Is competition BAD for the NHS? (read description)

Even right-wing Tory peer Sir Norman Tebbit opposes NHS reforms...
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2011/04/04/norman-tebbit-don-t-let-d...

As a result of successful protests against the Coalition government's plans for stealth-privatisation of the NHS, David Cameron and Nick Clegg have been forced to water-down their plans for NHS reform. However David Cameron still insists the healthcare regulator, an organisation called Monitor, will be used to promote (in reality enforce) competition in the NHS, but David Cameron now says competition will be encouraged when it benefits quality of healthcare, rather than forcing GPs to commission the cheapest possible products and services from "any willing" (unqualified and poor quality) provider; but is competition right for the NHS at all?

CO-OPERATION (not competition) enables profitable NHS departments to cross-subsidize vital, but loss-making, public services like Accident & Emergency. CO-OPERATION enables profitable NHS departments to help pay for training the next generation of doctors, nurses and ancillary staff, and to invest in medical research. CO-OPERATION encourages NHS funded researchers to share their results, and CO-OPERATION enables the NHS to save millions from bulk-buying products and services. Competition can help keep prices down, but so does bulk-buying, and it's a fact (proven by comparing the low cost of healthcare bureaucracy in the UK to the high cost of procurement bureaucracy in the USA) that marketisation and competition hugely increase expensive red-tape.

In their never-ending campaign to smear the GPs, doctors, nurses and other NHS staff who dedicate their lives to helping British people, Tory MP Andrew Bridgen described the NHS as "Stalinist". The NHS is an institution that, despite the strain caused by decades of under-funding and reckless political interference, works hard to improve the lives of British people. The NHS delivers our babies, provides GP and hospital services when we're sick or injured, and turns up to try and help when we dial 999. Stalin was a brutal dictator who imprisoned and murdered millions of people! The cynicism and stupidity of Andrew Bridgen's comparison speaks for itself.

The Income Tax, National Insurance and VAT paid by generations of British taxpayers (by ourselves, by our parents and grandparents) have built-up the NHS over decades. British people pay tax in order to make sure our hard work contributes to society. We've paid for the NHS, and NHS care has never been "free". We have an ageing population partly because the NHS helps us to live longer. The way to respond to that is not, as the Tories plan, to cut the NHS and increase tax breaks for businesses who exploit the care the NHS gives to the UK workforce. The way to respond to that is to stop all NHS cuts, to protect the investment Britons have paid-in to building-up the NHS over decades, and to tax banks and multinationals properly.

http://www.38degrees.org.uk/page/s/Protect_our_NHS_Petition
http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/5911
http://www.nhsalert.org.uk/page/speakout/will-you-email-your-mp-now

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[NHSinformation]

"What Wednesday's vote on the Health and Social Care Bill shows more clearly than anything is that many, if not most, of the political elite no longer care whether they are carrying out the wishes of the electorate, and barely pretend that we are any longer a democracy." Colin Leys, The Guardian, 8 Sept 2011

[NHSinformation]

"The rich run a global system that allows them to accumulate capital and pay the lowest possible price for labour. The freedom that results applies only to them. The many simply have to work harder, in conditions that grow ever more insecure, to enrich the few. Democratic politics, which purports to enrich the many, is actually in the pocket of those bankers, media barons and other moguls who run and own everything." Charles Moore, The Daily Telegraph, 22 July 2011

[radicalsystems]

tebbit only opposes the NHS so called reforms because it makes the tories unpopular...