libraries win a relatively free health service in movement and because of the needs and interests or the ruling class.
was abundantly clear that tne inerlicient at low cost a reasonably healthy labour LOICC cab laust state samoco us aumonty on the newly formed NHS, whose function nas remamed essenually curauve. socia factors such as unemployment, bad housing, exploitation and oppressionall vital matters in determining the state of health - are ignored.
Packed Dy une state to run me Nao noso tas men, local dignitaries, doctors and the odd cleric who could be relied on to accept te necas or capitansm. ne allocation of funds to the NHS has always been determined by the needs of te runne Cass capitalism is beset by crisis.
consultants was sanctioned with Nye Bevan's capitulation to their demands for private practice to remain both inside and outside the health service Not only did this leave power in the Hanus or me Consultants. DuLL CuSuICE that private practice could leech off the -No ano mat me cao aust emos of money being able to buy preference was perpetuated.
which meant that the NHS was made a virtual medical and financial prisoner of the giant monopolies who control the drugs market.
tially from the physical symptoms of illness, Inorms ueu social causes. s solutions range from surgery to the use of medieine and drugs. This not only creates a profitable and protected market for the drug manufacturers and results in a massive waste of resources, but often also causes reversals in former scientitie progress. For example the over-prescription of penicillin- not to deal with specific illnesses but to treat the common cold - has led to a marked reduction in its effectiveness.
The establishment of the NHS reflected the State's acceptance of the Beveridge Report of 1942, which argued that a rationally planned health service The British working class was the first to capitalist world. The NHS was formed both WOISL eXCESSES.
For the working class, a return to the appalling standards of pre-war health care was unacceptable. For the ruling class, it pre-war medical system could not provide From the very outset, however, the million.
The Regional Health Boards set up health.
at local level were packed with business -- nence sashE Curs In the NHS and hand-outs to industry when ted.
The dominance of the NHS by the The first post-war Labour Government retusca to nanonanse une drugs industry.
- DERA TH As capitalist medicine proceeds essenSHASH PRI would gradually decrease in cost as people Road, London N.1 got more and more healthy. This illustrates capitalism's overriding concern with doing no more than maintain a being that once you have eradicated the Ine WOrKCIs WILL DI fitter to carry on producing and both the state and me emplovers wir De better or Beveridge's hopes of declining costs provea to be an musion, nowever. trom the initial cost in 1948 of around £400 million, the annual cost of the NHS has now climbed to just under £5,000 Ever since the NHS was set up, the ruling class has been haunted by the spectre that it and the other socia services would use state funds which were needed for private industry and defence requirements. Always when the crunch has come, the capitalist class invariably with the support of the Labour leaders - has put private profit and imperialist armaments before workers' The watering down of the four NHS Hospital Building Plans shows this process at work. In 1962 (i.e. after 13 years of no hospitals or plans) a national net work of 265 seven hundred bed District General Hospitals (DGHs) was proposed. In 1966 this was thought too ambitious, and less new hospitals were thus projecIn 1969 the DGH was thrown out in favour of the Best Buv Hospital which was cheaper because it provided fewer beds per head of population (2 per 1,000 vs. 3-4 per 1,000). Yet again in 1974 this was thrown out to be replaced by the Modular Hospital Plan. Here the bed CRISIS IN THE THE SOCIALIST SOLUTION TACTICE NO 2 3 SION 'SERL GGLE FOR HENETI PAMPHLET No. 4 ING PUBLICATIONS 15p New IMG pamphlet, price 15p plus 8p p&p from Red Books, 97 Caledonian number Is down to sou ane ican De built up in stages of 100 beds or so.
unis process mirrored ine decine or the British capitalist economy, with the state tailoring its health building programmes to the needs of capital rather than the needs of working people. Beran's reforms have remained and will con tinue to remain paper plans with nothing on the ground, as the reformists have never seriously posed the question of workers control over the state and private health industry.
From the mid-1960s (starting with the Porritt Report), the ruling class favoured re-organising the three aspects of the NHS (Local Authority Health Ser vices, the Hospitals, and the GPs) under more centralised state control. It wanted this for one reason only - to make the NHS work more effectively and more cheaply for the capitalist class. But only under the 1970-74 Tory Government was a sufficiently centralised bureaucrat1c swucture acneved win tne chairman and half the members of the Area and Regional Health Authorities appointed from the Department of Health.
The re-organisation of the three sections of the NHS, because it was not carnica out under workers contor osti potentially progressive aspect of allowing a better planned and integrated health service. Instead, its function is to provide that centralised administrative struc ture which the state needs for the planning and carrying out of cutbacks.
-nowever me abour wovemmen runy understads that closing wards and MosO as sacking nurses anciEnes tech nicians and even doctors especially foreign junior doctors); and thus decreasing health care and increasing waiting lists will provoke a massive response from the working class. The new streamlined bureaucratic administration of the NHS could be too blunt an instrument to cut back the NHS without causing the blood ictung orcemonstrations. stukes. occupa tions, ete. It is in that context that we must see the role of the Royal Commis Amount was Created at me UnH or ine consu tants вптеатепев тестипа tions, it is now being turned into a means for pulling in the trade union and Labour Party bureaucracy behind its aims. The crisis in the health service can only be resolved by the capitalist class if they are aole to re-alocate money with mr framework of an overall cutback in the amances avalane to me Nos The purpose of the Royal Commission is to determine how best that can be done, and the purpose that the so-called workers' representatives will serve on mat commission is to our trauc un ion 'authority' behind capitalism's attACKs on Workers ACala
LU rortugal, zimbabwe Ked weekly 15 May 1976