The very first thing on the chopping block is healthcare. Why?
Because that, my friends, is where capitalism makes a killing. Literally and figuratively.
[Editor’s Note: This is one of the best assessments of the inefficient and deadly corruption of the American medical corporate wealth enhancement scheme you will find. Spot on. — Mark L. Taylor]
By Umair Haque
Eudaimonia (11/28/19)
Why — why on earth — would anyone want American style healthcare? You might be wondering why I even ask. After all, American healthcare is one of the modern world’s greatest and most epic failures.
It’s such a failure, in fact, that something eerie and weird is happening, unheard of not just in rich countries, but even in poor ones: life expectancy is literally falling…by a year…every year. And it’s not just a failure — it’s a nightmare, that leaves people terrorized, broken, hopeless, and bankrupt. Your money, or your life. And if you don’t have money — you just…die. Americans literally beg each other online for money to pay medical bills by the millions…they cross the border into Canada to buy medicine like insulin…which, by the way, can be a “federal crime”…they have maternal mortality higher than Russia.
Here’s a whole country so…astonishingly…dumb…it’s actually choosing capitalist healthcare. LOL — you can imagine the glee in boardrooms? They’re high-fiving.
Capitalist healthcare. LOL. It should be known the world over by now that it’s one of history’s great oxymorons.
Not so long ago, Britain had the world’s best healthcare system. Now, though, the surreal, gruesome nightmare of American style healthcare is about to arrive on British shores. What the? Why the hell would anyone want American style healthcare? The story, it turns out, is a sad and weird and gruesome parable of now. The age of proudly self-inflicted catastrophe that we live in. How our societies are drowning by a tidal wave of history’s great vainglorious follies, like nationalism, extremism, fascism — even if it literally kills them.
American style healthcare is on its way to Britain thanks to Brexit. …
- Rising: Reckoning With Barack Obama’s Legacy As National Life Expectancy Drops — Team Rising wonders what the Democratic bases’ turn away from President Obama means for his legacy. Link To 13-Minute Video
(Commoner Call photo by Mark L. Taylor, 2018. Open source and free for non-derivative use with link toe www.thecommonercall.or )
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British Medical Providers Lead Protest Against Trump During His Trip To UK Amid Rising Privatization Concerns
By Jessica Corbet
Common Dreams (11/30/19)
Nurses and doctors from the United Kingdom’s National Health Service are planning to lead a protest against U.S. President Donald Trump next [this] week amid mounting concerns about potential privatization of the U.K.’s decades-old public healthcare system.
The Stop Trump Coalition—which helped organize massive protests against the U.S. president when he visited the U.K. in July 2018—said in a statement Friday that “the health workers’ bloc will tell Trump ‘hands off our NHS,’ as concerns intensify about a trade deal letting U.S. firms muscle in on the health service.”
Trump is scheduled to arrived in the U.K. late Monday, ahead of a two-day summit to mark the 70th anniversary of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Demonstrators plan to gather at Trafalgar Square Tuesday evening, then march toward Buckingham Palace, where Trump is set to attend a banquet with the Queen.
Supporters of the demonstration include the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), Keep Our NHS Public, U.K. Student Climate Network, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, People’s Assembly, Muslim Association of Britain, Kurdish Solidarity Campaign, and Quakers in Britain.
“This week we discovered just how great a threat Donald Trump is to our NHS,” explained Nick Dearden of trade campaign group Global Justice Now, who is set to speak at the upcoming protest. “That’s why Tuesday’s demonstration will be led by nurses and doctors—to symbolize the millions of people who will stand up for our health service against a U.S. president who simply represents the biggest, greediest corporate interests in the world.”
“We will make clear that Britain is not for sale,” Dearden added. U.K. Prime Minister and Conservative Party Leader Boris Johnson “might be happy to be bullied by Trump, but on Tuesday we will make clear to the world that we are not.”
Leaked documents
On Wednesday, as Common Dreams reported, Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn unveiled over 450 pages of leaked government documents on U.S.-U.K. trade negotiations between July 2017 and July 2019—which Corbyn called “evidence that under Boris Johnson the NHS is on the table and will be up for sale” in talks with Trump.
Johnson and other Tories have repeatedly denied such charges, both prior to and following Corbyn’s press conference Wednesday. Johnson told LBC radio Friday that “under no circumstances will this government or any Conservative government do anything to put the NHS up for negotiation in trade talks, or privatizing, anything like that.”
“Were the United States or any other country to insist on that as a condition of talks, we would simply walk out,” added the prime minister. Johnson—whom Trump has previously supported and showered with praise—also encouraged the U.S. president to stay out of the U.K.’s approaching election, which will be held on Dec. 12.
New research commissioned by GMB, the union for NHS workers, and released Friday cast doubt on Tory politicians’ promises to safeguard the nation’s government-run healthcare system. Conservative Health Secretary Matt Hancock, for example, claimed in January that “there is no privatization of the NHS on my watch.”
The research for GMB was conducted by Tussell, a firm that provides data on government contracts. Tussell found that since 2015, nearly £15 billion in government contracts to outsource health services have been given to private companies.
The Guardian reported that “the value of contracts given to non-NHS providers, mainly profit-driven firms but also including some social enterprises, has soared by 89% since 2015, from £1.9 billion to £3.6 billion a year.” …
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