Save Liverpool Women’s Hospital September 2019 Bulletin

We say

Fund the NHS to Western European levels at least

Write off all debts caused by the internal market and competition systems

Research and improve outcomes in pregnancy, for mothers and babies

Research and improve all women’s health issues.

Defend the NHS from Trump trade deals

Defend the NHS from Brexit disruption

Make the NHS once more a universal service for all.

Train more staff, bring back bursaries, defend the EU staff, and the Windrush staff

Stop accountable care plans, and all the STP chaos.

 Stop rationing care.

Fund maternity care better nationally and locally

Improve our hospital onsite

Austerity is coming out in the wash. “Fiscal Responsibility” that has left the NHS in tatters, staff underpaid, and admissions to hospital for malnutrition growing and life expectancy beginning to fall was not needed after all. All that was needed was a change of heart or some electioneering by the Conservative government. Sadly, the first set of money Johnson pledged to the NHS turned out to be doublespeak, for the money was already there! Money invested in good healthcare repays not just in health and happiness, but in increased economic wealth for the country. Money spent on good health care is an investment.

£9.2Billion was given to private companies in 2018. NHS should never be  for  profit, it should be for health, whilst key services are cut for ordinary people, making unnecessary pain discomfort and disability part of life

Defend the NHS from Trump and the big health corporations who want the NHS for many reasons. The NHS as the largest health care provider in the world can negotiate with the big pharmaceutical companies over the price of medicine and medical and surgical equipment. This negotiation becomes a base rate that other countries and hospitals can use to hold big pharma to account.  If the NHS becomes owned and run by the big health care corporations the price of Drugs can go higher globally. There is no stopping them. Johnson’s trade deal with Trump puts the NHS as the main item. For much more detail on this please listen to this podcast from Tax Justice

Universal health care for all, publicly provided, and government-funded is the most cost-effective and efficient form of health care in the world. The US has the least efficient and one of the cruellest. Yet this is the model being forced onto the NHS.

One case from the US. Defend the NHS! 44 million Americans are uninsured, and eight out of ten of these are workers or their dependents. No health insurance means no healthcare, or paying yourself and losing your house. Millions are in support of Bernie Sanders who advocates healthcare for all

Antavia died two years ago. She was a Type 1 diabetic and depended on daily doses of insulin to live. But she could no longer afford to pay for the life-saving hormone once she aged out of her juvenile medical assistance programme at 21. Antavia was working two jobs but her pay and limited insurance were not enough to cover the cost of the insulin and other crucial supplies, like test strips. She was paying between $1,200 and $1,300 for a 90-day supply of insulin. At times she got insulin from her sister Antanique, who also has Type 1 diabetes, at other times from her grandfather. But finally, she had to start the dangerous practice of rationing. Antavia died on April 26, 2017, from diabetic ketoacidosis. She was 22.

Liverpool Royal Hospital Crisis smoulders on. Liverpool Royal is set to ask the government for £300m to complete building works on a former Carillion hospital after engineers identified a series of problems with the structure. (HSJ).Meanwhile,

patients and staff struggle to get by in the old hospital. We have to send our thanks to all the Royal staff in this situation. They are so very good. Now, who will say we were wrong to oppose moving Liverpool Women’s Hospital to the Royal site, using a PFI to finance it? (The PFI option is in the published business case)

Keep our hospital onsite

Privatisation in the NHS is not just about patients having to pay for their treatment, though that is part of it, one of the most unpalatable parts, and most difficult for politicians to “sell”  so it has been left till the last stage. Privatisation does mean all of these points

1. Companies making a profit from  the NHS
2. The NHS being changed to suit the private sector
3. Services being cut to make the NHS look bad, so privatisation can be made more popular
4. Private sector hospitals being funded by the NHS
5. NHS staff being outsourced and losing pay and conditions
6. Treatments and care being rationed to serve budgets built to help the corporations
7. Charging some patients for some care. It starts with migrants, then goes to those who are denied treatments, like in Warrington, where we joined campaigners to get this “paused”
8. Some Migrant women are charged for health care.
9. The final stage would be that the whole system is run for profit and charges become the norm.

Liverpool Women’s is one mile from Liverpool Royal Hospital. The Royal Hospital site we believe is an inappropriate place for a maternity hospital and a Women’s Hospital. This is explained in earlier  posts

We  have called  a national meeting to discuss the national crisis in maternity provision, to bring together campaigners across the country to defend NHS maternity services

We have  written more about these issues here

Please do register to attend if you care  about safe well funded well-staffed  woman-friendly maternity services