INSURANCE The British Medical Association has collected £50,000 in its 'fund for freedom'; while BUPA, which has 80 per cent of all health insurance on its books and an income of £36 million, is sponsoring the Nuffield Nursing Homes Trust, which runs 21 private homes with a total of 675 beds. With the average cost of a bed in a private hospital - before any medical treatment - standing at an average £25 a day (and at the Wellington Hospital as much as £60 a day), these companies stand to gain a great deal out of the extra 2,500 beds they aim to create in private hospitals over the next few NALGO estimates, in fact, that it will cost something like £80 million to replace the current number of NHS pay-beds in the private At the moment there are already 25,000 beds in the private sector according to DHSS figures for last year, and 2.5 million paying for private health insurance. The use THE N. HI.S.
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of private insurance by companies is on the increase as a fringe benefit not only for executives but also for highly skilled workers and in the Called by the National Co-ordinating Ctte against cuts in the NHS Supported by NALGO, NUS. SMA AUEW, Sheffield Dist.Ctte CLPs, Manchester TC, etc future as part of a pay increase for better paid workers.
COMMERCIAL Up too are the number of applications for planning permission to build private hospitals. Applications it have been made in Manchester, Sutton Coldfield, Leeds, Cheltenham, Stratford on Avon, and notably in London to a total tune of 581 beds, It is firms like 'Harley St Clinic Ltd' and the American 'Allied Medical International' which are behind these projects. Dr David Owen, Minister of State for Health, said in Parliament recently that requests from commercial developers were piling up in his departThe labour movement cannot afford in the slightest to sit back and congratulate Castle on her phasing out of pay-beds. At the same time she is allowing the growth of private practice outside the NHS which threatens to expand into a blossoming private health sector. It is for these reasons that the labour move ment should be demanding an end to the cuts and the abolition of all private practice. We are not simply fighting the deterioration of the NHS, but also the threat of a two-tier health service