Defend the health service from privatisation by stealth 0
North East Greens are calling for a return to a publicly funded, publicly provided health service, opposing creeping NHS privatisation.
Anna Heyman, Green Party candidate for Newcastle North said:
“Compassion in health care and the prevention of illness should be at the forefront of our health care service; instead successive governments have treated health care as a market. We need to end the phony idea of ‘patient choice’. Most of us just want good treatment at our local hospital or health centre.
“We want to keep the health service free, as was originally intended. Greens would abolish prescription charges, re-introduce free eye tests and NHS dental treatment for all, and ensure NHS chiropody is widely available. And, in particular, implement, in the rest of the country, the scheme that provides free social care to the elderly in Scotland. This would be phased in, costing about £3bn in 2010 rising to £8bn pa and could create 120,000 jobs. But preventative care of this sort should save money overall.”
Andy Redfern, Green Party candidate for Gateshead, continued:
“Prevention is better and more cost effective than cure, but part of prevention is about living healthier lives and greater equality. We cannot have an effective preventive approach – a health service rather than an ill-health service unless we encourage healthier eating, more exercise, a lower-stress society, reduction in environmental pollutants and greater access to tranquil countryside.
“And simply making our society more equal will improve our health, without spending a penny extra on the NHS. Life expectancy, infant mortality, low birth weight and mental illness are worse in more unequal societies. Drug addiction is more common in more unequal societies.
“Better health is not a matter of ever increasing spending on the NHS. A surer route centres on simple things like good food, good quality housing and a good life-work balance.”
John Pearson, Green Party candidate for Newcastle Central, concluded:
“Our approach to a fairer, more cost-effective health service with an emphasis on preventative health care is spelled out in detail in our manifesto ‘Fair is worth fighting for’ and includes action to:
- end the postcode lottery by ensuring that all cost effective treatments are available to all patients who need them.
- ensure that all medicines meet minimum safety standards, they are properly labelled with ingredients and have information on side effects
- make available on the NHS complementary medicines which are cost effective and have been shown to work
- provide accessible, local community health centres with a wide range of services, including out of hours care, in addition to local GPs
- end mixed sex accommodation in hospitals
- provide the right to an assisted death within a rigorous framework of regulation, and in the context of the availability of the highest level of palliative care.
- use increased taxes on alcohol and tobacco to fund overall real growth in the medium term of at least 1.2% per annum in the NHS budget.
- decentralise health care responsibility to local government but ensure that minimum service levels and national guidelines are provided to prevent a postcode lottery, and oppose further health service centralisation”
