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Welsh NHS is no basket case

Healthcare has specific problems in each country, but the biggest problem is the conservative coalition government in Westminster.

Unison Cymru/Wales head of health Dawn Bowden is fully justified in demanding an apology from David Cameron and his gaffe-ridden Health Minister Jeremy Hunt for their attacks on the NHS in Wales.

She won't get one, but that's because arrogant posh boys don't do sorry.

Despite their efforts to cherry-pick the Nuffield Trust report into health services in Wales, England, Scotland and Northern Ireland to prove that the NHS is a disaster in Wales, the case doesn't stack up.

Healthcare has specific problems in each country, but the biggest problem is the conservative coalition government in Westminster.

Apart from the unjustified top-down reorganisation of the NHS in England, for which the Tories and Liberal Democrats had no democratic mandate, central government penny-pinching has had a knock-on effect for devolved bodies.

As Bowden makes clear, neither she nor her union believes that the NHS in Wales is problem-free and they will "have an open and honest dialogue with the Welsh government about the health challenges facing our country."

But there is a million miles between that responsible sort of approach and the grim determination of right-wing politicians in Westminster, backed by their nodding-dog acolytes in Cardiff, to claim that the NHS in Wales is a basket case.

There is no secret why Tories and Liberal Democrats should have it in for Welsh government.

Cardiff Bay has the only Labour administration in the UK, so it is first priority for the Thatcherite coalition to attack Carwyn Jones's government.

This is even more the case given Welsh Labour's determination to tread its own political path, rejecting a neoliberal extremist approach.

Jones's predecessor Rhodri Morgan was insistent on "clear red water" separating Welsh Labour from new Labour and the party has followed a traditional social-democratic line since then.

Cardiff hasn't adopted the same "internal market" for Welsh health and education services as imposed in England.

Hunt, Cameron and their cronies are intent on handing over the NHS to their nearest and dearest in the private healthcare business.

As ever, the mantra "private is best" is used to justify lucrative contracts being assigned to private companies even though this weakens individual trusts' finances, increasing the likelihood of bankruptcy.

That was part of the problem with Mid Staffs, although the English Health Secretary pretends that the NHS in Wales is sticking its head in the sand and "sleepwalking into a Welsh Mid Staffs tragedy and unless we shout loud enough."

And his boss has clearly lost all grip on reality after the Maria Miller affair by suggesting that Offa's Dyke marks the "line between life and death."

There is still something laughable about a Tory politician claiming to be speaking up for the NHS.

Privatisation is in their DNA. They didn't want the NHS in the first place, most rely on private healthcare policies and they won't rest until they can break the service up and flog it to their privateer mates.

Labour members and supporters who are praised by the Conservatives for criticising the NHS in Wales on the basis of hearsay should stop and think for a minute about what they are doing.

NHS staff, their unions and those who use the NHS in Wales are aware of the need to improve it, but the last thing they need is the privatising obsession that is destroying the NHS in England.

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