The NHS started in 1948 as a taxation and national insurance funded service, free to everyone, regardless of ability to pay but research suggests that England is now well down the road to having an American-style private health system. The 2012 Health and Social Care Act absolved the UK government of providing a national health service and forced the new Clinical Commissioning Groups to put each health service contract out to bids from the private sector. Around 15-20% of NHS services are now privatised and the companies skim off between 20-30% in running costs and profits for shareholders, from every £1 we pay them from our taxes. Sustainability Transformation Plans insist that £3bn of NHS debt must be paid off by 2020. This will be done by cutting services, hospitals and staff.

Since the 1980s ALL governments have been slowly changing the structure of the NHS so the lucrative bits could eventually be sold to private health companies. Two Tory politicians, Oliver Letwin and Jeremy Hunt, the current Health Minister, have written books on how to privatise the NHS. According to large parts of the media the NHS is failing now because we have an ageing population which needs complex medical treatment, and that the country cannot afford to keep the NHS free, the way it was.  However, when the NHS was set up, the country was bankrupt. We are now the 6th richest country in the world, and yet the welfare state, including state education and the NHS, is being dismantled.

Collective action by workers, campaigners and communities can make a difference and there is now a local Neighbourhood Group in the Seven Dials.