The Dirty War on the National Health Service

This film explains the history of the NHS and how it's slowly being privatised, something that's been happening since the late 1980s. Shocking footage of how private healthcare works (doesn't) in the USA. It's a warning to us in the UK.

There are some trolls operating in their reviews of this program. This program should scare you if you believe in the idea of free heath care at the point of delivery paid for out of general taxation.

Pilger sets out the case that the NHS is being sold off and prepared for further selling off very well. He points out that under the current levels of privatisation/marketisation the proportion of the NHS budget that's spent on administration has risen from 4-5% in the early-mid 1970s to 20% today. Further privatisation would only increase that proportion.

The section on the US system is good and is highly relevant because of a political desire on the part of the Right to introduce a 'US-type' mixed system dominated by insurance companies and because the US health care providers are eying up the NHS as a source of profit, as something into which to expand it operations. The NHS, of course, is probably the most inefficient and ineffective and most expensive health care system in the world. Not a good model to aspire to, as Pilger points out.

Social care is the third area that's pointed to, something that's suffered as a direct result of the political ideology of 'Austerity' and the cuts both the the NHS and also (something Pilger failed to point out) local authority budgets.

The policy to privatise the NHS has its roots in the Institute for Economic Affairs, a right-wing think tank much beloved by Keith Joseph and Margaret Thatcher which promoted the belief that all thing wrong with the world could be solved by allowing the free market to run rampant, something that has been disproved time and again over many years.

The program is and excellent example of the documentary. I can vouch for its veracity because I taught public policy and the welfare state (including the NHS) at degree level during the period in which the privatisation agenda was being rolled out. Its power can be judged from the fact that it was banned in the UK in the run-up to the 2019 general election.

I'd encourage you to watch it and to show it to anyone else who cares for the idea that people matter more than profit.

Pilger has done a great job, but don't forget he is biased and does not have all the answers.

Healthcare obviously is a very sensitive and personal topic.

Do we believe in the parent looking after the child, the family unit, the extended family, the community? The documentary challenges the success and efficacy of private healthcare delivery in the UK but does use some horror cases from the USA.

He successfully reveals New Labour movement (Tony Blair) in early 2000s attempted to privatize the UK National Health Service (NHS) and this trend took another turn in the coalition (Conservative and Liberal Democrats) following the financial crisis in 2008 with labour politician Alan Milburn being appointed as Social-Mobility Tsar to accelerate change in the NHS (or the so-called cuts). He gives a very interesting example of how the Hitchingbrooke hospital becomes the first privatized hospital within the NHS thanks to Liberal Democrat Vince Cable.

In the US or UK, we simply haven't come up with the correct solution for healthcare. The documentary is an attempt to block the conjuncture which is in efficient with deteriorating clinical outcomes. Whether you are from the left or right this will leave you thinking that more thinking has to be done to solve the problem.