The bad news about the NHS just kept rolling in today. First the "Mirror" revealed that Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, is pocketing nearly a million pounds a year made up of his government salary and his various "business" interests. This, presumably, is now set to increase as he receives lucrative bribes from the healthcare sharks circling the NHS. Meanwhile Serco, the private company that took over the NHS's biggest pathology laboratories, have proven to be so inept that they made over 400 clinical errors in 2011 alone while London hospitals were forced to lend them taxpayers money to prevent them from going bust. If this further example of privatised profits and nationalised business debt isn't bad enough, then the latest round of contracts being handed out to private healthcare providers is enough to make your hair stand on end. Almost 400 NHS services, worth a quarter of billion pounds, are being literally given away to private companies with a further three quarters of a billion pounds worth of contracts up for grabs next year. Tonight the BBC televised a programme entitled "Britain's Secret Health Tourists" which outlined how the NHS is being defrauded out of millions by criminals and corrupt healthcare professionals. In one instance the practice manager of the Sparkbrook Health Centre in Birmingham was shown pocketing thousands of pounds to register foreign nationals with a doctor and allow them unfettered access to the NHS. This is disturbing enough, but health minister Anna Soubry's reaction was nothing short of disgraceful. Challenged as to what the government will do about this all she could say was that it is "complicated." The smirk on her face said it all. What does such fraud matter when the NHS is about to be privatised anyway and all the money that was once finding its way into the pockets of criminals and corrupt healthcare professionals will soon be finding its way into the pockets of Tory MP's and their "donators"?
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