The NHS bill is to be debated again in parliament very soon. The effect of this bill would be to alter then nature of our health system utterly. Please email your MP to ask them to attend the debate and vote against the bill.
You can find out who your MP is and send them a message at www.theyworkforyou.com. It only takes two minutes and could make your life, and the life of everyone else, better for decades to come.
To me the NHS is probably the best thing about our silly little country, a view reinforced by living in several countries where there is not the same provision in place. Just quite wonderful the NHS is doesn't sink in until you have had to muddle through with an unattended broken arm because someone made a mistake with your insurance forms.
If you are undecided as to whether or not you think the bill should be rejected, here are a few points to note:
The NHS as it is consistently comes out of academic studies as one of the best and most efficient healthcare systems in the world (e.g., http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/42050/1/How_the_NHS_measures_up_to_other_health_systems_(LSERO).pdf).
The people who actually work in the NHS have resoundingly rejected the bill. The length of the list of professional bodies that have said they don't support it would be funny if it wasn't so tragic (http://bengoldacre.posterous.com/what-do-doctors-nurses-say-about-the-nhsbill).
The government's arguments about the bill being needed because of things such as poor cancer survival rates or steeply rising drug costs are based on lies or misrepresentations (e.g. http://justanotherbleedingblog.blogspot.com/2012/02/what-case-for-change.html). Similarly, their arguments based on falling productivity are false (http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/feb/13/nhs-productivity-risen-lansley-study).
Many of the MPs and Lords voting on the bill stand to profit directly from it through links with private healthcare and health insurance companies – 80 in the House of Lords alone (http://socialinvestigations.blogspot.com/2012/02/nhs-privatisation-compilation-of.html). These links have often gone less than honestly disclosed (http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/may/29/lansley-ally-shareholding-lobby-firm). The political parties putting forward the bill also received hundreds of thousands of pounds from firms that will profit from the bill (see first link).
The bill, by opening up the NHS to competition, makes it subject to EU competition laws. This means that the currently primary responsibility of the Secretary of State to provide free and comprehensive healthcare to all will be superseded by the legal duty to go for the lowest bidder (http://abetternhs.wordpress.com/2012/03/10/ldconf/).
The bill has been drafted in conjunction with those who are going to profit directly from it, including McKinsey, the company that consulted on the privatisation of the railways that we all know and love (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2099940/NHS-health-reforms-Extent-McKinsey--Companys-role-Andrew-Lansleys-proposals.html).
The government's whole approach to the issue has been dishonest and arrogant. (Inviting only the people that support you to meetings on the issue? Classy. http://bengoldacre.posterous.com/who-is-and-is-not-invited-to-camerons-emergen)
The bill is around 650 pages long and, in the words of Liberal Democrat, Simon Hughes, “badly written” – you would have to have a far greater faith in humanity than I to believe that there aren't some unintended (or indeed intended) bad consequences amongst all that bureaucratise. Remember the 'terrorism' laws that were written in such a way as to allow councils to spy on people's bin usage or for police to stop and search thousands of people for no reason?
The changes put forward in the bill were not in the election manifesto of any party. Nobody voted for this. Almost everything David Cameron said about the NHS before the election was a lie (http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/david-camerons-top-ten-lies-692469).
So, make up your own mind and if you think that something should be done to preserve one of our finest institutions then...do something.
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