Miliband: Health bill is a ‘Pandora’s box’

Labour leader Ed Miliband used a press conference earlier to outline Labour’s five main reasons to oppose the health bill:
“Today I want to highlight five largely concealed aspects of their plans. Each of them puts the interest of the patient not first, but last. None of them have yet been defended by either David Cameron or Nick Clegg, and all of them represent steps in the wrong direction.
“First, the proposals open up the prospect of huge fines for hospitals who breach competition law. The board creates a new power for hospitals to be found guilty, and to be fined up to ten percent of their income if they are found guilty of breaching the law. That risks putting one local hospital off working with another, because it could be in breach of competition law.
“Second, Mr Cameron’s bill allows for the first time local hospitals to be subject to insolvency law to go bust in the same way as any commercial organisation. Big changes at your local hospital could come about as the result of a new internal market and financial failure.
“Third, the bill backed by David Cameron and Nick Clegg risks major decisions about NHS services being made not by the NHS, but by the courts. The bill imposes UK and EU competition law on our health service. As a patient, it could means that decisions about who provides what service in your area are made by lawyers and judges rather than doctors and nurses in the NHS.
“Fourth, the bill abolishes entirely the existing caps on the amount of private patient work which NHS hospitals can undertake. As a patient, this means your local hospital could convert a whole NHS ward or department to private, fee-paying care and you would have no say over it.
“Finally, these proposals from David Cameron and Nick Clegg leave enormous scope for unintended consequences and the erosion of national standards. Clause 22 of the bill gives new powers to charge for services. Clause 9 removes the role of the secretary of state in determining what services the NHS must provide, and transfers that responsibility to GPs.
“This bill is a Pandora’s Box. The more people look at the detail, the more profound and worrying the implications appear to be for the NHS.
“I take David Cameron at his word when he says he has no intention of undermining the principle of providing healthcare free at the point of need.
“But I have never heard the government explain what the effect of this transfer of power over charging to GPs will be, nor seek to defend it.”