40% of GPs expect to leave NHS by 2021

I wonder if this exodus has anything to do with the NHS reform and the current outlook.
I always gave for granted that student entered medicine and general practice not under the allure of money and business. At the least because if they did as they were business oriented, then I would have told them that they were not fit for the job and that they had to change profession.
I am not the only one to have concerns about the NHS reform.
This reform follows of just few years rather drastic changes, including the PCTs merging.
In my view, the latest reform is a colossal step back from the position we are now in terms of preserving and promoting health and wellbeing of the most people we possibly can.
I do understand that a key principle of the reform is the one of introducing more competition in the NHS. Private providers should allow to reach this goal and competition should be the catalytic factor in improving the quality of the healthcare being delivered.
I have elsewhere disputed this model, which has clear similarities with the US healthcare system.
Those similarities do stretch even to the name of the providers and advisers taking parts in the ongoing rooting phase.
We can see how in US things went wrong by means of a quick look at the WHO and other International Institutions data. They will unmistakably show that it is not the most effective, nor the most efficient, and neither is it the most cost-effective. President Obama is trying to changing it.
Yet, the US healthcare system may be the most lucrative.
Just to clarify, the competition we are herein considering, in the opinion of the legislator, should be driven by financial rewards rather than prizes or other prestige awards to the Institution and people working for that Institution.
Therefore, let me elaborate a bit more on the competition and free-market in healthcare.
First and foremost: how do we define a free-market healthcare economy? This should be a healthcare market unregulated by any parties other than market participants. In its purest form, the government plays a neutral role in its administration and legislation of economic activity, neither limiting it nor actively promoting it (by owning economic interests or offering subsidies to businesses or R&D).
In an ideal free healthcare market, healthcare services are goods sold at a price arranged solely by the mutual consent of the sellers and the buyers.
By definition, price is the result of buying and selling decisions en masse as described by the theory of supply and demand.
Then, who is the buyer? The buyer is ultimately the taxpayer patient.
But, as we speak, can any lawful qualified and registered GP open a GP surgery and compete with the other Primary Care providers for NHS patients and performances?
Could the buyer patient decide to register with that provider, even if outside his residential “postcode”?
Should there be a ceiling to the number of patients a GP may be able to register under his care?
The market will not be free.
And this is just to make a simple example.
There are big, private, firms entering the market in the UK. A very lucrative and unique market where resolving a health problem constitute the dealing of the business and more health problems you get, more potential business you have.
My fundamental criticism is deep and definitional as the government is already intervening creating controlling bodies, and other artificial legal entities.
Those artificial entities will buy the services, rather than the patients themselves, as they allegedly know best.
Problem is that this may not be the case, at the least because of the presence of a clear conflict of interest or blurred separation among professional clinical activity, commissioning roles, and income.
And, anyway, this is not the competition of a free-market.
Finally, what is happening to the world economy should suggest more caution when embracing the spirit of the capitalistic competition in managing the healthcare system.

Headline not appropriate for the content- don't be Daily Wail!

Only 40% GPs expected to leave the NHS by 2021? Now that's the surprise. If the never ending changes within primary care carry on at the rate they have been (you know: budgets, targets, QOF, pensions etc) then it wouldn't surprise me if you can add a further 60% to that figure!.

Of course the government will be delighted as politicians will be in an even stronger position to make all GPs salaried as is the long term intention. When that happens then all medical practitioners in primary and secondary care will be under total control of the government. The days of GPs being independent practitioners are moving further away and it's probably too late to stop it.

And me? At my next 'big' birthday in 2012 I can consider jumping from sinking ship 'HMS NHS'. I have long felt that it will be better to be relatively poorer but sane than flagellate myself further for the only guarantee of a shorter lifespan. I just hope that the NHS ship hasn't sunk before I can jump off!

Thus we have a vision of the GP commissioners no better than Generals without any troops to command. Is it now too late to stop this Bill which will destroy General Practice as we and our patients have known and loved it?

I'm planning to leave aged 55yrs in less than 8 yrs time- if not sooner.