NHS privatisation

Once again from The Mail.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-21...l#ixzz1o7ushs60

The chair of the body supposed to ensure "fairness" in competition in the NHS gets a great deal of his income from private health care companies. A very great deal: far more than he gets from the public purse.

As I mentioned in another thread, it is not difficult to see what is wrong with this. If the man hasn't the wit to know he cannot undertake the work, he is a moral imbecile

http://abetternhs.wordpress.com/2012/03/10/ldconf/

The Liberal Democrats have now decided that they have secured changes to the NHS bill sufficient to ensure that it will improve the service and Clegg and Williams wrote to their party conference recommending support to pass it. It is not true that they have made substantial improvements which will safeguard UHC and so the letter is a tissue of lies. Nonetheless the party has not agreed to do what they are told and vote to support the bill. They haven't decisively voted to oppose it either, however

There is an analysis of the letter and its lies here:

http://abetternhs.wordpress.com/2012/03/10/ldconf/


The liberal democrats have just signed their own electoral suicide note, IMO. I do not object to that since they have shown themselves interested in personal power (however illusory) at any price. But it does not help us. Both Labour and Tories have the same plutocratic agenda and are in thrall to big business. We have no alternative to vote for: not because there is no possible alternative but because they have been bought.

In passing this article mentions that the Netherlands passed similar legislation recently. I would like to know more about that, if anyone knows

Edited by FionaK - 11/3/2012, 11:07

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-1740861

Children's Services in Devon are to be privatised. Virgin is a preferred bidder.....

Lords with vested interests are supposed to declare them before they speak. But if they don't it hardly matters: they can apologise when they are found out and that makes it ok

http://socialinvestigations.blogspot.co.uk...-upheld-no.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/ap...y-pay-nhs-staff

They want to abolish national rates of pay in the national health service: oh, except for senior managers: they can't be included because they are a different species, or something

Much earlier in this thread I talked about Circle Health care and I was not able to discover how they became the preferred bidders for taking over Hinchingbroke. It may be that the fault is not mine

www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/20...acts-in-private

The case for giving it to Circle is apparently a secret because the information is "commercially sensitive". I freaking bet it is.

It is now reported that Circle shareholders have rights to the first 2 million pounds of any surplus the company might make. You will recall that the aim was to get rid of the existing (arguably non-existing) debt. But only after a lot of money goes out to pay the shareholders: 51% of whom are hedge funds who do not need to disclose their dealings in the ordinary way through publishing accounts.

http://www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/news/97...r_NHS_proposal/

Just when you think you have understood the tories........

Further to Circle holdings.

I mentioned above that it was clear they did not intend to stop at Hinchingbroke.

Circle was floated on the stock exchange in June 2011 and the share price then was £1.52. Apparently in May the company tried to raise funds on the stock exchange to the tune of £47.5 million. This was said to be partly to provide working capital for their NHS management take over strategy. Presumably it is nothing at all to do with operating losses of £17 million in Dec , 2011 (down from £19 million the year before, nor with net debt of £42.4 million. In May it made a share offer to raise this capital and the shares were priced at 70p: far below what the original issue was said to be worth.

Given the prospects for making money out of Hinchingbroke I am quite surprised they have fallen: but it may be that the fact they lost a different NHS contract in the course of the year is significant. Revenues fell 2.4% in the year: but income from Hinchingbroke has presumably not come fully onstream as yet so the prospects should be good: yet it seems the infallible market has doubts about the company's finacial health.

The current flap about the NHS is the financial crisis in a hospital trust serving the south east: this trust cannot pay its bills and so the government has placed it in "administration": a term which is itself telling since it is what happens to businesses which got bust.

South East London Hospital Trust has some of the same problems as Hinchingbroke: but the main difficulty is the PFI repayment,s and this is is a bigger problem for this trust than it is for others at present. Of course we get the usual from the government: other hospitals manage and so there is something particularly incompetent about the management in this particular Trust. Maybe there is. But it doesn't change the fact that this trust is burdened with debt repayment and that debt is just a version of sale and lease back: the very same model under a different name which caused southern cross to crash: and they were in the private sector.

So I don't buy this tale of incompetence because it is in the public sector. I do not think that is what it shows

PFI is an utterly indefensible policy. It was adopted by a tory government and expanded a lot by a labour government. It has been clear from the outset it is absurd and many people said so right from the beginning and more from the time of the great expansion.

It does not just apply to the NHS, either. The guardian has pulled together some information about PFI from the Treasury, here:

www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/jul/05/pfi-cost-300bn

More information from social investigations about the financial links between parliamentarians and private health care companies.

And the video here is relavant though, it is primarily aimed at banks

http://ht.ly/cdhHr

It is reported that the government has decided to sell the blood transfusion service to the private sector in this country. According to the Health Minister this will allow the service to "compete in a global market". I thnk he has a parrot not far back in his evolutionary history

I do not know how this service works in other countries. In this country blood is donated by volunteers. There are a number of centres you can go to, and in additon there are mobile donation "buses" which go around the country so that it is easy to do. Most employers I have worked for allow time off for people who wish to give blood: and it is something most donors value: they give blood regularly and happily.

I will say at the outset that if this is done I will never give blood again. That may be very reprehensible because the need will still be there, and in a sense it shames me: but that is what they are relying on. They wish to give profit to their private sector pals on the basis that I, and others like me, will continue to view this as public duty. Well I won't.

That they asked a merchant bank whether this is a good idea, and the merchant bank said yes, does not settle anything.

Therein lies the rub: I will not sell my blood until they reduce me to such penury that I have no other option. Until then they can forget it.

When I do have to sell my blood they can also be sure that there will be conditions No blood of mine will ever go to anyone who works in the private sector and never to anyone who ever had anything to do with politics in a paid capactiy. It won't go to journalists either. In a free market I get to have choices

There is a lovely report in today's Indpendent about a private hospital called BMI Meriden, in Coventry.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/he...ts-7962582.html

The hospital does work for the private patients and also for the NHS. It is paid a fee by the NHS, and one must presume it makes profit on the deal. It charges private patients a lot more: so you can forget that idea of private being cheaper, for a start. They are obviously not making their services available at the lowest possible cost.

They have noticed this too. As I noted when discussing Circle, the difference they rely on is hotel services, not medicine. BMI Meriden does not have that difference however: there is no difference at all between the service to NHS patients and the service to private patients. They are working on it, but meantime the Chief Executive issued an instruction to doctors to ensure that NHS patients had to wait a minimum of 4 weeks between their initial outpatient appointment and their admission. She went on to say that that minimum should be increased to 8 weeks by September. Not as a matter of clinical priority: not because of pressure on beds: but as a policy decision even if beds are empty.

Her reasoning is impeccable: if there is no difference people won't go private. So they will make a difference. It is her job to maximise shareholder value: it is presumably her job to be a complete bastard in order to do it. This does not suprise me one bit !!