These GPs tended to be from the leafy home counties and were all over the media like a rash.
Yes, I was very surprised at this. Certainly my soundings of local doctors in my patch show virtually universal cynicism about the motives for the White Paper, and anxiety about the break-up of the NHS.
This was clearly a good example of news management. The key is to get your people well briefed, supported and ready to react. This certainly happened, and the initial suggestion was that there were many thousands of GPs who were willing and able to take the Government's line.
Here is evidence that it was all stage managed, and there is apparently a list going round of GPs who are supportive of the Government, supplied by private firms who have a vested interest in the Lansley proposals.
I wonder what any of my colleagues are doing supporting the changes. Either they have been seduced by the hyperbole, or they think that they can make improvements by a change in management combined with a projected cost cut of £20,000,000,000 in 4 years. I think they are deluded in this matter.
There is little I can find to approve of in the White Paper. My God, I wish I worked and lived in Wales or Scotland where they are committed to an NHS.
Pro-Government patsies (those on the 'list') have helped usher in a chimera, and should examine their motives and their consciences.
Lenin had a word for pro-Leninist supporters in the West who supported the Soviet version of communist totalitarianism.
He called them "Useful Fools".
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My bit of GP watching has led me to conclude that most regard privatisation of the NHS as virtually inevitable, and lets not forget that NuLab laid most of the foundations.
GPs are simply jockying for position in the exciting new post-NHS health environment - there has been no meaningful resistance to the general trend of marketisation of health care so some have calculated that it is best to be ahead of the game, or risk losing business to a more powerful competitor?
The End Game now. Posted a link to:
NHS & Monitor: Toyota & McKinsey
Unless.......
Well, having given 40 years to what I thought was real general practice I am glad I am out of it (finally retired at the begining of this year).
I don't think I am going to like the changes very much as a patient either.
What with the latest NHS reorganisation and the pending attack on their pensions there are a lot of GPs in their late 50s saying "time to go". If you don't think this matters wait until the salaried "I work for a private company and don't give a damn" doctors are all you have. What you have right now will seem like a medical nirvana.
My daughter is a doctor in her first year. I am going to advise her to emigrate.
If you believe me threaten your local MP (it doesn't matter which party) with eviction at the next election if they don't vote against this bill. The only thing they really care about is getting in again at the next election. We can.do this if we all decide to act. It really is up to you.
If I have to rely on this brave new NHS in my old age I will probably just top myself.
Good luck!
As a potential patient, I would rather they simply sorted out the existing NHS, which to me means sorting out the incompetent and excessive administration. Two of our local hospitals (some twenty miles apart) have been merged and departments closed at each with consequent reductions in medical staff.
But according to my mole, administrators have increased. Instead of getting rid of one of the two "finance directors" (or some such title), both have remained in place and an additional "executive finance director" has been recruited, presumably with extra support staff. The same has happened with other administrative departments and there is now a host new of "executive" appointments to oversee the existing staff.
The plans do nothing to address this type of situation, nor that of totally incompetent managers who seem to move from one NHS trust to another, being paid off each time to leave.
To me, what is being proposed is similar to a doctor sending a patient for a major operation when the patient could probably have been cured by a simple course of pills!
Related post by Julie McAnulty over at Campaigning for Health on this. http://juliemcanulty.blogspot.com/2011/03/both-sides-tweed.html
JD, retire to Wales and come and do some locums for us! :0)
Scotland may be committed to the NHS but they are still cutting frontline nursing and midwife posts to levels where there simply are not enough bodies to staff a ward. And a hospital with 1 doctor on for "hospital at night" seems downright dangerous to me.
Quite helpful piece of writing, thanks for the post.
the thin end of the wedge is being felt already. We have been advertising for a replacement full-time partner. Can you get one? Not easily. All the sensible ones have gone down under. Most of the rest of female and aren't prepared/able to work full-time. We have not trained up the workforce and once the pension changes come in and large numbers of late 50-year-old GPs retire WE ARE STUFFED. Walking into the hands of companies ready to swallow up family practice into supermarket medicine with a revolving door of young part-timers. No continuity. No passion.
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