Beware Greeks bearing gifts.

Being in the “market”, a real market not the management structure called the “NHS market”, for a new partner a few of us saw our eyes drawn to an article in the GP rag called Pulse magazine.

Now anyone here in the UK looking to recruit a new partner as an established GP practice would look upon £225,000 (over 3 years) as a god send to boost income as virtually all GP Practices have, and will see, a drop in income as a reward for fulfilling their side of the new GP contract which has displeased our political masters so much.

The exception being the “private” contractors, some of whom will also be local GPs, supplying the Darzhole centres who we reckon will, for providing less than half the services that we do at ND Central, will be raking in as much in PROFIT as our whole Practice TURNOVER. These will be generously funded to ensure their success as they are political structures provided by “private” providers rather than things that are actually needed.

In English this means a million quid for an 8 doctor practice which includes the doctors pay versus 2 million quid for a 3 doctor practice but here the profit is the same as our turnover. Private is clearly best, comrades, it costs so much less than Publicly funded general practice.

This is why we say onto thee, dear reader, beware of Greeks bearing gifts.

The Trojan Horse is the fact that any Practice(s) greedy enough to take the comrade Commissar’s schilling will in effect be losing any independence they have as they will be expected to sign up for a PMS (Personal Medical Services) contract.

Historically PMS contracts for GPs in the UK have been financially better paid (although that is changing) but the downside is that you lose your medical independence as the Party seeks to control how you “practise” medicine via the PMS contract it negotiates with you.

Although there is an alleged” National Health Service” in the UK it is in fact a multi national health service with each local Politburo or Soviet (PCT) dictating the local supreme idiot commissar’s (Chief Executive) policy for local healthcare loosely based on the supreme Soviet’s (Department of Health) view of the current Party’s (Government) healthcare policy.

If, and this is a huge if, the local commissar has a brain this might result in some degree of local improvement.

However, the NHS’s “socialized medicine” means that this is nothing more than an attempt to cut costs via imposing a PMS contract = more local idiot Party commissar’s control.

For any US, and indeed UK readers’, you have to realize that all NHS commissars have at least 3 degrees from either Harvard or Yale or, in some cases from the lesser universities of Oxford or Cambridge as historically the brightest of the United Kingdom’s graduates go into NHS management in contrast to those who struggle to make it into medical school (not!).

This is why NHS managers struggle to improve healthcare in the UK as they are always hampered in their efforts by the less intelligent medical profession. This then angers the Party, who being true Socialists, hate the bourgeoisie called medicine as the Party represent the “workers” of the private sector and will happily trouser anything forthcoming from them.

So while we would like to replace a partner there are no local Party bungs unless we sell our souls to the dark side of “socialized medicine” = total Party control. Although we would like to be as intelligent as the local commissars we know we would struggle to keep up so we shall decline their gift of a horse even if it means a few more years of siege.

But still like the Trojans, after almost as many years of siege by Za Nu Labour, sorry the Greeks, there will be those in the Resistance who may take Gordon’s commissar’s schilling and sell out.

We here at ND would urge caution for having invited the Greeks in, you may find that far from bearing gifts, they will in fact raid your family silver for years to come which you will have to pay for year on year.

Praise be the Party for free healthcare and for encouraging GP Partnerships in these austere times. They are all wise and as good socialists they want even.

As someone is said to have said (sometimes Lenin and Stalin are quoted as originators of this phrase) and we have checked our sources:

“The [capitalists] will sell us the ropes with which to hang them”.

So will they now “pay us” for new GP Partners?