A few days ago right-wing youtuber Alex Belfield put up another video in which he commented on people increasingly pulling their own rotten teeth out. They have been unable to get to a dentist, and so have had to resort to doing it themselves. One man supposedly pulled out 11 of his teeth. I think Belfield was trying to argue that this was all because of the Covid lockdown as he firmly believes it should be lifted. But it was going on long before the outbreak last year. And as with the state of the country generally, the blame ultimately lies with the woman Belfield venerates as a true-blue Tory: Maggie Thatcher.
Way back in the 1980s the Grantham Gargoyle effectively privatised the dentists. There was a dispute with them over salaries and funding. Thatcher refused to give them they amount they were demanding and so a large number left the NHS and went private. The result of this is that there is a shortage of NHS dentists, and the private dentists are frequently too expensive for many people to afford. So people are pulling their own teeth out in desperation.
Which is very like American healthcare. Bernie Sanders, America’s counterpart to Jeremy Corbyn, wanted to introduce Medicare For All, a system whereby the state would pay American citizen’s medical bills. In his book Our Revolution he describes how dreadful the private American healthcare system currently is. 40,000 people a year die because they can’t afford to pay their medical bills. In Virginia, people spend a whole night in their cars waiting for the one day in a month where they can get medical treatment for free. It’s a situation that’s rapidly emerging here in the UK.
Belfield rants in his videos about the current state of the NHS and how it should be privatised. But the crisis is also a product of Thatcherism. The Tories have been underfunding it for over a decade, and in any case costs have escalated and the actual number of hospitals and other medical services diminished as the health service has been privatised piecemeal. The Tory goal is a completely privatised health service, financed by private health insurance.
And this is what we will get if Belfield gets his way and the NHS is privatised.
And I don’t trust Blairite Keef Stalin to oppose it. Not when Tony Blair did so much to privatise the health service too.
Get the Tories out and get Starmer out of Labour!
Tags: 'Our Revolution', Alex Belfield, Bernie Sanders, Conservatives, Dentists, Kier Starmer, Labour Party, Margeret Thatcher, NHS, NHS Privatisation, Private Health Insurance, Private Healthcare Companies, tony blair, Virginia
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