In two weeks, the government’s flagship Health and Social Care bill will be discussed in the House of Lords. This bill outlines the process by which the government would begin breaking up the NHS into bite-size chunks and dumping them into the shark-infested waters of the international healthcare industry.

Written in the kind of civil service babble-speak designed to make most laws incomprehensible to the people they shaft, the bill basically proposes to turn public funds over to private commissioners, on the understanding that they will deliver medicines according to what is profitable, and not according to the needs of the patient.

The health and social care bill was introduced into Parliament in January 2011 and is part of the government’s warped vision to modernise the NHS –  delivering ‘world-class healthcare outcomes’ by giving predatory health industries control of the purse-strings.So far, the Health Minister Andrew Lansley has failed to explain why the NHS needs this radical change, which is opposed by the majority of doctors, nurses and the general public.

Far from condemning the NHS, a recent study in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine showed that the NHS is the most efficient service in the world, completely undermining Lansley’s propaganda that increased private control will lead to a better service.

The public aren’t blind to the pro-market, profit-oriented ideology driving the reforms. Nor are they unaware of the implications for the welfare state itself if the NHS is butchered.

It is already clear that the service provided by the NHS is worsening, with jobs being slashed, beds being cut and waiting lists growing. Instead of investing in our national inheritance, the government is funding tax-breaks for its millionaire friends by forcing through £20bn savings, freezing wages, and forcing hospitals into the arms of private providers, by starving them of funds.One of the key proposals in the bill is to give new ‘GP’s consortia’ across England the task of commissioning the healthcare they believe a certain patient should have, and control over the £80bn budget to pay for it.

Many doctors simply don’t have the time or skills to do the large amount of administration required. The inevitable outsourcing of this work to private providers is the foot in the door that the healthcare industry is desperate for.

This measure is designed to enable the the application of market principles in the health service. Doctors will be forced to compete for patients, while simultaneously maximising their profit margin by withdrawing expensive treatments, and cutting staff costs.

It is also difficult to see who will be responsible for the NHS at a national level, if anyone is. There will be five key national bodies and it’s unclear how these national bodies will interact or how they will provide coordinated and consistent governance of the NHS. In addition, the re-structuring would make GP’s consortia into privately-run businesses, benefitting from pro-boss business secrecy laws, which risks damaging accountability instead of increasing it.

Currently Primary Care Trusts are public bodies with public meetings, and thus have no such accountability grey-areas to take advantage of.This lack of accountability has already come to light in the recent PIP breast implants scandal where the government health regulator, refused to accept responsibility for ignoring warnings of the dangers posed by the use of industrial-grade silicone.

The ongoing £20bn ‘efficiency savings’ threatens the closure or dramatic reduction of frontline services at 20-30  hospitals. This calculated plan to run hospitals in the ground is revealed by the fact that the Department of Health is already discussing turning over management of several hospitals to the German firm, Helios.

Recently it has emerged that the latest proposal is to remove the cap on private patients being treated in NHS hospitals. This explains the government’s decision to abolish ‘wasteful’ waiting-list targets – after all, the current pressures on waiting lists bear no relation to what would happen when, inevitably, hospitals start prioritising paying private ‘service users’ over NHS patients.Within time all hospitals will have to become Foundation Trusts (FTs), basically commercial bodies. They will have the power to close services without public consultation, and caps on income from private patients in NHS hospitals will be removed, tempting many to increase their income at the expense of NHS patients.

Obviously the main objective of these FTs will be to make a profit. This could easily be done under the new system by competing for patients from other areas (threatening local hospitals with closure), and by reducing the priority of treating chronic and complex conditions (which are generally more costly).

The attitude of the government ministers, with their BUPA safety nets, is one of knowing the cost of everything, and the value of nothing. A system based on the idea that general health is a social responsibility cannot be reduced to a penny-pinching playground for private consultants.

The Tories, of course, see health as a luxury like flatscreen TV’s and foreign holidays, to be bought and paid for by those who can afford it.

The overhwhelming opposition mounted against the bill by ordinarily conservative institutions like the RCN and BMA demonstrates that the government is totally out of touch. Unions representing nurses and midwives have made clear their opposition and more than half a million people have signed the 38 degrees petition against the reforms.  The government is determined to press ahead, regardless.

Despite having said in that past that although they had concerns they would work with the government, the RCN (Royal College of Nursing) and RCM (Royal College of Midwifery) now want the entire bill to be dropped.The colleges’ stance comes after a similar move by the British Medical Association last year and also mirrors the stance adopted by Unison, which represents a host of vital administration and support staff, such as porters and cleaners.

The mounting opposition has not deterred the government, who have staked their ambition to smash the welfare state, on their ability to break up the NHS – the most symbolic embodiment of the values of the post-1945 settlement, which put housing, health and full employment at the heart of every government strategy for 30 years.

The current government are determined to finish the process of dismantling the welfare state, and giving capitalism a shot in the arm by opening up the huge internal markets for education, health and social care to private providers.

The future of the NHS as a publically-owned, publically funded system of free, universal healthcare depends on the resistance to the bill. Either we must force it to be unconditionally rejected in Parliament, or we must make it unworkable in the wards and surgeries of our hospitals.