When Capitalists Come a Knocking: UK Health Reform Bill is Privatisation Through the Front Door
It is clear that the Health Reform Bill, which is going through its final stages in the UK at the moment, is being used by the Tories as a means to privatise the NHS. While we hear that there are ‘factions’ within the Lib Dems who are staging moderate resistance they will eventually go along with the plans, give or take a tweak here or there.
So I’ve put together a selection of what I have found are the best comments on the plans, along with some information that relates to Ireland and our health care system and how certain well-known Irish oligarchs are making the most of the opportunities that privatisation provides, both here and in the UK. This originally was supposed to be a ‘best of the web’ piece, but it got out of hand. Apologies in advance for the sloppiness of the presentation.
The NHS is “the most efficient service in the world, in lives saved per pound spent” yet “Andrew Lansley has yet to explain the need why ‘reform’ of the NHS is so urgently needed”.
Without a doubt, the Health Reform Bill is privatisation.
“Lansley plans to change the NHS into a regulated industry, operating under rules set by Monitor (a new economic regulator), means the NHS becomes like the telecoms industry. Lansley, a former civil servant who piloted privatisations through in the 1980s, knows the arguments well. He’s been making them since 2005.”
But the health sector is not the telecoms industry.
“The pro-market nature of the reforms is still clear: private patient income will not be capped, family doctors will privilege choice and competition rather than health inequalities across the local population as the NHS commissioners do today and hospitals will be closed because they cannot run cash surpluses.”
Irish readers note, the Tory’s (& their corporate backers) wet dream is to turn the NHS into a system similar to Irish public/private health care run by very rich doctors, James Reilly being mega-rich doctor-in-chief. We know from the involvement of very rich doctors with developers in the extension of private health care in Ireland that these changes come not from improving health care, but simply to make money.
Here’s a list of some of the major healthcare consortia in Ireland and an interesting quote from an advisor for investors, the International Law Office:
“Barchester Healthcare is owned by Irish bloodstock and racing tycoons John Magnier and JP McManus, who together own 50% of the company alongside Irish financier Dermot Desmond and former Kerry Group chief executive Denis Brosnan. Barchester Healthcare is a British nursing home company which is now interested in buying the Priory chain of psychiatric clinics in the United Kingdom, worth an estimated €965 million.”
Barchester Healthcare provides accommodation for 11,000 residents throughout Ireland and the UK.
Barchester was also in the news in July, after a Panorama exposé of abuse at Winterbourne View, a care home owned by a company called Castlebeck led to the resignation of Paul Brosnan, son of Denis Brosnan.
“The chairman of Castlebeck, the company behind Winterbourne View, the care home at the centre of the recent BBC Panorama abuse exposé, has resigned as the group braces itself for what it expects to be a highly critical report into care standards conducted by the Care Quality Commission and PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Castlebeck is owned by Denis Brosnan’s Jersey-based Lydian Capital, which is backed by fellow Irish tycoons JP McManus, John Magnier and Dermot Desmond.
Paul Brosnan, who has served as chairman of Castlebeck for almost three years, called in PwC to conduct a review of systems and controls at care homes after being presented with Panorama’s findings.
Why are people like JP McManus, John Magnier and Dermot Desmond interested in care homes?
The explanation can be found in the story behind the recent collapse of another care home consortia, Southern Cross. As the Guardian reported in July:
“Southern Cross will soon cease to exist, as landlords take back leases linked to the firm’s 750 care homes because it can no longer afford the rent. [......]But how did it come to this? Britain’s largest care homes operator, with 31,000 residents, was once a force in the land.
It’s easy to see why. Not so long ago, running care homes for the elderly and sick seemed an easy way to make money in a country where the population was greying at a faster rate than anyone could remember. Most elderly residents were bankrolled by local authorities, offering private-sector operators a steady stream of income from the taxpayer.
Interest rates were low, allowing companies to borrow to expand their estates at a time when banks were falling over themselves to furnish loans. Councils were feeling generous and agreed annual fee increases ahead of the rate of inflation, making it simple for operators to cover their costs.”
This situation is similar to the scheme operating in Ireland, which has run into difficulty because the level of demand exceeded the budget allocated for the Fair Deal scheme. However, similar to the problems at Southern Cross, the banking crisis has also caused problems for those developers trying to tap into the Grey Euro.
According to the Fair Deal scheme state support is providing private-sector operators with a potential steady stream of income from the taxpayer:
“The Financial Assessment looks at your income and assets in order to work out what your contribution to care will be. The HSE will then pay the balance of your cost of care. For example, if the cost of your care was €1,000 and your weekly contribution was €300, the HSE will pay the weekly balance of €700. This payment by the HSE is called State Support. The Financial Assessment looks at all of your income and assets.”
Back to the UK and the Tory/Lib Dem Health Reform Bill. Does this sound familiar? from Colin Leys, author of The Plot Against the NHS (Merlin Press 2011) - 8th of September:
“The bill will end the NHS as a comprehensive service equally available to all. People with limited means will have a narrowing range of free services of declining quality, and will once again face long waits for elective care. Everyone else will go back to trying to find money for private insurance and private care. More and more NHS hospital beds will be occupied by private patients. Doctors will be divided into a few who will become rich, and many who will end up working on reduced terms and with little professional freedom for large corporations (the staff of the hospitals that are being considered for handing over to private firms will have noted that the firms in question want “a free hand with staff”).
Where is this pressure for change coming from? Politicians? The people’s desire for choice? From
“What we are witnessing is the completion of a project begun some 25 years ago to restore healthcare to private enterprise. The key players have not been MPs but private healthcare companies and consultancies like McKinsey and KPMG. The war has been waged by the lavish corporate funding of pro-market thinktanks - the quiet subversion of some of those, like the King’s Fund, that are still rather quaintly described as “independent” - and the deep penetration of the Department of Health and Labour’s senior ranks. No countervailing argument has come from pro-public thinktanks, because none exists with resources equal to the task. And how many MPs have actually read through the bill they are in the process of endorsing, or even the explanatory notes that accompany it?”
Neoliberalism - Ireland’s greatest export since 1922.
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