Something interesting is going on at the Daily Mail just now. Not just the fact that one reader made a sensible comment on nurse staffing levels, but I have been reading this article re Rachael Woollaston's opposition to the Health and Social Care Bill. (Rachel Woollaston is a Tory MP and also a GP. What's very interesting is the comments below the article. Here's a selection. (warning; put hot drinks down and make sure you are not within reaching distance of a half brick.)
"What a dangerous precedent giving GP the power to wheel and deal with our lives. The main focus should be on provide healthcare to their patients and not with the financial cost of this care. If GPs start controlling the budget then they will fundamentally try to preserve it by outsourcing to the cheapest providers, which may not be the best, efficient or closest to your local area."
"In recent years GPs have changed from, mainly, dedicated family doctors to group practices whose principal aim appears to be financial profit rather than care of the patient. They are subcontracters to the NHS and are therefore autonomous, hence their refusal to implement the NHS requirement of giving patients access to a GP within 48 hours. Given control of vast sums of money it is probable that much will be diverted into their own pet schemes rather than in improvement of patient care and treatment. Just note how much the practice nurses now do compared with their GP bosses! Andrew Lansley is riding headlong into trouble!"
"Whilst I strongly support getting rid of layers and layers of bureaucracy in RHAs, PCTs and even in the Dept of Health, Dr Wollaston is correct and Lansley's proposed changes to the NHS are likely to end in more tears simply because GPs are in the business of practicing medicine and dealing with illnesses by dishing out pills and potions and not spending much of their time fiddling budgets. Giving GPs £80bn a year to pay for consultant appointments, tests, procedures and operations is a bit like putting Dracula in charge of a blood bank."
"I would not allow my Bank Manager to decide if I had appendicitis or IBS and I'd rather my GP wasn't responsible for massive amounts of NHS budgets as she has no qualifications to suggest that she is any more competent to spend the money than I am. To say Cameron is out of his depth is the understatement of all time."
Ok, ok. Now calm down. These people are against Andrew Lansley's reforms. They are not against them for the reasons that you would like them to be against them (the idea that GPs are all greedy mercenary profiteers who only care about profits), but they are against them. In fact, out of 42 comments only six were in favour and they were the worst rated comments on the board.
For the past couple of years, Daily Mail readers have been fed a diet of anti -doctor stories and the Mail has pandered to natural Conservative instincts. They get paid too much. There's too much bureaucracy. They're incompetent and don't know what they're doing. They are autonomous and are not in touch with local needs. Now, suddenly, those same people that have been so denigrated are to be handed £80 billion of public money to do with as they like and naturally DM readers don't like it. Because these doctors are greedy, wasteful, uncaring, autonomous operators, aren't they?
There is another element here and it's a point I made in this post. Being a Conservative pre -Thatcher, didn't mean being in favour of profiteering. The characteristics of old Conservatism are thrift, value for money and small government. This bill goes against these instincts. Rachel Woollaston has pointed that out and with Cameron trying to make capital out of condemning PFI as wasteful, he is going to find it very difficult to justify the White Paper.
Things are taking a new turn. I think saving the NHS is not going to be a battle between different political parties, but it is going to be grass roots versus leaders. The Conservatives are now joining in and in that, I can see a glimmer of hope.
