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The NHS needs spin-free journalism - please help

To continue breaking the stories the mainstream media miss, OurNHS needs your help now.

openDemocracy.net - free thinking for the world

The debate the media won't have: government snooping made NHS hacking easier

Even Microsoft now admits that government snooping has made it much easier for hackers.

Migrant activists disrupt the Department of Health

Migrant solidarity is vital in the fight for a national health service, as 'pay upfront' card machines start to be used by patients' bedsides this week.

Are NHS staff really getting happier, despite everything?

Or is their goodwill being stretched to breaking point? The latest surveys of NHS staff paint a mixed picture.

Why you can’t solve the NHS’s problems by banning smokers and the obese from treatment

NHS underfunding and legal changes are leading local NHS managers to deny healthcare to large groups of people who need it, on the basis of inappropriate ‘lifestyle’ rationing – meaning more pain, and more cost in the long run.

How trustworthy is NHS Digital?

It looks as though ministers are bullying supposedly the independent patient data agency to hand over private information to the Home Office despite an uncertain legal basis.

Uncertain, cold, and disempowered – healthcare in Greek refugee camps

How can we heal the wounds of refugees in these circumstances,asks a volunteer with the Syrian American Medical Society.

‘Dangerous’ new changes planned to force sick people into work – or into poverty

The government promised to help disabled people back into work. They’re failing – and now it looks like they’re targeting those who need higher levels of support.

Protests mount against swingeing cuts to children's health services

If Jeremy Hunt is as keen on preventative health care and 'care in the community' as he claims to be, why is his NHS slashing health visitors and school nurses?

How do you keep news of dozens more A&Es closures off the front pages?

Government announcements to 'tackle health tourism’ squeezed drastic new A&E closures off the front pages yesterday – showing there’s no dead cat as useful as a foreign dead cat.

"The whole agitation has a nasty taste" - Nye Bevan on so-called 'health tourism'

As the government announces that NHS staff are to be issued with card readers to take payment at hospital bedsides, from anyone who can't prove their eligibility, it's worth re-reading NHS founder Nye Bevan's discussion of the 'health tourism' issue.

Management consultants scoop up on the secretive shake-up of the health service in England

These aren't the kind of consultants the NHS needs.

The NHS - Theresa May's dowry gift to Donald Trump?

Our Prime Minister is so desperate for a Brexit-salvaging marriage of convenience with Trump, she's suggested the NHS could be part of a rushed trade deal – and her vows about it being 'free at the point of use' leave too much unsaid.

You get what you pay for – landmark study exposes NHS privatisation risks

England’s NHS has relied on outsourcing cleaning but new firm evidence about increased infection risks should make it reassess.

Liam Fox and the worst secret trade stitch up you've never heard of

The EU/US 'TTIP trade deal' is dead - but another deal that will do similar damage to our public services and protections is almost in place already. And the socialists are split...

5 reasons Brexit is hazardous to our health

The post-Brexit deals now being negotiated are likely to leave Britons in poorer health and with a severely damaged or even privatised NHS.

Theresa May has handed the NHS crisis to the regions - here's why that should worry us all

Westminster and Whitehall ‘lords and masters’ are making local NHS bosses create NHS plans full of hopelessly optimistic ambitions, and bad excuses for cutting services.

Don't leave midwives out in the cold

The NHS needs more midwives – and must avoid hasty changes to their role driven by current financial pressures, warns the Royal College of Midwives in a brand new report.

Who's keeping a lid on "priceless" whistleblower information in our health system - and why?

NHS and social care watchdog the CQC appears to be ignoring or even suppressing information from whistleblowers - and failing to protect staff who speak out.

Jeremy Hunt wants to 'Amazonise' our pharmacies - and 3000 face the chop as a result

A bitter year of wrangling over the future of community pharmacies ends with the government imposing cuts that will benefit the big players but may leave communities without this vital service.

Does an "ageing population" make it harder to afford our NHS? A look behind the rhetoric

Jeremy Hunt claims the "ageing population" poses a challenge "as serious as global warming". New UKIP leader Paul Nuttall says the "ageing population" will force us to see the NHS as merely a "monolithic hangover from days gone by". OurNHS thought it was time to examine such claims - and finds they distort a much more interesting reality...

NHS passport proposals are just more grubby politics from May and Hunt

The NHS needs a proper response to its problems - not distraction with false claims about so-called 'health tourism' and with un-implementable plans.

No wonder social care is failing our sick and elderly, if this is how it treats its workers

Social care work is big business – and its business model rests on severely exploited workers who often aren't even paid the legal minimum wage.

Why talking about an 'NHS tax' isn't brave at all

Norman Lamb, Liz Kendall, and Alan Milburn want the NHS to turn to various less progressive forms of taxation for its funding. Such proposals have a shoddy history.

Work makes you well? After 'austerity' comes complicity

This week the government announced new health and welfare plans to ‘help’ (or bully?) disabled and sick people. Why are the disability charities so quiet?

Councillors must look before they leap into secret NHS cuts plans

Jeremy Hunt can no longer pretend he's following 'the NHS's own plan'.  Expect fierce local battles ahead.

Making the NHS a “hostile environment” for migrants demeans our country

What kind of country treats migrants like this?

The NHS - is it all about the money, money, money?

As Jeremy Hunt and Simon Stevens appear before the Health Select Committee in an emergency session on NHS finances, Paul Hobday explains why 'where's the money coming from' is the wrong question.

After a summer of crisis and opportunity, can Labour’s progressive NHS policies be sustained?

What does the Labour reshuffle mean for the development of its NHS policy?

Government duplicity exposed at NHS Expo in Manchester

As the warnings pile up about the financial problems in the NHS, the solutions on offer at its annual ‘Expo’ just don’t stack up.

Hungarian 'women's health': stigma and coercion

Political and media institutions in Hungary are promoting a coercive culture of intervention in female bodies under the banner of self-care.

Labour leadership, the NHS, and 'honest politics'

We need to take back control of our NHS from the unelected technocrats and their health industry friends – and politicians brave enough to say so. What about the Labour party?

The NHS: The new dividing line in the Labour Party?

The crisis in health and social care shows how badly we need an end to the inefficient market-based system. On that score, Team Corbyn looks a lot more convincing than his Labour leadership rival Owen Smith and his allies.

Is there a 'club culture' at the heart of the NHS's quality regulator?

A look at the Care Quality Commission's choice of inspection chairs and overall processes reveals a predominantly white, male, corporate culture that risks letting down patients and staff.

How and Why Do We Retire? Ill omens for younger doctors

The nature of our departures from our work often tells us much about what kind of problems are being left behind. The individual may escape, but what about the wider community?

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