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It's not going to be national.
It's not primarily going to be about health, but will instead be about profit.
And it won't be a service unless you can pay for it.
This is post-Brexit Britain.
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I do think this will be the issue that will get people out onto the streets kicking off.
There will come a point where the Tories push too far, and it will snap back at them.
No, they really won’t.
Yes, NHS open to US competition. And British farming and consumers exposed to GM, beef grown with enthusiastic quantities of growth hormone and antibiotics, and many other things.
If you want to be seriously depressed have a look at: http://outsidethebubble.net/2017/01/25/brexiteers-in-fantasyland-trade-deals-much-harder-than-they-imagine/
With all the soya appearing in chocolate, bread and most ready-meals,I would suggest tha GMO contamination is already well under way. Check the ingredients labels youself and think about how many USA companies are involved in the food chain. Then find out for youself how much GMO soya is grown in USA.
Craig, I looked at this website and asked a question which has been bugging me. The answer was what I suspect but haven’t been able to track down. If we get a deal -special access for financial services or cars-under the most favoured nation rules, they have to offer this to all trading nations in the WTO. So we wouldn’t be getting a deal special to us which is implied in Daily Express headlines such as “countries queueing up to sign trade deals”. Probably more like hoping to improve access to the British home market, while non-tariff barriers will reduce reciprocity.
However, the website did say that they were not experts so I will have to search further. Perhaps you know if the answer is correct?
She’s rushed over because the banks, insurance and finance are very likely behind the hasty visit plotting getting “first in” to survive the turmoil of Brexit and Trumpianomics, and develop opportunities like opening the NHS to the insurance and debt generation industries. It would be interesting to find the identities of the party that flew out with her, there is no information on the web. She flew over in a mighty big plane rather than an a cheaper executive jet.
I think it is mostly about Brexit, so she can say she has this strong relationship with the US and can walk away from any deal with the EU she does not like.
Aside from the viewpoint that anyone rushing to forge a special relationship with the new US administration might be morally compromised, European leaders are unlikely to be impressed. They know that UK trade with the EU is higher and will remain higher because of the gravity of law of trade, double the distance half the trade, and on top of that, Sunderland and Germany make better cars, the EU makes better food and wine, the NHS outperforms anything in the US on price and performance (higher life expectancy for one third of the cost per capita), and everything else comes from Asia.
The special relationship we really need is with our EU friends!
As a genuine question to you or any of your readers:
if NHS advertises a contract, isn’t it open to anyone around the world with an internet connection? An applicant with out a UK presence may well struggle to get the contract, but that would be no different for US applicants than those from (say) Finland.
What’s changed?
Finland is in the EU
The US is not
NHS contracting is not open to all comers
I’ve just found this article, which seems to say that tenders are open to bidders from outside the EU, other than in a limited range of industries such as utilities (which is what I always thought):
http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=089996eb-85b5-4f79-973c-1ec3ea6ef30e
The only advantage an EU bidder has is this: if the UK host requires a particular accreditation, licence etc, it must give equal recognition to the equivalent in another EU country. Doesn’t have to do the same for a non-EU bidder.
All the PM can be doing is offering mutual recognition for US accreditations. In practice, unless the US bidder has a presence here (and therefore UK accreditations in its own right), it is probably not going to win anything anyway.
Well, I try to keep an open mind about most things, but I fail to see how:
‘US contractors could bid for NHS contracts’
becomes:
‘The NHS would then be abolished in favour of the US health system with multiple charges’.
There’s no evidence I am aware of that justifies that transition. All major political parties are committed to the NHS, which is excellent in parts but sub-standard in others.
I favour a system like the German or French systems over the NHS. Mention this to many on the left and the response is that you want the UK to adopt the US system of healthcare. The level of paranoid irrationality displayed there is beyond anything rational argument could ever counter. It fills me with despair. Healthcare cannot (without rationing) be planned for nearly 70m people. Which is why we need a nationally funded system with a diversity of suppliers — as in Germany and France — that enables ptoviders to respond to market demand. Had we stayed in the EU, then in the long term we would probably have been forced to adopt an EU-wide system similar to the German and French model. Another reason to mourn Brexit?
I have no belief at all that the government is committed to the NHS
Senior members have written books saying they are not
And why favour the French system that is enormously wasteful as there is no GP triage system, costing 2% of GDP as a result?
The NHS is the most effective system there is
Any party that radically altered the NHS would be committing electoral suicide. Some Tories may wish to change it, but it just ain’t going to happen.
We could take the best from the German and French systems, and combine it with the best of the NHS.
And the NHS is failing, despite vast increases in funding in recent decades. Funding per capita is slightly above the EU average, but outcomes are well below average. You simply cannot manage a health service for nearly 70m people centrally. Nobody, no team, can handle that amount of management information; so we end with up insufficient beds/nurses/doctors and rationing of treatments.
John Whiting: – where wis your evidence that funding per capita is above European average?
