NEWS RELEASE
12 July 2010
Lansley puts business at the centre of NHS, not patients
Responding to today's publication of the NHS white paper, the health pressure group, NHS Support Federation, accused the government of favouring commercial business over patients and cast doubt on plans to save money by restructuring.
Federation director Paul Evans said:
"Patient power will be overwhelmed by the influence of unaccountable companies. No matter what individual patients want, profit-motivated firms will now have a huge say in what care is available and much of the fairness, value and public trust in the traditional NHS will be lost."
"GP commissioning will create a spaghetti-like snarl of conflicting interests, where profit will inevitably come before patients. Paying companies to spend the huge NHS budget on other companies is a recipe for scandalous waste and the sort of shady deals that the public must be protected from."
"Savings from sacking local NHS managers are unlikely to be as large as the government predict, due to redundancy costs and extra GP payments. Few GPs have the skills or the time to do this essential job and the plan to use the private sector will be expensive and sacrifice public control."
Source: NHS Support Federation Newsletter