An analysis of the transition from universal, publicly funded health care to New Labour’s application of market principles: a national institution reaching crisis point and a key lesson for those concerned with health care everywhere.

Universal, comprehensive health care, equally available to all and disconnected from income and the ability to pay, was the goal of the founders of the National Health Service. This book, by one of the NHS’s most eloquent and passionate defenders, tells the story of how that ideal has been progressively eroded, and how the clock is being turned back to pre-NHS days, when health care was a commodity, fully available only to those with money.

How this has come about—to the point where even the shrinking core of free NHS hospital services is being handed over to private providers at the taxpayers’ expense—is still not widely understood, hidden behind slogans like “care in the community,” “diversity” and “local ownership.” Allyson Pollock demystifies these terms, and in doing so presents a clear and powerful analysis of the transition from a comprehensive and universal service to New Labour’s “mixed economy of health care,” in which hospitals with foundation status, loosely supervised by an independent regulator, will be run on largely market principles.

The NHS remains popular, Pollock argues, precisely because it created the “freedom from fear” that its founders promised, and because its integrated, non-commercial character meant low costs and good medical practice. Restoring these values in today’s health service has become an urgent necessity, and this book will be a key resource for everyone wishing to to bring this about.

Reviews:

“NHS plc is an excellent guide, not only to the woes of the NHS but, by extension, to those of all the public services in Britain. ... It is a lamentable tale of private enterprise without enterprise, and public expenditure without public purpose.” — New Statesman

“A rallying point for those against public-private partnerships, Pollock plays a powerful role as one of the few people to provide academic evidence to make the case for little or no private sector involvement in the public realm. Pollock is a fearsome critic of foundation hospitals, which she says will kill the NHS. Expect to hear lots more from her.” — The Guardian

“Pollock offers a critical contribution to the key issues in contemporary political and policy debate: the role of choice, competition and private provision in health system reform.” — James Johnson, British Medical Association

“Professor Pollock ... has weritten a brave, necessary book. And because you know the government thinks you shouldn’t read it, you probably should.” — British Medical Journal

“This is a shocking story, brilliantly told, by one of the leading thinkers in the field of public health policy. Here you will learn how the NHS, for decades vandalised by the Tories, is now being destroyed by Labour policies and politicians who, with their cronies from the private sector, are turning this magnificent institution into on the greatest pork barrels of all time.” — Raymond Tillis, author of Hippocratic Oaths: Medicine and Its Discontents


Allyson Pollock is Professor of Health Policy and Chair of the Health Policy and Health Services Research Unit at University College, London. A hospital consultant for many years, she now publishes widely on health policy issues and is a frequent contributor to radio and television discussions.

Publication
Cloth: Sept. 2004
Paper: March 2006

320 pages

Cloth
1 84467 011 2
£15 / US$25 / CAN$36

Paper
1 84467 539 4
£9.99 / US$18 / CAN$25