The National Health Service is tottering towards complete collapse.
Inflation - predicted to reach 25 percent per annum - adding to the crisis is now biting deeply into its budget, make a sick joke of Mrs Castle's interim £40 million award.
The worst and most devastating effects of this crisis fall on the health workers, grossly underpaid and overworked, and the working class, whose health is subordinated to the cost accounting of the capitalist state.
An eigliteen year old student nurse outside of London draws an annual pittance of E816 a year. The NHS waiting list is 500,000. A Department of Health study of hospitals with long waiting lists, admits that 40 per cent of those had been waiting at least a year and one-fifth of them for two years.
Last June only 32 of the 75 po ybeds in the Nuffield Wing at Guy were occupied. The rich cannot Jump the queue if consultants haven't saved empty beds to hawk on the market!
The only reason that the ruling class is interested in the NIS is that they see it as a cheap way - paid one day conference Details from: Collin Smith, 18 Fife Street, London, N1. Red Weekly for by the working class - of getting their labour force repaired and made ready once again for work, It is against an expensive and preventive health service. Harley Street consul tants always prefer an abortion for the rich rather than getting involved with the pregnancies of the poor.
The recent eruptions of militancy in the NHS are not simply about wages but bring into sharp focus the burning question of how to develop a preventive and comprehensive health service.
The conference called by the Central London branch of ASTMS and sponsored by ten other union branches will be discussing the crisis in the NHS and how health workers and the trade union movement can unite against the capitalist attacks on the NHS.
For a complete ban on private patients - enforced by the health workers For the blacking of all construction and supply work on private medicat building by the burlding unions For a workers inquiry into the NHS. headed by health workers. The inquiry to determine what money and resources are needed to provide a fully comprehen. sive NHS.
Saturday - 27 July - 11 am University of London Students' Union, Malet St., WC1 Red Weekly, 97 Caledonian Road, N.I. SUPPORT
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PRIVATE CRISIS IN THE HEALTH SERVICE