Murder by Stealth: The Slow Death of the NHS.
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ARE WE ALL HAPPY NOW? YOU'LL 'REPEAL' THE NHS BILL 'AT THE FIRST OPPORTUNIIY?' WHAT - LIKE THE WAY YOU PROMISED TO TAKE THE RAILWAYS BACK INTO PUBLIC OWNERSHIP? YOU COULDN'T REPEAL A DAMNED BANANA ... YOU'RE ALL 'IN IT TOGETHER' - PIGS AROUND THE TROUGH; AND WE'RE ALL OUTSIDE PROVIDING THE SWILL. |
The ‘constitutional outrage’ Lord David Owen predicted if the Lords failed to vote against the Coalition’s defiance in refusing to publish the Risk Dossier on the NHS reforms is now a reality.
The seemingly spineless, whipped-in Upper Chamber’s vote of 269 peers for the NHS Bill and a mere 174 against thickly underlines the Coalition’s utter disregard and disrespect for both the public’s right to know and the law of the land. The Information Rights Tribunal upheld the Information commissioner's ruling that the November 2010 document should be disclosed, but no doubt the government will over-ride this in the same way Tony Blair blocked the publication of the intelligence document on WMDs, enabling the Iraq war to proceed – by the use of a Cabinet veto.
One thing is certain; the private health sector is now un-corking the Bollinger with glee, and nowhere will the celebrations be more joyful than with a shiny new company called Mee Healthcare, the brainchild of one Cherie Blair QC and America’s Dr. Gail Lese, a former Republican running-mate of Mitt Romney. Mrs. Blair has been instrumental in raising £65 million to fund the launch of Mee Healthcare by co-founding the Allele Fund, which stated on a cached version of its website dated 29 December 2011 ‘In the United Kingdom this website is issued by Allele Fund, which is authorised and regulated by the FSA.’ However, when the Daily Telegraph contacted the Financial Services Authority, they had no record of the Allele Fund and since then the claim has vanished from the website.
Mee Healthcare is already busy recruiting for staff at www.primaryhealthnet.com and soon you’ll be able to by-pass the NHS with your illnesses via your credit card in supermarkets in Leeds, Manchester and elsewhere, with the flagship private clinic opening at Stratford’s Olympic Village.Now that the NHS as we know it is about to exit from its near-death experience into the long tunnel of mortality, with the shining angels of capitalism reaching out in their golden light for our open wallets, what can we expect our UK health provision to be like by 2030?
Some of us, thankfully, will not be around by then, but those who are will see the culmination of that ‘special relationship’ so beloved of Blair and Bush. Britain is about to go into reverse gear on public health. We’re going Yankee, like it or not. Back in 1974, the following political statement, judging by today’s US take on semantics, seems about as daringly ‘socialist’ as Lucifer would allow:
“The time is at hand this year to bring comprehensive, high-quality health care within the reach of every American. I shall propose a sweeping new programme that will assure comprehensive health insurance protection to millions of Americans who cannot now obtain it or afford it.” Surprisingly enough, the man who uttered these words was Richard Nixon. Had it not been for Watergate, who knows – he might well have pulled it off. Bill Clinton tried his own variation on the theme, but was battered to the ground by the insurance lobby. Bad health is big profit, and you don’t mess with a sacred corporate cash cow like health insurance.
Cherie Blair QC seems to share a distinction with most of America’s population. She appears to misunderstand the word ‘socialism’. Yet that’s exactly what she claims to be; ‘a socialist’. In the USA ‘socialist’ has replaced ‘communist’ in the political lexicon’s epithets for Satanist. This is mainly due to the presence of Barack Obama in the White House. In tandem with the long-running campaign by the extreme right to ‘prove’ that Obama isn’t even an American citizen, his Beelzebub credentials have been further embellished by his plans for the nation’s health. He was probably on a loser from the start. If Clinton’s bold plans for an expansion of affordable health facilities for all Americans were scuppered by the corporate lobby, then the naïve ‘Yes we can’ Obama, together with his Vice President Joe Biden, guilelessly imagined that the wave of nationwide electoral relief felt when George W. Bush was flushed away down history’s S-bend, would allow them to bring a modicum of common sense to America’s woeful health system.
