NHS Emergency

With the NHS in perpetual crisis it’s easy to forget the principles on which it was built – giving revolutionary healthcare to all, free at the point of need.

Not to mention the avalanche of misinformation from the government and right-wing media, making it even easier to lose sight of why this is happening, who is behind it and what we need to do to save the NHS from being lost forever.

So, to make things clear, UNITElive lays bare what is really happening to the NHS…

What’s going on with funding?

Basically, there isn’t any

Since the coalition came in NHS funding has remained flat, with a fall in 2010-11 and 2009-10

We have one of the lowest healthcare spending in the G7

The UK comes in at joint-last position with Italy, with healthcare spending at just 9.2%

In fact, the UK’s public service spending is at the lowest level since 1938, when the welfare state as we know it didn’t exist!

So it is facing ruin

With no attempt to plug the ÂŁ30m shortfall, the NHS could run out of money within five to six years

And the government doesn’t seem to care

Short-term fixes we’ve seen so far – cuts to staff pay and employment T&Cs, reduction of the value of services sold off – have had no lasting help to rescuing the NHS from extinction

  The truth about privatisation

It’s real

The NHS is being privatised – 70% of NHS contracts have been sold to the private sector since the pro-privatisation Health and Social Care Act came into effect in April 2013

Passed by people with pound signs in their eyes

261 MPs and peers (mainly Conservative) have private healthcare links and voted to bring the Act into law

It makes profit a priority – not patients

The value of NHS contracts has tripled to ÂŁ13.6bn since competition was introduced

What does this mean for the NHS?

Danger

In January last year the CQC issues 17 hospitals with warnings about dangerous levels of understaffing

Exploitation

40,000 NHS staff earn below the living wage of ÂŁ7.65 or ÂŁ8.80 in London, and with the cost of living rapidly increasing, dedicated staff are being pushed to their limits

Chaos

This will have a direct impact on the quality of service to patients, with the staff bearing the brunt of the money shortage in more cuts to their pay, terms and conditions

RIP NHS

Ultimately it could mean the extinction of the publicly owned and state funded NHS as we know it and as it was born to be

But Unite are dedicated to stop this from happening.
To join us in the fight to save the NHS click here.