Demand #4: Free, open, public and unconditional access to health and social care
Central to government claims that health services are overburdened andmust change is the scapegoating of migrants or ‘health tourists’ to the UK –repeatedly debunked by research showing medical tourism generates millions for the NHS and wider UK economy. Another prominent debate proposes that smokers or the obese should be denied treatment or should be required to pay, a measure which would simultaneously affect the poorest in society and in effect blame individuals for the huge health and care inequalities in the UK caused by wider social inequality as well as funding gaps for local NHS trusts or – now – clinical commissioning groups and disproportionate cuts to local councils who need to provide the most care. Both arguments rely on the myth that funding problems are caused by a character cast of convenient scapegoats: fat smokers, greedy immigrants, and the unemployed. The NHS has also been required to screen potential migrants, making hospitals a particularly insidious facet of UKBA’s method of in-border immigration control.
We demand an end to the use of health and social care services as spaces of in-border immigration control. Every patient deserves care. We demand that health and social care services be unconditional and open – and obviously, remain always free at the point of access.
Plan C supports the recent collective action by workers in the NHS and social care services and would like to intensify this struggle and win these demands.
We’re not the only group campaigning on this – here’s an incomplete list of allies:
http://www.keepournhspublic.com/index.php
http://www.nhscampaign.org/about.html
https://you.38degrees.org.uk/efforts/save-our-nhs/
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Doncaster-Supported-Living-Unison-Strike/1465854936976109
[if we have missed you out, please add your details in the comments]
Members of Plan C MCR
6th March 2015
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