Profit From Illness.

        We keep hearing our prancing political ballerinas spouting about how the National Health Service is safe in their hands, and that there are no plans to privatise the NHS. What utter bullshit, the NHS has been getting privatised slice by slice for years and it is still continuing.

From Kings Fund:

         The Department of Health and Social Care’s accounts also show that NHS providers spent £1.3 billion2 on services from non-NHS organisations in 2018/19. Data from NHS Improvement shows that NHS providers spent £271 million on outsourcing services to other providers, including the private sector, in 2018/19 – up from £221 million in 2017/18. This includes outsourcing elective hospital treatment in order to deliver waiting times targets.
         If spending on primary care services – including GPs, pharmacy, optical and dental services – is included, some have estimated that approximately 25 per cent of NHS spending goes on the private sector.

        Anybody that holds any illusions that this creeping privatising of the NHS will some how be reversed under a capitalist system is naive in the extreme. With the engineered problems in the NHS it is likely to become a galloping privatisation, with governments seeing private capital as the white knight that will rescue our struggling NHS, but also making lots of money from people's health problems, for the financial Mafia. A system of profit governing your treatment, not your needs.

       Then there is this talk of opening up the NHS to the American market, which of course will lead to an American style Health Service. The following is just one example of how the American Health Service works.

This from the Guardian: 

 'I live on the street now': how Americans fall into medical bankruptcy 

        It’s been over a dozen years since Susanne LeClair of West Palm Beach, Florida was first diagnosed with cancer and she’s been fighting ever since. Now she, like many other Americans facing life-threatening illness, is bankrupt despite having health insurance.
       Before her first cancer-related surgery, LeClair was told by the hospital they accepted her employer-based health insurance.
      “I paid my $300 copay. After the surgery, I started receiving all these invoices and came to find out the only thing covered was my bed because the hospital was out of network,” said LeClair. “My bills were hundreds of thousands of dollars, so I had no choice but to file bankruptcy.”
        LeClair is on the verge of having to file for bankruptcy a second time due to the mounting medical debt she has accrued for additional cancer-related surgeries, regular appointments, medications and supplies related to her recovery, despite having health insurance and paying as much as she can out of pocket for copays, deductibles and premiums to maintain insurance.
       “My medical bills are at $52,000. I’ve done everything from credit cards to consolidation loans, I just keep simply paying one credit card with another interest-free one until I can pay the next one,” LeClair added. “It’s the side of cancer most people don’t understand or know about and it’s never-ending. It just keeps adding up and adding up and before you know it you’re back in debt that you can’t believe again.”
       Bankruptcy can also make it difficult to find employment given that many employers will disqualify a candidate with a bankruptcy filing found from a background check.
        According to a study published in February 2019, about 530,000 bankruptcies filed annually are because of debt accrued due to a medical illness. The study found that even the Obama administration’s landmark Affordable Care Act (known as Obamacare) has failed to change the proportion of bankruptcies caused by medical debts, with poor health insurance cited as one of the main culprits.

Read the full article HERE:

Visit ann arky's home home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Do you Wish An Anesthetic? That'll Be Extra.

         I, like many others have been screaming for years about the devious underhand plans to privatise our National Health Service. No matter what is said in those Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption, the plans slither on, piece by piece our NHS is being sold off to the corporate world. I am sure there are many, like myself, who owe their lives to the dedicated staff of the NHS and are horrified at the thought of a privatised health service, where what you can afford will govern your treatment, with private insurance companies rubbing the grubby hands with glee at the health problems that can hit any and all of us. Already large swaths of our NHS are in the hands of corporate exploiters like Branson, etc.. On the secret and insidious agenda of the privileged parasites is the total sell off of our NHS to their corporate buddies. We act determinedly and in solidarity now, or we wake up to find ourselves living with the horrors of a private health service with profit its main purpose.
         This is an appeal from John Pilger in an attempt to make us all more aware of the looming and very real danger we face as the corporate world are gifted slice by slice, the entire body of our National Health Service.

