Evoking the memory of his late son, British Prime Minister David Cameron defended Monday his planned major overhaul of the National Health Service amid charges his reforms are“potentially disastrous.”
Cameron was speaking in advance of the tabling of legislation Wednesday intended to introduce greater private sector involvement as part of the most radical health care shakeup since the Second World War.
He painted a dismal picture of the NHS even though by international measures the system has performed well, particularly compared to Canada and especially the U.S.
And he said his motivation for pushing reforms in health care, education and other public services is driven by a“passion” that is both personal as well as political.
“The doctors who cared for my eldest son, the maternity nurses who welcomed my youngest daughter into the world, the teachers who are currently inspiring my children, all of them have touched my life, and the life of my family, in an extraordinary way, and I want to do right by them,” said Cameron, whose oldest son Ivan, who had both cerebral palsy and epilepsy, died in 2009 at age six.
He noted Monday that Britain has health outcomes that are“worse than many countries in Europe” in areas such as survival rates for victims of cancer and heart attacks.
“We face enormous pressures on demand – driven by an aging population, obesity and alcohol abuse and the rise of infectious diseases like TB,” he said.
“And at the same time, we have rising pressures on cost.”
But a coalition of health care unions, including the British Medical Association and the Royal College of Nursing, said there’s clear evidence that price competition in health care is damaging.
“Furthermore the sheer scale of the ambitious and costly reform program, and the pace of change, whilst at the same time being tasked with making 20 billion pounds ($31 billion) of savings, is extremely risky and potentially disastrous,” they declared in a letter published in The Times newspaper.
The government announced last summer it will phase out England’s 150 primary care trusts and 10 strategic health authorities with approximately 500 general practitioner consortia.
Each will be GP-led and be responsible for purchasing care on behalf of patients, taking over about 80 per cent of the NHS’s annual budget of about $125 billion.
Allyson Pollock, a public health policy specialist at University College London, has argued the huge U.S. health management industry is now eyeing the British health system as an“unopened oyster” to be exploited.
The British health care system costs a little over $3,000 US per person in 2008, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, compared to about $4,000 in Canada and an eye-popping $7,500 in the U.S.
A poll last year of 19,700 people in 11 industrialized countries, including Canada, found that the NHS offers the only national system in which wealth doesn’t determine access to care.
Another 2010 Commonwealth Fund ranked the British system second of seven countries analyzed in terms of quality, efficiency, access to care, equity and healthy lives. On efficiency the UK was No. 1.
Canada ranked sixth overall in the survey, ahead only of the U.S. The Netherlands was the top-ranked country.
Last week, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said there is no chance of Canada’s health system being dismantled.
“When people say in vague terms they want to change or dismantle the system, I think people don’t know specifically what it is they’re talking about in this case,”he told Postmedia News.
“The single most important thing the federal government can do is make sure the provinces have the funding they’ve been promised to run the health care system. We work co-operatively and we always work within the principle that we’re going to have the system of universal health care.”
The King’s Fund, an independent British think-tank, issued a report last year saying that “real strides” had been made over the past decade in improving the NHS.
“The King’s Fund supports the government’s aims but questions whether fundamental reforms are needed at this time,” concluded a King’s Fund analysis of Cameron’s reforms.
The report noted the considerable costs involved and disruption incurred in winding down the trusts at the same time as the system is being asked to cut billions in spending over the next four years.
“There are significant risks in making these changes.”
Postmedia News Europe Correspondent
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