The Guardian’s decision to focus its “wide journalistic expertise” on the current state of the NHS is welcome and timely. In an article describing this project as “probably the most ambitious we have ever attempted”, it is therefore extraordinary to find, among the “broad range of issues” to be explored, no mention of the greatest threat that confronts the NHS – the impact of the commercialised model forced on it by the Health and Social Care Act 2012. The consequence is that private companies are awarded huge health contracts, at an ever-increasing rate, for core services previously run by the NHS. The result is fragmentation of services, loss of accountability and billions of pounds spent on contracting out services to private companies which pocket the profits.
Mavis Zutshi
Bristol
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