\n<\/p>\n
Your editorial states that the government will be judged on the state of the NHS (The Guardian view on Labour\u2019s NHS reforms: where is the plan to deliver them?, 22 September). It is a pity that it doesn\u2019t also consider the risks to the future of the NHS posed by the\u00a010-year health plan, which shifts outpatients from publicly owned hospitals to public-private-funded neighbourhood health centres and commits to contracting\u00a0out NHS services, embedding privatisation.<\/p>\n
Those who feel relaxed about the use of the private sector to deliver NHS care should note the devastating impact it is having on NHS eye care and the research by the Centre for Health and the Public Interest showing that on average \u00a31\u00a0in every \u00a33 that the NHS pays for a cataract operations leaks out in the form of profit. They should also heed the warnings implicit in Sam\u00a0Freedman\u2019s book Failed State: Why Nothing Works and How We Fix It: in 1979, 64% of social care beds were provided by the state, but by\u00a02012, it was 6%. Clearly, contracting out leads to a loss of state capacity to deliver.<\/p>\n
There are real fears that the NHS will be hollowed out and share the same fate as social care: something that everyone wants to be there should they need it, but which the\u00a0state no longer has the means\u00a0\u2013\u00a0or will \u2013 to deliver. Have an opinion on anything you\u2019ve read in the Guardian today? Please <\/em><\/strong>email<\/em><\/strong> us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our <\/em><\/strong>letters<\/em><\/strong> section.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Your editorial states that the government will be judged on the state of the NHS (The Guardian view on Labour\u2019s NHS reforms: where is the plan to deliver them?, 22 September). It is a pity that it doesn\u2019t also consider the risks to the future of the NHS posed by the\u00a010-year health plan, which shifts<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25335,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[2558,5393,37,11611,1229,1436,13293,745],"class_list":{"0":"post-25334","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-10year","9":"tag-embed","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-hollow","12":"tag-nhs","13":"tag-plan","14":"tag-privatisation","15":"tag-service"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25334\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Margaret Greenwood<\/strong>
Former MP for Wirral West<\/em><\/p>\n