%0 Journal Article
%T Your NHS - Myths Debunked and the Reforms Explained
%A Joshua Coats
%A Benedict Warner
%J Scottish Universities Medical Journal
%D 2012
%I University of Dundee
%X By the time the Health and Social Care Bill passed into law, becoming an Act, on 20th March 2012, it had garnered almost universal condemnation, with unprecedented agreement between the medical Royal Colleges, the British Medical Association, the Royal College of Nursing, the Royal College of Midwives, and many others ¨C not forgetting nearly 180,000 signatures on the ¡®Drop the Bill¡¯ Government e-petition (the second-most signed petition on the site). The Bill, from a government that had promised ¡®no top-down reorganisations of the NHS¡¯ at the last general election, represented a glaring democratic deficit. But how did such widespread opposition fall on deaf ears? Perhaps part of the failure of the opposition to the reforms was the difficulty in forming an adequate counter-argument to the huge variety of issues raised by the Health and Social Care Bill. In this article, we will outline the key policies of the reforms and some of their potential consequences as well as indicating how students and citizens may become more involved in the future direction of the NHS.
%K NHS Reform
%K medical students
%K medical legislation
%U http://sumj.dundee.ac.uk/data/uploads/volume2/sumjv1i2p.123-127.pdf