NHS Reforms - Why The Opposition Now?

a. Your local doctor, your GP, having the ability to buy the services that the local population need.
b.GPs making decisions as to who provides those services, NHS or Private Providers.
c.GP's controlling the major part of the NHS budget by forming groups.

Big changes. Will they work? The Labour opposition up in arms about all of this. They say it is dangerous and is going to ruin the NHS. The unions are up in arms. Break-up of the NHS. Privatisation by the back-door. Making a lot of noise to ensure that everybody is aware they are dead against this.

I cannot understand this. I cannot understand the opposition to it now. Why is that you may ask? Simple. Because the items listed at a., b. and c. above are not taken from the latest plans.
No indeed not. They are taken from the plans put into place by the last government in 2005. They are from a system called Practice Based Commissioning (PBC) that was introduced by them. This was the way forward for them 5 years ago.

Practices were told they could prioritise services, find savings by getting Private Providers to provide services that were cheaper than could be provided by NHS organisations. Go Private for their patients in effect. Lots of names were being bandied about as wanting to come in and take over GP practices that were not prepared to get involved. Boots, TESCOs, Virgin Health to name a few. This under Labour remember.

In Louth a PBC group The East Lindsey Group was actually set up and are still running today as far as I know. They were actively supported by the local Primary Care Trust who had the responsibility to do so. The group actually took over the running and funding for Louth Hospital from the United Lincolnshire Hospital Trust. As far as I am aware they are and were a success.

So why now are the Labour Party and the Unions up in arms about this? What is the difference between bringing this in now or in 2005. Why were the Unions not up in arms 5 years ago? They had big concerns about it then but did we hear anything about it then? Did the Labour Party think it was a bad idea then?

How about political expediency?

Have a read of this document from 2005 which is freely available on the internet and was found by a simple search. It is from the Union Unison.
http://www.unison.org.uk/acrobat/A2184.pdf

I was not sure this was the way forward in 2005 and I am still not sure in 2010. At least that is a cosistent view though.