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UNDERSTANDING THE NHS PLAN - THE MISSING LINK
It didn’t? Then here is a “taster”
” the British government has for years been in contact with Kaiser Permanente, one of the big US healthcare corporations, and is actively trying to remodel the NHS along American lines. All the reforms carried out by the government over the past few years have been aimed at that……..”
“But as the medical director of Kaiser Permanente, which is both an insurer and healthcare provider, told me at the time in her marbled headquarters in California, the NHS was not yet ready for Kaiser. Such a system, built on public ownership, control and accountability, was closed to commercial companies. And it was the same story for the whole of Europe. But Kaiser Permanente, which, along with the rest of the US healthcare industry, was known as one of the “darlings of Wall Street” because it made so much money, was restless. It wanted to make more, and had its eye on the rich pickings of European tax funds. And where better to begin than by conquering the UK’s “socialised” NHS, so long the model for much of the world?…….”
“Kaiser Permanente didn’t have long to wait……..”
“Tony Blair found a solution one night in 2000 as he was leaving the smart River Cafe. He was introduced to Tim Evans, external affairs director of the Independent Health Care Association, the body that represented the private healthcare industry, who convinced him that the private sector had all the answers…….”
“But the Labour government knew that a public sector NHS was close to the heart of most Britons, and a spin operation was required. So, from the start of the Labour government, ministers dismissed the NHS as Stalinist, a 1940s relic of socialism, bureaucratic and rigid…….”
“Then, in 2002, the highly respected British Medical Journal published a paper purporting to show that Kaiser Permanente (them again) was more efficient than the NHS. Within hours, hundreds of emails had poured into the BMJ exposing the flaws in the paper, from the misleading nature of the claims to the authors’ links to the company. But the BMJ’s editor, Richard Smith, declined to retract the paper, correct it or publish a proper scientific rebuttal……..”
“The paper had done its work. Its propaganda was cited and repeated everywhere by academics and policy-makers and, most crucially……..”
“Not long after publishing the article, Smith left the BMJ for a lucrative post as chief executive of the UK subsidiary of the US health corporation UnitedHealth. There he joined its new European president, Simon Stevens, formerly adviser to every Labour health secretary, and Tony Blair, since 1997. The flow of ideas, from him and many others like him, was all one-way: from the US to the UK……..”
“As adviser to Alan Milburn, health secretary from 1999 to 2003, Stevens and his American colleagues helped to shape the NHS Plan 2000……”
“Using the mantra of choice, the market was thus disguised. In primary care the government negotiated a new GP contract that would allow commercial companies to run GP services. There are now more than 30 corporations running GP services in England……“
“Foundation trusts such as University College London Hospitals Trust have been given new powers to enter joint ventures with commercial companies such as the Hospital Corporation of America and to spend millions of pounds on advertising campaigns, PR agents, mega-departments of finance and accounting, press officers, management consultants and profits. As in the US, billions of pounds, probably approaching 20% of annual NHS funds - estimated to be £20bn in England in a year - are being squandered on what are called the transaction costs of the market……“
Monday September 24, 2007
The Guardian
Where are you going, My Black Cat?
Ah. To the Stockbroker……
The Witch Doctor - Link to a random page
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LINK TO UK MISSING KIDS WEBSITE
LINK TO MISSING PERSONS WEBSITE
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