  The Dirty War on the NHS
      The NHS is in crisis. Support John Pilger's latest film that unearths the hidden agenda.

By John Pilger
      September 06, 2019 "Information Clearing House" - My last film, The Coming War on China was only completed because of the generosity and solidarity of the hundreds of people whose names appear in the end-credits. For me, watching those names roll is one of the proudest moments of the film.
       Initially, I was reluctant to crowd-fund and said so in the preamble on the crowd-funding site; I believed most people needed the money in their pockets and it was up to me and my colleagues at Dartmouth Films to convince likely institutions or rich donors with a conscience (yes, they exist) to impart their loose change.
       But when one of the major funders of the film suddenly pulled out, it looked like the film and its editing would grind to a halt.
       The crowd-funders came to our rescue: people who gave a fiver or what they could afford (and often couldn’t afford). What struck me was the entirely gracious way people offered to help. They weren’t giving charity, they said; they were delighted, even honoured, to be partners in the making and success of a film they considered important.
        Today, I am again making an appeal for support - this time for a film whose urgency touches all our lives, literally.
        It’s about the NHS, the last bastion of a truly people’s institution without which so many of us would stumble and fall and perhaps not survive.
       The film is certainly a tribute to the NHS; but, above all, it’s a warning.
      Under our noses, often secretly and deceptively, our National Health Service is being undermined and sold off: piece by precious piece to the likes of Richard Branson and the giant American health insurance companies that are at the root of the misery that is American healthcare.
       The privatisation of the NHS has been mostly insidious – by “stealth”, as one of Mrs. Thatcher’s cohorts once advised. But since 2010, the “reforms” have speeded up. It’s got to the point that if we don’t act now, we’ll wake up one day to an unrecognizable health service that is no longer ours.
      As with my previous films, this film will be in cinemas and on network TV, bringing a vital public message, and warning, to a mass audience
        With this urgency in mind, please support this work – again, with whatever you can afford. Your name will appear with special honour as the credits roll. Thank you.
John Pilger

       It's not just about the money!
       If you can't contribute, you can help us enormously by:
      TELLING your friends, family, colleagues, neighbours and contacts about this film and share this page: http://bit.ly/pilgerhealthdoc

SHARE via Facebook
TWEET using #DirtyWarOnNHS, @johnpilger
SIGN UP to our mailing list for updates on the campaign and the film as it progresses.

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A Capitalist Sytem Can't Save Our NHS.

      So the Branson brand gets a massive £700 million slice of the NHS, shock, horror, well no, I, like many others have been shouting for years that the NHS is to be privatised. Slice by slice, bite size bit by bite size bit, it will be gobbled up. If you are appealing to the capitalist system, to please don't privatise our NHS, you're wasting your time. If you accept capitalism, then accept that everything that can make money will be privatised, that's what they are about, that's the system you are tolerating. All that is termed essential services, gas, electricity, the postal service, all gone into the broth-pot of the corporate world. More and more councils are handing over what were services that they delivered, to private companies. Part of the prison system is in private hands, care for the elderly, the DWP assessment of the sick, is in private hands. So what makes you think that the NHS will be treated differently, considering they have already punted large sections of the NHS to their mates in the corporate world.

     Stop shout at the government to "save our NHS", they have already bankrupted it, making it ready for "private capital" to come rushing to the rescue. Start acting against the root cause of all this privatising, (plundering of public assets) and concentrate on getting rid of capitalism, only when that is done, will our NHS be safe.

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

You May Have To Die, Your Insurance Doesn't Cover This Illness!!!

        We continually hear the two faced lying parasites, wallowing in the perks of that cesspool of self interest, that goes by the name of The Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption, spout, "the Health Service is safe in our hands ". However, anybody with two brain cells is well aware that the NHS is up for sale, and will be privatised, over a period of some years. The latest gift from the Cameron cabal, to their corporate buddies, is a nice slice of child care in Wiltshire. Come April, child care in Wilshire will become a money making machine for billionaire, Batty Branson, and will fly the flag of "Virgin Care". 

