The BMA's annual representative meeting

摘要

The BMA is to examine again alternative ways of paying for the NHS, but it ruled out any idea of patient charges, even though several speakers argued that charges might be the only way of getting extra funds for the NHS. A related motion asked the government to fund the NHS unambiguously and explicitly from public funds with no assumption of efficiency savings or private finance. Opening the debate on this second motion, Dr Joan Black (West Berkshire) spoke of the despair overwhelming NHS staff as they struggled to maintain standards and services, of 50 years of chronic underfunding and underinvestment in the NHS, of the fact that 69 health authorities and 125 trusts started the year in deficit. Now the secretary of state had warned managers they could expect no extra money in the forseeable future. There was no scope, she said, for extra efficiency savings. What the NHS needed was extra cash now, from public funds.