11am – 4pm at Dewsbury Women’s Centre, (men are welcome :)), 7 Wellington St. WF13 1LY, where Dr Anna Athow (retired Consultant Surgeon & BMA member) will give a presentation on NHS England’s Five Year Forward Plan – so that we know what we’re dealing with.

There will be lots of opportunities to ask questions and discuss what these proposals mean to the hospitals, community and public health services and GP surgeries in our areas – as well as gaining an understanding of what is happening nationally.

Dewsbury KONP says:

“WE ARE CALLING ON AS MANY OF YOU AS POSSIBLE to come and equip yourself to challenge what will be the last nail in the NHS coffin – if the privatisers have their way.

Meeting up will also give us an opportunity to meet as a region – it will enable us to learn, discuss, network and
make our own Forward Plans!

To make sure that we have enough space for everyone – please let us know your name, email address and phone
number(s) by Saturday 4th July (yes – irony intended!).
RSVP asap to: christine@northkirkleesnhssupportgroup.org.uk

If we don’t hear from you by then, we will assume that you can’t make it.

ALL are welcome – bring a friend, Grandma, neighbour, ambulance driver …”

The foxes have control of the NHS

As you may know, NHS England’s Five Year Forward View was introduced last year by Simon Stevens (David Cameron’s appointment as Chief Executive of NHS England)
and – crucially perhaps- before that, president of the global health division of UnitedHealth Group, the biggest US private health insurance company.

Optum, a subsidiary of United Health, is now gobbling up NHS contracts. And Spinwatch revealed that United Health chaired and funded the NHS England’s secretive Commissioning Support Industry Group. This brought together the usual management consultancy suspects and private health companies to plan for the future of support services for GPs (sold off to Capita a couple of days ago) and the privatisation of the Commissioning Support Units in 2016 (approved contractors and suppliers in the diagram below).

Spinwatch_Tamasin Cave_NHS foxes have control – Privatisation of CSUs starts 2016

Simon Stevens joined UnitedHealth through the revolving door between government and private health care companies that whizzed him out of his job advising the New Labour government on NHS privatisation. From 1997 to 2001, he had advised the first two New Labour health secretaries, Frank Dobson and Alan Milburn and from 2001 to 2004 he worked with Tony Blair in 10 Downing Street.

While working for the New Labour government, Stevens co-authored the 2000 NHS Plan with New Labour Health Secretary Alan Milburn (who later jumped ship to work for companies that promote and profit from NHS privatisation – both at Bridgepoint Capital and as as Chair of PwC’s UK Health Industry Oversight Board, which aims to shake up the NHS and create a “health market” that PwC can profit from).

The 2000 NHS Plan promoted more private sector involvement in the NHS: a greater role for competition in the NHS, getting private companies to provide some services, and expanding the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) to fund the construction of new hospitals.

In 2000 the Labour Government issued its Concordat which welcomed private health care
companies into the NHS.

Simon Stevens also praised the Coalition government’s 2012 Health & Social Care Act, which has speeded up and extended the NHS privatisation that the new Labour government set in motion.

What is NHS England’s Five Year Forward View?

NHS England’s Five Year Forward View plans to introduce “new models of care” that
reproduce the “models” advocated by the UnitedHealth Center for Health Reform and
Modernization.

Four areas in West Yorkshire are now piloting some of these “new care models” in NHS
England Vanguard schemes:

• Calderdale Multispeciality Community Provider Vanguard scheme, being set up now in the Upper Calder Valley, based at the Todmorden Health Centre
• West Wakefield Health and Wellbeing Multispeciality Community Provider Vanguard scheme
• Wakefield Enhanced Health in Care Homes Vanguard scheme
• Airedale Enhanced Health in Care Homes Vanguard scheme

If carried out, the Five Year Forward View will destroy our National Health Service and
open the door to its complete privatisation.

George Osborne’s ‘Devo Manc’ proposals are the biggest roll out of the Five Year Forward
View so far. According to Calderdale Clinical Commissioning Group’s Chief Officer Dr Matt Walsh, this is the “paragon” that others including West Yorkshire Clinical Commissioning Groups and local authorities are going to follow.

We need to defend the NHS as never before.