      NHS staff working in child health services in one West county have been told they have a new boss – Richard Branson – after health chiefs unilaterally privatised their entire department in a £64 million deal.
      All community child health services in Wiltshire will be privatised, with council and NHS bosses defending their decision saying it was the best way to ensure a consistent service across the county.
     But leaders representing the staff being transferred said they had real fears the move would mean a worse service for more money, which they said was what happened when taxes were paid for 'profits and shareholders.
      Until now, all the services from Cricklade to Salisbury had been run by five different NHS organisations. The services now part of the deal include children's specialist community nursing, health visiting and speech and language therapy.    

      This piece of slicing and dicing of the NHS for corporate profit is not new, nor is it likely to be that last. The final aim is the total privatisation of health care in this country. Your only purpose in this society is to make profit for the multinational corporations, if you can't do that by working for crap wages, then you can do it when your ill. You are just a money making entity, or you are useless, superfluous to requirements. Is that the society you want?

       The NHS has been legally abolished. Perhaps most controversial is the opening up of NHS contracts to unlimited privatisation. Last year alone, out of £9.63bn worth of NHS deals signed, £3.54bn (nearly 40% of them) went to private firms. Private providers are cherry-picking lucrative services to boost their profits leaving the NHS with less money to provide comprehensive care. This neatly ties in with the next aspect of the legislation.

        This continual strangle hold of corporate power over all aspects of our life will continue, health care, education, social services, all to be turned into money making machines for the financial Mafia. If you don't like that, then you will have to stand up and fight one helluva battle, not just to save your NHS, but to save your children and grandchildren from the future enslavement under the yoke of corporate capitalism. Forget attacking the nasty branches of capitalism, we must destroy the root itself. Until we bring about the destruction of capitalism, and send it to the dustbin of history, as man's darkest hour, our conditions are on a downward spiral, with no other purpose than to enhance the wealth of an army of worthless, greedy parasites. 

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Profit From Illness.

      Just a glimpse of what privatisation of our hospitals will look like by glancing across at the Good ol' US of A. This from Truthout: For-Profit Hospitals Mark Up Prices Because There Is Nothing To Stop Them.

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

An Anaesthetic? That'll Be Extra!!

       Further to Osborne's "Walking Tall" claim, he and his partner in crime, Cameron, are helping their millionaire cronies to walk even taller, by handing them the biggest slice of the NHS yet to be privatised. They are working hard to get it all sliced and diced up in manageable portions for their band of robbers, before the next election. Do you want a private health care system, where you get what you can afford? If not, then we have to do something about this ruthless band of plunders, and do it quick. Would you like an anaesthetic with your operation? That'll be extra then.

An appeal from The Sum Of Us:

Thanks,

Hanna, Martin and the rest of us 

Friends, 

    David Cameron just sold off a massive chunk of our NHS, in the largest healthcare privatisation deal in UK history. The contract hands over a whopping £780 million to private firms with shoddy care records -- it’s over 50% larger than the next biggest healthcare sell-off.

Three of the for-profit companies have track records of poor care, yet still ended up with fresh NHS contracts to pad their bottom line. We’ve seen what happens if we privatise our health services: we get worse care at a higher cost. The sheer size of the deal means it’s virtually irreversible once it goes through.

      Let's make sure the government doesn't get away with this. Sign the petition here: http://action.sumofus.org/a/nhs-privatisation/?sub=taf

Thank you,

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

 

Cancer Care, For Profit!!

       Even before the greed monster TTIP, has been released from the bowels of corporate voracity, onto the general public, we are seeing the NHS being sliced and diced for the corporate friends of our millionaire cabal that sits in the Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption. Within that cesspool of self interest, there are over 140 Lords with business interests in private healthcare, plus at least 80 MPs with similar interests, that would benefit from the privatisation of the NHS. How do you think they will be pushing the debate?

