Recommended reading: books and articles

Books and articles which explore in depth the issues confronting health care provision in Britain and around the world.

	The Plot Against the NHS by Colin Leys and Stewart Player What will Mr Lansley's new health care market mean for patients? Is there really no alternative? Do the coalition government's plans for the NHS really mean a big change of policy? Or do they just bring into the open what New Labour was already doing? This book shows what has really been going on. The plot: for ten years a 'policy community' around the Department of Health has schemed to replace the NHS. They want a US-style healthcare market coming in by the back door. Why tell us, or parliament? The players: the insiders - the 'policy community', corporate heavies, management consultants, think-tankers, freelancers and hired hands, including some academics and doctors. They can use the 'revolving door': company envoys can get jobs in the Department of Health, and ex-ministers and officials can get well-paid jobs in the private sector. The book is published by Merlin Press ISBN 978-0-85036-679-2 Special Offer: Special price to KONP members of £10 inc p&p. To take advantage of this offer, send cheque or postal order to: 19 Vincent Terrace, London N1 8HN
	Morbid Symptoms: Health Under Capitalism Edited by Leo Panitch and Colin Leys A survey of the political economy of health. Morbid Symptoms focuses on the economic, social and political determinants of health under global capitalism, and on health care as an object of struggle between commercial forces seeking to make it into a field of profit, and popular forces fighting to keep it - or make it - a public service with equal access for all. Contributors survey structures of power and forces for change in national health care systems - from the UK, Germany and the USA to India, China, Sub-Saharan Africa and Cuba. They examine the impact of neo-liberal hegemony on the health industry, the WTO and the WHO; they consider key issues of international health policy. The book is published by Merlin Press ISBN 978 0 850366 92 1 Special Offer: Special price to KONP members of £12 inc p&p compared with £15.95 in the shops. To take advantage of this offer, send cheque or postal order to: 19 Vincent Terrace, London N1 8HN
	The NHS After 60 - For patients or profits? by John Lister This new critical history of the National Health Service is published to mark the 60th anniversary of our most popular and universal public service in July 2008. Author John Lister has been a prominent and outspoken health campaigner, as Information Director of London Health Emergency, for over 24 years. He argues strongly that despite so-called "reforms" that have begun to fragment and privatise sections of the NHS since 2000, there is a great deal still to defend. Tony Benn says: "This is a very significant book, meticulously researched, and intensely readable. It warns us all about what is on the agenda - the steady privatisation of the National Health Service. "Everyone should read this book, and we must get together to ensure that the privatisation it warns of does not happen." Dr Julian Tudor Hart says: "John Lister has written a book which everyone interested or active in health care needs to read. He has unrivalled experience of campaigning to defend the NHS as a public service economy, originally lifted out of the marketplace, but ever since 1979, steadily opened by governments toward unrestrained pursuit of profit by any company that can find a promising business opportunity. "There should be a world of difference between the NHS economy serving public need, and the business economy serving private greed. This book will help you to re-establish that difference." The book is published by Libri Publishing, standard price £25. ISBN 978 1 904750 30 7 Order online from Libri Publishing
	Confuse & Conceal - The NHS and Independent Sector Treatment Centres by Stewart Player and Colin Leys As the 60th anniversary of the foundation of the first freely available health service approaches, the threat to the NHS as we know it is serious, and if we as a nation do not act vigorously now, will lead to irreversible damage. Stewart Player and Colin Leys have managed to get behind the government spin about choice and the 'Patient led NHS'. The contents of the Department of Health's frequent press releases are usually reported accurately by the media but without any critical analysis or in-depth scrutiny. Using quotes from Department of Health policy documents and evidence given to the House of Commons Health Committee (which looked at ISTCs in 2006) and supplemented by Freedom of Information requests, the authors make a convincing case for a conspiracy to change the NHS irrevocably. Confuse & Conceal   is published by Merlin Press
	Health Policy in Europe - Contemporary dilemmas and challenges Edited by Alexis Benos, Hans Ulrich Deppe and John Lister This book is an effort to describe and critically analyse the recent experience of various European countries and discuss the dilemmas and challenges that confront health policy and policy-makers in this period of time and geopolitical setting, providing concrete evidence from various countries. Specific chapters address issues in Germany, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Croatia, the Republic of Macedonia, Serbia, Greece, Turkey, and Palestine, with an additional comparative study of the situation in the market- dominated health care system in the United States. It is produced as an aftermath of the productive exchanges during the XIV Conference of the International Association of Health Policy in Europe (IAHPE), held in Thessaloniki in May 2005, with papers subsequently edited through a peer review process. Published by the International Association of Health Policy Europe (IAHPE)
	Health Policy Reform - Driving the Wrong Way? by John Lister, London Health Emergency LHE supported John Lister in his five-year doctoral study of health care reforms around the world, which has been published as a 350-page book Health Policy Reform: Driving the Wrong Way?. This critical guide to the global 'health reform' industry offers a readable and accessible understanding of health policies around the world, with a unique analysis covering not only the wealthiest countries of Europe, north America and Australasia, but also the poorer developing and so-called "middle income" countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America. Driving the Wrong Way?  is published by Libri Publishing.
	NHS plc - The Privatisation of Our Health Care by Allyson M Pollock An analysis of the transition from universal, publicly funded health care to New Labour's application of market principles: a national institution reaching crisis point and a key lesson for those concerned with health care everywhere. Universal, comprehensive health care, equally available to all and disconnected from income and the ability to pay, was the goal of the founders of the National Health Service. This book, by one of the NHS's most eloquent and passionate defenders, tells the story of how that ideal has been progressively eroded, and how the clock is being turned back to pre-NHS days, when health care was a commodity, fully available only to those with money. NHS plc  is published by Verso.