I HATE UNITED! - LATEST BRIEFING RANT

I know that Michael Moore isn’t everybody’s cup of tea but I can heartily recommend a trip to your local flea pit to catch Sicko while it’s still on general release.

The living nightmare which is the US healthcare system should make you both angry and very afraid because the glaring gap in the Moore movie is that those same companies who have inflicted pain and misery on tens of millions in the States are being lined up to plunder the NHS.

United Health are without any doubt the greediest and the most aggressive of the bunch. They are also the smartest when it comes to buying influence and they knew exactly where to splash the cash when it came to influencing New Labour health policy.

So step forward Simon Stevens– former advisor to Blair and health ministers – who now resides in Minnesota directing European strategy for United.

I’ve never met this bloke but I don’t like the smell of him one little bit. According to the Observer, Stevens has been busy meeting with health ministers, including Lord Darzi who is said to be a big fan. And guess what? United are one of the 14 corporations lined up to take over GP commissioning in the UK and already have their foot well and truly jammed in the door in the pit villages of Derbyshire where their involvement has been resisted by a brave and determined local campaign.

When Brown took over, and when Johnson replaced Hewitt as Health Secretary, it was suggested by some that there might be a policy shift away from the privatisation agenda. Don’t believe it.

Despite the fact that the private Independent Sector Treatment Centre’s (ISTC’s) have ripped off nearly a quarter of a billion from the patient care budget for operations that have never been down, and despite the fact that the real costs of the payments to the companies involved in PFI are starting to become clear, the pace of privatisation is actually accelerating.

In the leafy streets of outer South West London a cabal of pro-privateers are making up their own rules as they go along. In the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames primary care commissioning has already been hived of to a self-styled “co-operative” of local GP’s who include amongst their number a director of United Health.

Meanwhile, Kingston Hospital NHS Trust are cooking up a scheme to bring in a private sector company to run the whole elective surgery operation on their site. This would be a step beyond anything that’s happened before. The ISTC’s have been self-standing privatised units – Kingston are planning to bring the private sector right into the heart of an NHS hospital which would give the green light to similar moves up and down the country.

The Kingston situation exposed the sheer lack of any transparency and accountability in the development of key aspects of future health policy. Ask them who their approved bidders are to take over surgery and they will hide behind the cloak of “commercial confidentiality.”

Not only that, but in a press briefing they told us that their plans are fully in-line with the recommendations of Lord Darzi. I challenged some of the clinicians involved in the Darzi Review, who had gone to great lengths to tell me that they weren’t a Trojan horse for privatisation, what Kingston were saying. They were angry but they couldn’t, or wouldn’t, do a damn thing to rein them in.

So the timing of Sicko is excellent and should be a wake up call to anyone committed to the principles of the NHS. Here’s the truth, the US corporations being lined up by Brown and Johnson to take over a GP centre near you are ideologically opposed to the principles of the NHS. They hate the concept of “socialised” health care and believe that it’s part of a red conspiracy and that’s why they have actively fought any attempts to sort out the poisonous chaos of US health care.

These same companies have form as long as your arm for denying care, price fixing and generally acting like some of the most evil scum ever to be spewed forth by the capitalist system – and Brown thinks that your healthcare is safe in their hands.

That’s why some Blairite tosser sitting in an office in Minneapolis has more influence over the future of your local health service than all the local people who use and work in those services put together. You are right to be very angry and very, very scared.


· It was an absolute pleasure to be invited along to join the Freemantle workers in Barnet on their day of action against their appalling treatment by their “third way” company.

What is all this bollocks about the “third sector” – all sounds to me like something out of a Sci-Fi movie or a Patrick Harrington version of fascism, or is that the “third position”? Whatever, they all make the same claim that they are some sort of alternative to socialism versus capitalism or public versus private.

But the Freemantle workers, and thousands of other care staff across the country, know the truth. The “third sector” is a cosy title for more cuts and privatisation and more of the same shitty end of the stick if you are a low paid carer. I know whose side I’m on.