Join the Movement to Reverse Americanisation and Renationalise our NHS!
Did you know that, in the 1980s, the Conservatives began privatising our NHS on the sly? That, by the 1990s, they had broken up a lean and efficient UK-wide service led by doctors into a multitude of competing businesses run by managers? And that New Labour broke its election promises to start hiring private companies to deliver NHS care? Or that, in 2012, the Conservative/LibDem Coalition opened up all NHS contracts to private sector competition, effectively giving the service away to big business?
In 2022, the Conservatives finally took the ‘National’ out of the health business by breaking the English ‘NHS’ into 42 American-style Integrated Care Systems (ICS). Private companies can sit on the ICS boards that control ‘NHS’ budgets, with financial rewards to cut and deny our care for profit. With the exception of the iconic logo, there’s little left of the original NHS.
You’re saying that politicians and NHS execs have spent £hundreds of billions of our taxes to:
- divert a fortune away from doctors, nurses and patient care towards an army of highly-paid managers, accountants and business consultants, and vastly over-priced private loans (PFI), bankrupting hospitals;
- shut 100+ hospitals, cut 150,000+ beds and nurses’ grants, and shrink the medical workforce, NHS dentistry, doctors’ training, workforce skills and more efficient, publicly-provided, doctor-led care;
- pay 1000s of private companies for more expensive, often worse quality NHS care, rip up universal standards, sell beds and GP practices to UK and foreign corporations, while asset-stripping the NHS?
Exactly. And this has led to thousands of us dying avoidably every month, hungry nurses and junior doctors on poverty pay using NHS food banks, NHS staff strikes and 7.6 million people on waiting lists, all to push us into the arms of private healthcare.
Who stands to gain from American-style healthcare in England? Many Conservative MPs, peers of all parties, Labour PM Keir Starmer and Secretary of State for Health Wes Streeting who all have a financial interest in private healthcare, as well as rich shareholders, private firms, UK and US health insurers and the banks who will ultimately repossess the homes of those bankrupted by hugely expensive private healthcare.
And why have the media kept silent on the government giveaway of over 75 years of the nation’s investment in its health to UK and foreign corporations? Because the UK media are themselves owned by private corporations or, in the case of the BBC, headed by their representatives.
Go to Learn More to get informed. Tweet/share this website link, the videos at the foot of each page and our 5 Key Demands everywhere. Join the movement to reverse Americanisation and renationalise our NHS!
Four Actions to Save Your NHS!
1.Action on NHS Staff Strikes - Paused 
Recent Conservative governments froze the salaries of frontline staff at below-inflation levels for over ten years — in real terms, NHS staff suffered a pay cut of nearly 30%. Some of the most, caring, dedicated and skilled members of society were unable to make ends meet and were even going hungry in the 6th richest nation in the world! Nurses, ambulance workers and junior doctors went on strike for pay restoration and the survival of our NHS. They don’t get paid when taking strike action, so we appealed for donations to strike funds to provide them with a bit of income to help them survive and, in turn, make strike action more effective. The strikes are now over. If you donated to NHS strike funds, thank you!
Background
Government policy caused a shortage of 135,000 NHS doctors and nurses. Hunger pushed over a third of NHS trusts to open food banks for frontline staff, who also suffered from the effects of cuts, closures, business-style performance targets, exhaustion, burn out and PTSD. NHS staff contracts contain gagging clauses to stop them speaking out, all of which pushes many talented doctors and nurses trained at great expense by the NHS to leave, damaging national health outcomes for patients and wasting public money. Private companies then cream off £millions to provide agency staff, who are paid more than NHS staff. After a long battle, pay levels have finally been restored. It is essential that they’re maintained and that NHS staff across different services and trade unions are never again forced out on strike to stand up for their survival and the survival of our NHS.
Donate to the junior doctors’ strike fund at the British Medical Association: https://bmastrikefund.raisely.com/
Donate to the nurses’ strike fund at the Royal College of Nursing: https://action.rcn.org.uk/page/117402/donate/1
Donate to the ambulance workers’ strike fund at the GMB: https://www.saveournhs.org.uk/strike_fund
2.Petition - Action Paused
UK governments since the 1980s have been repurposing the NHS by stealth into an American-style health system. Neither medical unions nor the current Labour government have informed the public about what has been done to our health service. We urgently need them to join forces and fight to save our NHS. So far, they have utterly failed to defend and protect the service that Labour founded — this nation’s greatest achievement.
We call on the whole union movement and the Labour Government to vigorously:
• Denounce the privatising Health and Care Act 2022 and educate the nation on how it enables a take-over by American private health insurers.
• Ensure full pay restoration for heroic NHS staff, and drive predatory UK and foreign corporations out.
• Support full renationalisation as the only remedy for the stealthy, deliberate and anti-democratic dismantling of our NHS.
These positions have huge support from public health experts and the public. It’s time to back them.
3.Tweet Politicians
Make yourself heard on Twitter! We are currently updating our template tweets so feel free to compose your own message and send it to the PM, Secretary of State for Health and others.
You’ll also find template tweets directed at corporations privatising the NHS, and medical unions who need to do much more to oppose it.
