Miliband: Coalition creating ‘two-tier’ NHS
The leader of the opposition has argued in The Times that the health and social care bill is not the reform the NHS needs:
"The NHS will have to change. The question is if the health and social care bill helps it to meet these challenges. My emphatic answer is that it is does not. People interested in reforming the NHS to help patients should not – must not – support this bill.
"One of the most pressing tasks for our healthcare system over the coming years is to integrate the provision of services so that they are better organised around the needs of patients, to give them more control, and relieve pressure on NHS budgets.
"Years of upheaval lie ahead and patients will get a worse service.
"And the danger is that NHS hospitals will be tempted to take advantage of the government's plan to allow them to raise up to 49% of their income by turning over their beds to private patients. That would return us to a two-tier service: you can pay to jump the queue, but if you want free treatment you have to wait.
"Even at this late stage the government should drop the bill and adopt an approach that will drive the reforms that the NHS really needs."
