Free at the point of need.

I've just read a Guardian article about GPs (General Practitioners: Doctors) in the UK who are due to vote on the 22nd May in York on whether to charge people for visits: a terrible idea that violates the core philosophy of the UK's National Health Service (NHS). The NHS was formed in 1948 by a UK that was bankrupt, but they had just been through a terrible war and had suffered together so there was a feeling of solidarity so they decreed that everyone should be provided with a safely net, healthcare 'free at the point of need'. This means that all are entitled to it whether rich or poor. Illness is a misfortune and it is right that we should pay taxes and set up a safety net for everyone. This is a brilliant system that has worked very well for 66 years.

The problem is that since 1980, corporations have become more powerful than people in the UK, and have seen that such a nationwide safely net is not profitable for them and have lobbied the UK government to deliberately damage the NHS. Private health companies prefer a model under which people will have to pay them, to live. We already have to pay for gas and electricity, but some people can do without these. They wish to charge us for our life, which we cannot do without. So, for the benefit of these companies, in which they have shares, the government are starving the NHS of funds. The latest manifestation of this is the proposal that GPs should charge £25 pounds for people to visit them. It attacks the principle of the NHS 'free at the point of use' at the very core.

The motive for MPs is that many of them have shares and even positions in private health companies - this is public knowledge. It is also clear that it is the government and not the global crisis. In 2010, two years after the financial crisis, and well into the demographic ageing of the population, the NHS was 1.5 billion in surplus under Labour. Now, after four years of the conservative - libdem coalition it is in trouble. It is directly to do with this government.

What would be the effect of this GP charging? It would produce a situation like dentistry in the UK. People who have to be a little careful with money, the working and middle classes, the 99%, may have a minor medical problem. At the moment, just like the rich, they can get help, and a potentially fatal condition will be resolved well. Under a charging regime though, many of them would delay going to their GP to save money, like many people avoid the dentist, and therefore potential fatal or debilitating diseases will go unnoticed and be treated too late. In other words, as in Victorian times, it would produce a healthy rich elite and an unhealthy underclass. There will be another effect too. If the principle of 'free at the point of need' is destroyed, private companies would be able to charge for other services. Eventually we would have the American system, which is, frankly, so much a disaster, despite Obama recent extension, that one wonders why the Americans put up with it.

I have seen far too much over the last 20 years to doubt that a robbery of 63 million honest people in the UK, by a few rich people with their hands on government, is going ahead, and I believe most educated people in the UK also realise this, but are unsure what to do, since the attacks are coming too often, and combination is slow and difficult. I hope the GPs decide against this proposal, doctors, thank goodness, are compassionate as well as skilled, but if it passes then so too may the fair country I was born into. A country is the people and the system they make for themselves. The world beating system our grandfathers built out of adversity in 1948 is being destroyed by a few rich criminals for profit.

A 38 degrees petition against GP charging is here.