Here then, are the warning signs of the unhealthy morass into which our ‘all in it together’ coalition are leading us.
The Obama-Biden plan sought to offer accessible affordable, health care for all Americans, building on existing health care system, utilising existing providers, doctors, and plans. The Obama-Biden meant that, instead of being blocked by insurance company dogma, patients could make health care decisions with their doctors. If you already had health insurance, nothing would change, but your costs will go down by as much as $2,500 per year. Those without health insurance would be able to choose from affordable new health insurance options. Of course, it’s all about money. The big question was how to fund the idea. So Barack Obama’s $50 - $65 billion health care reform would be achieved by cutting back the generous tax cuts given by George W. Bush to rich Americans earning more $250,000 per year whilst retaining the estate tax at its 2009 level.
Yet both the Democrats and the Republicans in their desperate race to the next election are finding any mention of health planning toxic in their rabble-rousing speeches. Cherie Blair, by her connection to the Allale Fund/Mee Healthcare project through her close friend Dr. Gail Lese, seems by osmosis connected to arch-Republican Mitt Romney, Dr. Lese’s strongest advocate, and he seems today as embarrassed about his own healthcare position as Clinton and Obama. ‘Obamacare’ and ‘Romneycare’ are two more terms in the current American political Devil’s Dictionary.
Romney’s Massachusetts health care insurance reform law, enacted in 2006, mandated that nearly every resident of Massachusetts had to obtain a state-government-regulated minimum level of healthcare insurance coverage, but provided free health care insurance for residents earning less than 150% of the federal poverty level (FPL), those ineligible for Mass Health (Medicaid). It also subsidised health care insurance for those earning up to 300% of the FPL. These subsidies and FPL-related calculations affect very few of the over 6,000,000 people who possessed healthcare insurance prior to the law’s passing. But Romneycare wasn’t totally benign. Massachusetts tax filers who failed to enrol in what was considered to be an affordable health insurance plan would lose the $219 personal exemption on their income tax. Beginning in 2008, penalties increased by monthly increments.
As the sharp scalpel of the private sector begins to remove the profitable organs of healthcare from the battered body of the NHS, the feeding-frenzy of investors can begin. People like the Blairs and their American buddies have much in common – mainly that when it comes to money, enough is never enough. When The Sunday Telegraph disclosed that the ex-UK Prime Minister paid just £315,000 in tax last year on an income of more than £12 million, one might think that with £2 million per year alone promoting Morgan Stanley bank or a six figure fee for publicizing Louis Vuitton handbags, that these ‘socialists’ might have raided capitalism’s coffers enough to finance a revolution. But it must be a struggle living on a mere £230,000 per week, especially as the coalition is attacking hard-pressed families like the Blairs by planning to cut child benefits to higher earners. But Cherie has already thought this through; if the supermarket health clinics take time paying a dividend, she’s added another business to her portfolio. She’s joined up with the 28 year old descendant of the Duke of Wellington, Alexandrina Wellesley, the kind of grand aristocrat working class girls from Liverpool appreciate so much. It’s difficult to establish what the new business does, but Omnia Strategy is a limited liability partnership (LLP). LLPs are great for avoiding scrutiny of your business interests because they are subject to different rules on the filing of accounts. After all, why else would Cherie’s hard-working, globe-trotting peace ambassador hubby use them?
In his speech at the Royal College of Pathologists, 2 November 2009, David Cameron made a promise, which was reiterated in the Coalition agreement (The Coalition: our programme for government, 20 May 2010, p. 24) that there would be “no more top down reorganisations. With the Conservatives there will be no more of the tiresome, meddlesome, top-down re-structures that have dominated the last decade of the NHS.” These were the same sentiments issued by Andrew Lansley in a Conservative Party press release, 11 July 2007. Thus we have been ruled down the decades by a college of liars and cheats.
How much joy there must be in the Blair household today when they look back on the words of Clare Gerada, Chair of the Royal College of GPs, in the Guardian of 19 November 2010:
"I think it is the end of the NHS as we currently know it".
The Coalition Trojan Horse has released its ugly occupants, and their avaricious thirst can now be sated.