        The paid political liars that keep spouting, "The NHS is safe in our hands", have been laughing at us, as the clink their champagne glasses with their bosom buddies, the corporate leeches, while throwing NHS contracts around for favours.   

          Behind closed doors the biggest sell-off in the NHS has been rolling along, and now it is out in the open. Staffordshire was planning a £1.2bn sell-off of cancer and end-of-life care without proper patient consultation. But now a key leaked document reveals all:

--------Not only is this the first billion-pound NHS privatisation, it is the first time that it has been deemed acceptable to put care designed to meet the needs of our most vulnerable patients on sale.
Uniquely for a privatisation on anything of this scale, there has been no public consultation, simply a series of weak “engagement” events led by paid “patient champions”. For the past year unpaid patients have not been able to have their say. Thanks to the brave person who shared the documents, now they can.
       The background is this: Staffordshire commissioners want to hand the management of all care for cancer and end-of-life patients to a private company, a “prime provider” that will take responsibility for the delivery of care, subcontracting and performance management.-------

Read the full article HERE:

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The Privatisation Of The NHS Glides Ever Forward.

      Even before TTIP, the corporations charter, has been ratified, the big greed merchants are targeting the NHS, and all with a nod and a wink from their Oxbridge millionaire friends, sitting in the Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption. No matter the public statements to the contrary, being uttered by the residents of that Westminster millionaires club, the sale of the NHS is on their agenda, TTIP is just making sure it is written into law. Only by a massive uprising of anger and protests of the ordinary people will it be stopped. The sale of the NHS is in the interests of the millionaire class, and guess who is looking after and legislating on the NHS? That's right, it's the millionaire class of course. Only you can stop them, it is your NHS, you have a fight on your hands to keep it so.

 

 This from Sum Of Us:

      Incredible! Over 80,000 of us have signed the petition telling NHS England to keep mega US weapons company, Lockheed Martin, out of our healthcare system.
      Let's make sure we go into 2015 with a bang (after all, Lockheed Martin is used to those). Can we get to 100,00 signatures by the end of the year?
Here's what you can do:
Forward the email below to at least five of your friends.
Click here to share this campaign with your friends on Facebook.

       Let's make 2015 the year we kick corporate power out of the NHS,

Martin, Hanna, and the team at SumOfUs.org

Share email:

Friends,
      American arms company, Lockheed Martin, is targeting huge chunks of our NHS! If successful, the world's biggest weapons manufacturer could be in your GP's office, handling your records and scheduling your appointments.
      Lockheed Martin isn’t content with raking in billions from selling weapons to countries right around the world -- now it wants a slice of our National Health Service.
      Right now, it’s sniffing around a huge £1 billion contract to supply services to our GPs and family doctors. But the NHS hasn’t decided yet who will make it through the bidding process, so we’ve still got a chance to stop this arms company from profiting from the healthcare our families receive. But we don’t have long to make our voices heard.

      Join me to tell the government and NHS England to stop Lockheed Martin from bidding on the NHS contract. Gun-runners don't belong in the NHS! http://action.sumofus.org/a/weapons-NHS/

More information:
International arms firm Lockheed Martin in the frame for £1bn NHS contract The Independent, 21 November 2014
World's biggest arms firm targets £1billion NHS contract, Mirror, 19 November 2014

 Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

The Usual Oxbridge Self-centred Hypocrisy.

 

      Just what you expect from an MP, two-faced, money grabbing, hypocrite, Stephen Dorrell, sitting as an MP in a tory government that says it will protect the NHS, while taking a job with a company that wants to plunder out a slice of the NHS for profit. No doubt he'll advise KMPG on how best to go about grabbing a chunk of the NHS, at the cheapest price, and what sections will be the most profitable to the company. He has the inside info and contacts, having been chair of the Health Select Committee for four years. Well, what do you expect from one of the Oxbridge Mafia. 

