The two-fingered salute: Jeremy *unt displays his high
regard for the NHS patients whose details he wants to steal and sell to private
business.
If you live in England, Jeremy ‘The Misprint’ *unt wants your doctor to send your confidential patient record to a national database, from which it will be sold on – sold on to make money for him, mark you – to “approved” private companies and also universities.
The system is called the General Patient Extraction Service (GPES) – although exactly who it serves is entirely up for debate. You may also see it described as the care.data scheme.
He thinks this gross abuse of patient confidentiality is a good idea. But then, he’s a Tory and therefore thinks he has a God-given right to take anything, from anyone, if they have less filthy lucre than himself.
According to the Daily Mail - and you know the Tories have lost the plot when even the Heil weighs in against them - the *unt wants us to believe that the information will be valuable for medical research and screening for common diseases.
And an NHS England spokesman told the paper, “The programme will provide vital information to approved organisations about the quality of health services.”
Oh really?
So in fact this information could be used by private health companies as evidence of failures by the National, publicly-funded, service, yes?
How would it help in screening for common diseases? This information becomes freely available without any data having to be sold – how else would we know when an epidemic breaks out?
And how is this valuable for medical research – beyond the possibility that the now-infamous ‘job offer’ for people to take part in human medical experimentation may be targeted at particular individuals, according to medical records that they thought were only available to their own, trusted GP?
Doctors say Mr *unt and NHS England have failed in their duty to publicise the plan in a proper and reasonable way, that patients are not getting an “informed” choice about the matter, and that patients could be identified from the data with any information other than that on common conditions – which, we’ve already established, becomes public knowledge anyway.
Some Local Medical Committees (LMCs) are already discussing whether to opt out of the system – and this blog would urge all the others to do the same.
If you are concerned about this gross invasion of your privacy, you can contact your own LMC and request that they opt out. Contact details can be found on the British Medical Association’s website here.
*In fact he won’t be able to get his filthy hands on them anyway because I live in Wales. The title is for effect.
