We’ll have a speaker from Nurses United and Dave Carr (Critical care nurse, organiser at GSTT) of Unite, followed by general discussion. Link below or go to https://linktr.ee/covidactionuk to register!

“Our health service is in crisis. The government would have us believe this is due to the COVID pandemic. This is untrue. It’s due to a carefully designed plan, carried out over the last decade and more, to bring in an Americanised private system. The Health and Care Act, which came into operation six months ago, has effectively abolished the national part of the health service. Instead we have 42 separate health economies with responsibility for their own budgets. The great driver is to ration and deny care, therefore reducing any budget deficit. Both main parties talk about the need to use private health companies – “to reduce waiting lists”, and similar. Private companies exist only to make profit. As with our other formally nationalised bodies government money goes straight into the hands of the privateers. Funding needs to be dramatically increased.

Unless we kick out the private companies and restore a national health service, fully nationalised and adequately funded and resourced, nothing will change. Some private companies that have taken over GP practices for instance, have decided to close surgeries. Our health service has been underfunded for years. Hospital beds have been cut sharply and compared badly with other similar countries. PFI, enthusiastically taken up by the Blair government, has crippled the health sector. Our NHS used to be efficient, effective and cheap to run. This compared favourably with the American system which is inefficient and expensive. Nye Bevan, the founder of the NHS, talked about it replacing fear. The fear that people had of getting sick or having an accident. Unfortunately, that fear has returned. It’s down to all of us to fix that. One way we can start is by taking Covid Action – now!” – Frank McEntaggart, Covid Action Steering Committee