 This from 38 Degrees:

     Stephen Dorrell MP has just taken a job with KPMG, a private company that wants to bid on a £1 billion NHS contract. [1] But he's refusing to give up his parliamentary seat.
     Mr Dorrell has admitted his new job is “incompatible” with his role as an MP. But he's refusing to step down until May 2015. [2] How can that be ok? Who is his boss for the next 5 months - KPMG or his constituents?
     If thousands of us sign a petition to David Cameron to show our outrage, the weight of public opinion could force the PM to crack down. Please sign now:
http://secure.38degrees.org.uk/dorrell-conflict-of-interest
For four years, Stephen Dorrell MP was the chair of the powerful Health Select committee, helping open the NHS up to privatisation. His new job is with a private company bidding on the NHS.
       Here’s what Chris, one his constituents says:
“Public trust in politicians is currently at an all-time low. Dorrell's action in joining KPMG displays a cynical lack of integrity amongst MPs. This presents a serious conflict of interest and misuse of his privileged position, making him unfit to continue as an MP."
     From campaigning for a law to allow voters to sack rogue MPs, through to fighting to protect our NHS from private healthcare vultures, [3] 38 Degrees members have a history of challenging politicians who act against our democracy. Let’s show David Cameron we’re watching his every move.
    Can you sign the petition asking David Cameron to tell Stephen Dorrell he can't take a job in health privatisation whilst he's still an MP?
http://secure.38degrees.org.uk/dorrell-conflict-of-interest
Thanks for being involved,
Ali, Robin, David and the 38 Degrees team
NOTES:
[1] Daily Telegraph: Stephen Dorrell MP faces calls to resign over conflict of interest:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/11264425/Stephen-Dorrell-MP-faces-calls-to-resign-over-conflict-of-interest.html
[2] Mirror: £1 billion NHS sell-off scandal: Tory MP works for firm targeting huge health service deal:
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/1billion-nhs-sell-off-scandal-tory-4724959
[3] 38 Degrees blog - Recall campaign and NHS privatisation vote:
http://blog.38degrees.org.uk/2014/10/23/recall-mp-debate/ http://blog.38degrees.org.uk/2014/11/20/save-our-nhs/

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

How Stupid Can We Get?

     I once had a lot of chickens, I was a bit worried about what might happen to them, so to protect them I paid for a group of foxes to be responsible for protecting my chickens. I then went about my daily business, working, watching football and taking the kids to the park. Then one day I went to have a look at my chickens and they were all gone. The foxes were still there, strutting around looking rather pleased with themselves, and they all look a good bit fatter. Was I rather stupid?

    Well just think, we have a NHS and we are a bit worried what might happen to it. So we pay a bunch of very rich people, who have a vested interest in selling it off, to be in charge of protecting our NHS!! One day we will take a good look at our NHS and find it has all gone. The very rich people will still be there, looking rather pleased with themselves and a lot richer.

 

Thanks to Mathew Lyall for the photo.

    That place of pomp, privilege and grandeur, The Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption, is stuffed full of very rich people, many of them millionaires, lots of whom have interests in companies that would gain immensely from the privatisation of the NHS. These are the people that we pay to protect our NHS, while we go about our normal daily business. Are we rather stupid? Isn't time we got rid of the two-faced greedy parasites, and started looking after our own affairs? Ever heard of community control, people's assemblies, etc.? Is it wise to pay greedy millionaires to protect you from greedy millionaires? Perhaps you think that they are not really interested in wealth and power, and all they think about is your welfare, now that really is stupid.

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

UK Corporate Health Service.

      When the millionaire Cameron cabal said that the NHS is safe in their hands, he really meant in their hands, the hands of his millionaire friends in the corporate greed machine. Make no mistake, that's where it is going. The NHS is being sliced and diced into bite size pieces for the corporate profit mongers to gobble up and milk, to feed their addiction, loads of profit.