The Tories are already radically altering the NHS- its just being done stealthily and undercover. Significantly more is now provided by private companies, and more being tenured all the time, but they still are allowed to put NHS logo on therefore most people are unaware. The impact of the STPs (Sustainability and Transformation plans) if they succeed will be to have aligned the NHS to be taken over by American companies.
I have always felt safer when a Democrat is in the White House; but even for a Republican Trump is extreme. My brother thinks that it is bound to be more efficient; instead of the crooks having to bribe the US government putting the crooks in charge will cut out the middleman.
I’m sure you are right; I remember the Thatcher/Regan era all to vividly – Spitting Image was one of the few things that kept me sane. The last thing the UK needs is closer ties to the US at present; the Europeans are rightly in my view very worried. Blair was shafted by the US and I can’t see May doing any better.
The NHS is close to breaking point; Brexit is providing a suitable smokescreen. Given a halfway decent opposition; May could not get away with it.
” NHS contracting is not open to all comers” I think it is. Pretty certain United Health has won some contracts. Here is some info about the amount of infiltration by the private sector already
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/feb/08/us-firms-look-to-capitalise-as-nhs-becomes-increasingly-privatised
http://www.patients4nhs.org.uk/private-companies-involvement-in-the-nhs/
I think you will find there are restrictions that TTIP would have removed and a US trade deal will almost certainly remove
Whether you believe this move will alter the NHS or not, everyone must understand that in order to expand, the American economy (American business) has go abroad. It had virtually scraped all of the value form within its borders; the American people are poorer than before so how are American Corporations going to make money?
And as it goes abroad it will attempt to mould its business environment to be like what it is used to back home. This is the American MO. It always has been.
Also think about what has happened to our education system recently? How many of those academy schools are in chains and how many of those chains are going to be acquired by American firms? In other words British ran academy school chains are now feeding off state education budgets. It is only a matter of time before American ‘education providers’ do the same and this also applies to the NHS.
And finally, have you ever read the book ‘Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee’? Again, the American modus operendi is in there – negotiate – get a deal – break it – negotiate again with better terms – break it – negotiate again with even better terms. This is how they managed to rob the North American Indians of their land and make it look completely legal. The Americans always come back wanting more until they have everything. It is how they have nearly destroyed their own country.
And this is how they will end up sucking the NHS dry if we are not careful, all enabled by the witless Tory and BREXIT voter whose passions are stirred by Trojan horses like immigration, ‘taking back control’ and ‘aspiration’.
And with no other alternative economic or social system such as communism or socialism to balance attitudes there are now seemingly no limits to how far this twisted version of American capitalism will go to make money – to ‘income stream’ everything.
The US, like all empires, is built on rent extracted from other nations
May wants to be the local rent collector
Yes – agreed – and the rest of her money loving party too. We are being sold – no doubt about that.
Off track, but did you know that NHS hospitals pay full Business Rates – they don’t even get the rebate that private hospitals do? So when NHS Estates is sold off to the private sector they will not only be paying the rent but the property tax as well.
Believe it or not, United Health the US health insurance multinational and former employer of Simon Stevens, now head of NHS England, has contracts with the NHS in the name of Optum, its UK subsidiary. It is involved with both commissioning, as part of a commissioning support unit, and for the same geographic area, providing services. Nice work if you can get it! Hospital Corporation of America(HCA) has a contract for cancer services in London. Ernst and Young (EY) was very involved in drafting the Sustainability and Transformation Plans (STP) which you will not have heard of by the look of the comments and Assura has written the West Yorkshire document after getting a 6 figure sum for running the West Yorkshire STP office until October 2016. If we still had a National Health Service, the redisorganisation which will purposefully close hospitals and reduce A&Es from 144 in 2010, to between 40 and 70 in 2020,(revealed in the Keogh report 2013 but shelved until after the election) would not be so bad because the Secretary of State used to have a duty to provide health services and could be held to account, but now Health has been taken out of political control and run by this Quasi Autonomous Non Governmental Organisation (QUANGO), the biggest in history, NHS England, no one has a duty to provide health services that are universal and comprehensive, in law. the 206 Clinical commissioning groups having wasted lots of money all doing the same thing as directed by NHSE but in little pockets with masses of contract managers, lawyers, compliance officers development ‘leads’ etc are getting ready to form companies to ‘deliver’ services as Multispeciality Community Providers (profit making) and Acute and other Hospital Trusts are forming Accountable Care Organisations like Keiser Permentente in the US with capitated budgets, to run health services for areas with private profit making companies sitting round the table as equal partners. Virgin Care has a great number of contracts both for community services and GP practices. When it started after the Health and social Care Act 2012 it was wanting at least 8% profit. The complicated finance structure manages to transform these profits into costs and tax is not due! Everyone needs to get on the street, now, there is no time to lose, the STPs are the last piece in the jigsaw puzzle of profit before people. They need stopping now.