FIVE HUNDRED hospital consultants have called for a radical reform of the NHS to put power into patients’ hands.

Rejecting the Government’s claim that a tax-based healthcare system is best, the doctors say that systems in Europe, based on compulsory insurance, work better.

Such systems liberate doctors and patients, encourage innovation and are fairer, according to a new group, Doctors for Reform, which launches itself with a full-page advertisement on page 18 of The Times today.

The 500 consultants who signed up for the group say that they are committed to the NHS ideals of equitable and universal healthcare but believe that this could be better achieved by other methods of financing.

“The NHS as we know it has had its day,” Professor Karol Sikora, an oncologist and one of the founder members of the group, said. “You can fiddle about with it and patch it up, but with an ageing population and high-tech healthcare, something has to give.

“Everything else we need today we can get very easily: air travel, holidays, cars. Why can’t we get healthcare that easily? The form of funding is the key.

“To change it is a radical step. Politicians are very ner-vous. But we have to do it if we want a system that is focused on the patient and open to innovative ideas.”

The Labour Party reacted to the group, which claims to be independent and non-party, by claiming that it was the Conservative Party in disguise. A spokesman said: “I wouldn’t want doctors to be misled by this Tory front organisation.”

But the group says that it has members from all three major parties, including a Liberal Democrat, and is not promoting the Conservative policy of patient passports.

One of the founders, Dr Christoph Lees, an obstetrician, said that the group had been disappointed by a report by Derek Wanless for the Treasury two years ago which concluded that taxation was the best way to pay for healthcare.

“We need to go back to the founding principles of the NHS, providing a genuinely equitable system,” he said. “Continental countries such as France, Germany and Switzerland do that better than we do.”

The group believes that a system based on compulsory social insurance would work better. In such systems, everybody pays for a basic insurance plan defined by law, with insurance companies competing for customers. The policies must provide a mandatory and comprehensive package set at the national level. Employers may or may not contribute: in France and Germany they do, in Switzerland they do not.

Poorer people have their insurance premiums subsidised, or paid virtually in full.

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