      Several of the big corporate greed machines are bidding for a £689 million contract to provide cancer care in Staffordshire. A second contract worth £535 million and again in Staffordshire, will cover end of life care. This will be where cancer patients have had all the expensive treatment from the NHS that they can have, and have no cure. The profit mongers will build large units where the only treatment will be opiates. They will be run like the private homes for the care of the elderly, staffed by under paid, under trained, over worked staff, while the coffers of the profit mongers overflow with tax payers money. There will be the usual leak of ill treatment of patients, and the usual bland "lessons have been learnt" crap. That's a massive slice of the NHS in one area, £1.22 billion hived off to the friends of the Cameron Club. We also have the nice Mister Branson with his lucrative £500 million contract to provide various health services in Surrey. If they get away with it in Surrey and Staffordshire, there is no doubt they will roll it out across the rest of the country.

      If there is anyone who doesn't see this as privatisation of the NHS, they must be brain dead. When and where was any party given a mandate to sell off the NHS to their rich friends?

      Unless we wake up now, to the fact that we have a group of bankers friends in charge of the NHS, who are hell bent on hiving it off to those friends, we will eventually wake up to no NHS. It will take a concerted effort by all unions and interested groups to wrestle back that which is ours from the slime grasp of the financial Mafia. What they are doing cannot be deemed legal, likewise, what we do to retain our NHS does not need to be legal. Every means at our disposal must be utilised before we are completely in the hands of the corporate beast, for all our health care.

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

HEALTH CARE OR STICKING PLASTER??

        

    I keep saying that the millionaire cabal sitting in the Westminster Houses of Corruption and Hypocrisy, know who there friends are. It seems that the millionaire public school thugs have changed the funding arrangements for the primary care trusts. Previously areas which have higher incidences of poor health were given a higher per-capita funding. However our millionaire controllers have decided to end that arrangement of special weighting. The result of this clever slight of hand means that poorer areas such as Manchester and Tower Hamlets will lose out in the funding process, while the more prosperous parts of the country, for example, Hampshire and Surrey will gain considerably.

I was treated in Manchester!!

        As the NHS moves to privatisation it will become obvious that the poorer areas will be unable to afford the super-duper care on offer, while the toffs can. So market forces dictate that you put the better, more expensive facilities in the richer areas and have a sort of good sticking plaster care system for the peasants. It is all falling nicely into place, our lords and masters are looking after their own, isn't about time we did likewise?

ann arky's home.

THE GREAT ILLUSIONIST!!

    

      A lot of public anger regarding the decimation of the social fabric of our society, is hurtled at the Cameron/Clegg millionaire public school thugs, and rightly so. However we should remember that though they may be pushing for the privatisation of every thing that their pals can make money from, we have to realise that they have an army of back-room boys, (advisers) who come up with the ideas on the how and wherefore. Sometimes these millionaires' flunkies speak the truth, but we are not supposed to hear. Take the NHS, while Cameron, in public, goes on about protecting the NHS and only wanting to improve the service that it provides, one of his back-room adviser poodles, a certain Mr. Mark Britnell is telling a conference of executives from the private sector, that future NHS reforms would “show no mercy” to the NHS and these same reforms would offer a “big opportunity” to the for profit sector. He also stated,  the NHS could be improved by charging patients and will be transformed into a "state insurance provider, not a state deliverer" of care.

         There you have it, the Cameron cabal's true plans for the NHS, improve it by charging people and turning it into a nice little money earner for their millionaire friends in the corporate world. So while his adviser is spouting the truth to his corporate friends, Cameron is putting on a smiling and compassionate theatre act for our benefit. He is the great illusionist, but unlike a theatre act, he is extremely dangerous. Will he now come out and agree with his poodle Mr. Mark Britnell, or will he dismiss him? With this information now public, will he now scrap the plans for the privatisation of the NHS or will he carry on spouting one message for our ears and another truthful message for his pals in the corporate world. There is no doubt that Cameron will soon take his place among those other great actors like Tony Blair and Sir Laurence Olivier. Though only the latter had any integrity.

ann arky's home.