To wonder why the NHS plans where the it gets completely decimated isn't being reported?

[JustATadConcerned]

As leaked and published in the health services journal, available to view online (with a subscription) and backed up by North Devon 's hushed plans to shut emergency and maternity services. The plan talks about unpalatable changes being needing to be made, and "challenging the value base" of NHS leaders.

It discusses cuts to staff, bed, theatres and services. It plans to limit the number of outsource companies the nhs can use, so less operations can be offered on the nhs. Fertility treatment and 'low value' treatments will be cut, and some prescription items removed.

It's horrendous. And yet it isn't anywhere in the news. I'm posting in a desperate hope that this can't be allowed to happen. I'm an NHS nurse, I'm not normally passionately political but please, please, vote anything but tory on Thursday. I'm absolutely terrified.

Speak to anyone working in the NHS and I'm sure you will realise this isn't just a political argument. It's the truth.

And bruffian I completely agree.

The temptation, I don't know how you would check it. The hsj isn't well known for being overly political AFAIK. I think the proposals are well known within NHS management and the fact that any announcement on this has been delayed till after the NHS is telling.

It's been reported in the papers, but no denial from the tory party.

aka

Would you say people loose their lives unnecessarily in this drawn out process of killing off the NHS?

I really hope I'm wrong but I just don't think enough people care about the NHS anymore. You can share the reality of risk to the public sector until you are blue in the face but people don't want to hear it. It is reported but just not in mainstream media. Even when policing cuts etc are reported in the mainstream media it doesn't seem to matter.

I really think the majority want some form of private healthcare system and demolition of the public sector - a Tory vote will never be a vote for the NHS yet so many will vote Tory.

The only ray of sunshine for me is that even colleagues (I'm NHS) who publicly supported Tory are now publicly slating them. Dreading Friday's result and years more of this shit.

I think that some people think the NHS will always be safe and have not thought through the implications of treatment charges, insurance policies and pre-existing condition exemptions. A bit like those US voters that voted for Trump and are now facing the prospect of a 20 fold increase in policy costs

The Guardian had an article today about hospital performance in May's and Hunt's constituencies - Maternity services in one hospital only had a third of the numbers of qualified staff required for several days in March - but of course the usual slogans of more money/more staff are trotted out by the party
www.theguardian.com/society/2017/jun/07/revealed-scale-of-hospital-staff-shortages-in-top-tory-areas-may-hunt

Lunt, and their constituents will probably vote them back in. To be honest I think at some point I have to accept that people get what they voted for.

The capped expenditure process is likely to significantly adversely impact the services you and your family receive. People don't believe this can happen because over the last twenty years it hasn't. However it's happening now. Vote Tory tomorrow and believe me you will live to regret it. Course you might not live quite as long as you would have done because that s what defunding health services does. It kills people.

North Devon 's hushed plans to shut emergency and maternity services. The plan talks about unpalatable changes being needing to be made, and "challenging the value base" of NHS leaders.

I was pregnant in 2007 ( Blair) and I had a fear of birth. My local hosptial was butchering and killing women and children due to short staff and incompetence - mistakes and under funding. I felt sick hearing local womens stories of physical maiming....near death experience and dead children, some went to court, some had inquests most women were so traumatised they said they wanted to forget this hideous experience and move on.
The other hospital had to close its doors to labouring women. Close its doors and deny them entry, sending them miles away to strange new places they didn't know. I had to give birth - in this fucking chaotic shower of shit in the end of Labour government.
There was a massive MW crisis - every single day - more horror stories of women left to labour alone, MW running between multiple women......

These hospitals are now functioning and improving...under a Tory Gov. It makes me feel sick to see this sort of thing being turned into political point scoring when Labour did nothing under years of being in charge except run our hospitals down to fatal levels of care where people lost their bloody lives.

It does worry me very much about North Devon's hush-hush plans. If we lose our A&E and Maternity the nearest hospital is in Exeter. Exeter is an hour and a half away by road from our house, for others in North Devon it's further still. I can see deaths occurring due to the distances to be travelled.

What troubles me about the NHS (and schools) and the Tories, is that the Tories would like these things to be run as businesses, and I don't think either of them should be a commercial concern.