Saturday, April 01, 2006

Redistribution in the NHS - confirmed on BBC Newsnight on Thursday

What I've been worried about was confirmed on Thursday night's Newsnight programme when a government health minister explained how he wanted NHS Trusts in poorer parts of the country ( a point he made at least twice ) with surpluses to be paid interest on those surpluses at 10-20%, whilst NHS trusts in deficit are charge 10% to borrow to cover their overspend ( in addition to automatic drops in their grants ).

It is clear to me that the governments aim is to provide worse health care to the middle classes, whilst moving resources to its core voters.

Now this is a policy they are entitled to carry out - but not whilst pretending to have a National Health Service. Support for the NHS will stop amongst those who pay the bills, and that will ultimately be the end of the NHS. ( Lefties think hard on this as you may be out of power sooner than you think. )

Does anyone have a geographical map showing which trusts are in surplus and which are in deficit ? It would be interesting to cross reference with the political map from the last general election.

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