More Tory privatisation

The Tories plan that the National Health Service will have to pay over 100 private firms to treat patients in a major expansion of privatisation. The healthcare firms will be given the status of ‘any qualified provider’ (AQP) and allowed to offer services like physiotherapy, hearing aids and MRI scanning – for profit.

Companies such as InHealth, Virgin Care and Specsavers will be among the first to take advantage of this. NHS workers, including many doctors, fear that the NHS is being atomised, split into thousands of different providers.

Meanwhile patients have to find their way through many different organisations instead of one NHS.

Capitalism’s future for the NHS is one where big firms, wary of investment elsewhere, make money from our public services and our health. We say kick big business, which cares only for profit, out of the NHS.

Sam Rivers