'NHS reforms will turn health service back to 1930s'

The Daily Mail reports:

Plans to reform the NHS could return healthcare provision to the days of the 1930s and 40s, one of Britain's leading doctors has warned.

Dr Mark Porter, chairman of the British Medical Association's hospital consultants committee, criticised health secretary Andrew Lansley's plan to make NHS hospitals compete with private companies.

Opening NHS care in England to 'any willing provider' could result in the closure of local hospitals and see some patients denied care by private providers because they are expensive to treat, he said.

The Health and Social Care Bill, currently going through parliament, will see £80billion of the NHS budget handed to GPs, enabling them to commission services.
Dr Porter told the Guardian: 'Very deliberately the Government wishes to turn back the clock to the 1930s and 1940s, when there were private, charitable and co-operative providers.

'But that system failed to provide comprehensive and universal service for the citizens of this country. That's why health was nationalised. But they're proposing to go back to the days before the NHS.

You can read the full article here, and the original Guardian piece here.