NE Demonstrators fight cuts in Oxfordshire arising from inadequate funding of cost pressures, leaving hospital Trusts and PCTs facing combined deficits of at least £l billion at the end of 2005.
Ministers have seen the answer as simply creaung new hit-squads of accountants and business consultants who will visit the 52 most indebted Trusts and PCTs to drive through even more intensive cutbacks, job losses and closures.
Of course many of the economies made in one part of the NHS simply compound the problems elsewhere: when Primary Care Trusts slash back on spending by delaying patients' treatment in hospitals, they simply pass the cash problem on to their local hospitals.
And when Trusts seek to speed up the discharge of patients to the community regardless of the level of resources to support them, they dump new problems back on to GPs and their local PCTs.
As the chaos worsens, and the pressures on health services increase in a freezing New Year, there are promising signs that campaigners are getting organised and fighting back.
Big demonstrations have marched against the closure of community hospitals, and public meetings to launch local branches of Keep Our NHS Public (see box opposite) have been well attended.
The fightback is vital: Blair
determined to leave "legacy" of a marketised NHS dependent on a large and parasitic private sector.
We have a few months to stop lasting damage being done.
Let's make 2006 a year of action to Keep Our NHS Public!