Keir Starmer PM (Labour):
@Keir_Starmer
Wes Streeting (Secretary of State for Health):
@wesstreeting
US corporations privatising the NHS
Medical unions that need to do more
4.Donate to defend the NHS
To keep this campaign going we are going to need funds!
Your donation will help to pay for:
- an organiser to coordinate the campaign
- advertising on social media to get the word out
- research into NHS privatisation and renationalisation
We know times are tight. But it’s going to be far cheaper to pool our resources now than allow the NHS to be privatised and find that we are facing exorbitant costs for care in the future.
Every penny counts and will be much appreciated.
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Five Key Demands
1.Don't Americanise, Renationalise!
Four decades of UK health law has torn our nationwide service apart, shifting money away from patient care towards the unnecessary internal market and private providers. Admin costs have rocketed from some 4% of the NHS budget in the late 1980s to double figures. Experts say the internal market costs some £5 billion a year, totalling some £150 billion over 30 years!
In 2022, the government broke NHS England into 42 regions known as Integrated Care Systems (ICSs). Based on American Accountable Care Organisations, they have effectively de-nationalised our NHS.
The NHS used to be funded from a central pot of public money. Now, each ICS has its own budget and the power to spend taxpayers’ money on private contracts and decide which treatments to provide.
ICS budgets are controlled and influenced by private companies, including American private health insurers, free to increase profits by cutting routine and emergency services and denying care to patients.
Government must reverse 40 years of privatising legislation and scrap Integrated Care Systems to fully renationalise the NHS, including dental, optician and social care.
2.Bring Back the Hospitals You Shut & Beds You Cut!
Since the 1980s, over 100 hospitals have been closed and half of hospital beds have been cut at a time when the UK population has grown by about 10 million.
This deliberate shrinking of publicly-provided care is designed to destroy our confidence in the NHS to create an inadequate health service, increase waiting lists, stimulate the growth of private care and bring in a two-tier, American-style system.
The middle class pay for top-up private insurance to make up for treatments that the NHS no longer provides. Those who can’t afford insurance receive only reduced A&E care and less access to other treatments, with fatal consequences for some.
Running down and concentrating NHS services in fewer centres creates “economies of scale” to cut costs so that ICSs are more profitable for the private sector. In the last decade alone, £100 billion has been taken by private companies at the expense of the NHS. During the pandemic, the government spent £37 billion on the failed corporate Test & Trace.
Government must reverse cuts and closures, and end the Americanisation of the NHS.
3.Save Services to Save Lives!
Studies show that NHS privatisation is leading to significantly increased deaths from treatable causes and a worrying decline in the quality of care.
Outsourcing to private companies, austerity cuts and the mishandling of the pandemic have increased waiting lists to over 7 million people, delaying treatment and prolonging preventable harm and suffering.
Since the outbreak of Covid, government have had three years to invest in more beds to treat the 10% increase in patients. Instead, they shrank NHS capacity by 8%, creating a further 18% shortage of beds and contributing to 100,000 excess deaths.
Since 2010, the government also cut 10,000 mental health beds, fueling a severe mental health crisis made worse by Covid.
Government must increase bed capacity to the safe levels seen in comparable European economies to ensure safe, high quality healthcare.
4.Drive Out Big Business, UK & US Health Insurers!
American private health insurers Centene (UK arm: Operose) and UnitedHealth (UK arm: Optum) have been embedded in England by NHS executives like Simon Stevens, who previously worked for UnitedHealth.
Stevens downgraded the NHS to an American-style ‘managed care’ system dominated by private health insurers who block payments for expensive care, and hospital providers who boost profits by selling treatments that patients don’t need.
Centene owns 70 GP practices, and UnitedHealth is buying England’s biggest GP electronic patient record system, EMIS, holding over half of the population’s medical records. Insurers use this confidential data to find reasons to block payment for care or to set expensive premiums which put private insurance out of reach for the very sick.
£12.7 billion in Private Finance Initiative debt is costing the NHS and taxpayers a fortune in repayments of over £80 billion! These vastly over-priced loans are used to push hospitals into insolvency.
Government must stop diverting £billions into the pockets of private companies, banks and foreign corporations, and redirect tax-payers’ money into a publicly-provided NHS.
5.Safe Staffing Levels Not Poverty Pay!
The NHS is short of 135,000 doctors and nurses. Salaries of many frontline staff have been frozen at below-inflation levels, causing real-terms wage cuts of nearly 30% over about 15 years. Hunger among nurses and junior doctors has pushed over a third of NHS trusts to open foodbanks for staff!
NHS staff are also suffering from cuts, closures, business-style performance targets, exhaustion, burn out and PTSD. Many talented, expensively-trained doctors and nurses then leave the NHS, which damages national health outcomes for patients and wastes public money. Private companies cream off £billions to provide agency staff who are paid more than NHS staff. Maintain NHS pay to retain NHS staff.
Government must directly employ safe numbers of frontline staff, maintain their pay, provide nutritious refreshments, rest and shower rooms, free parking and access to mental health care to make staff feel valued and invested in NHS care.