Care may suffer, admits private company taking over NHS hospital

[alp227]

Source: The Observer

The first private company to take over an NHS hospital has admitted in a document seen by the Observer that patient care could suffer under its plans to expand its empire and seek profit from the health service.

Circle Health is already feeling a strain on resources due to its aggressive business strategy, the document reveals, and the firm's ambition to further expand into the NHS "could affect its ability to provide a consistent level of service to its patients", it says.

The company, run by a former Goldman Sachs banker, was awarded management of Hinchingbrooke hospital in Cambridgeshire last week in a ground-reaking move lauded by ministers as a "good deal for patients and staff".

However, the government was forced to answer an urgent question in the Commons after the move sparked furious accusations that the deal was privatising the NHS and putting jobs and health services in jeopardy. Concerns over the future of the health service were further heightened when David Cameron, in a speech on regulation and the economy, said he wanted the NHS to be a "fantastic business for Britain".

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/nov/12/care-private-company-nhs-hospital

[Skittles]

1. the wealthy won't suffer

[neverforget]

2. and that's all that matters in the New Gilded Age

[PSPS]

3. They can be made to suffer.

[tpsbmam]

4. Run by a former Goldman Sachs banker......are the Brits out of their fucking minds?

Jesus, all one has to do is look at our totally fucked up system of healthcare, the outrageous cost of our healthcare compared to the rest of the industrialized world, the lack of access to healthcare for both insured and uninsured alike....WTF are they thinking??

Oh yeah.....of the 1% by the 1% for the 1%. Pathetic.

I hope the Brits succeed in quashing this and don't let it spread to other hospitals.

Revolution time!!

:nuke:

[freshwest]

5. Appears so. They got a deficit. Operate with less quality, more cost. Yeah, that'll fix it!

[dipsydoodle]

16. There was an alternative fix

At least parts of the hospital where due to be closed.

[alp227]

9. There should be NO medical millionaires EVER!

The public welfare is something NO ONE should ever ever profit from.

[harmonicon]

14. Not the Brits, but the Tories only.

The bit that amazes me is that there are enough spineless middle-class toadies on the LibDem side to not break-up their little coalition. The Tories won 30-some percent of the vote last time and are governing as if they'd won 90.

[enlightenment]

15. Lib Dems support a libertarian style platform - but with an admix of

social liberalism that puts a veneer over the nasty bits. They also seem to believe that power is good enough, regardless of the outcome (and if Clegg is the frog, Cameron is the scorpion). They won't give it up, even if they only have it by riding on the bespoke coattails of the Tories.



http://www.libdems.org.uk/home.aspx

[sarcasmo]

18. +1

[goforit]

6. These people live in a bubble

[dballance]

7. Everywhere These Goldman Sachs people show up something bad happens

There is a pattern here. Obviously the moral climate at Goldman Sachs was lacking. It appears the corporate culture at Goldman was "make a profit at any cost - to hell with the customers and investors."

Some of their top people need to be frog-marched out of their 90th floor corner offices over Wall Street.

[crunch60]

13. Like Goldman Sachs , Jeb Bush is also waiting

for a disaster to happen. They profit from it. see following. Sociopath's all of them.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush ® managed several hurricanes and natural disasters during his two terms as the state's executive, but now he is preparing to respond to storms from the helm of a for-profit company instead of from within the governor's mansion.

Bush's newly created firm, Old Rhodes Holding LLC, joined forces with O'Brien's Response Management to form a for-profit disaster response company, the Maritime Executive reported.
:hippie:

[ananda]

8. The company run by a former GS banker...

... kinda sez it all eh.

[999998th word]

10. Cameron is a douchebag. Sensing ALEC is involved somehow.

Wasn't there a recent scandal implicating ALEC w/British government officials, it was called ? bridge ...?

[alp227]

11. Atlantic Bridge

Liam Fox resignation exposes Tory links to US radical right

"Fox's organisation, which was wound up last year following a critical Charity Commission report into its activities, formed a partnership with an organisation called the American Legislative Exchange Council."

"Writing in the Observer, the shadow defence secretary, Jim Murphy...writes: 'With each passing day there have been fresh allegations of money and influence and it appears that much of the source was the Atlantic Bridge network and its US rightwing connections. We need to know just how far and how deep the links into US politics go. This crisis has discovered traces of a stealth neocon agenda. For many on the right, Atlanticism has become synonymous with a self-defeating, virulent Euroscepticism that is bad for Britain.'"

[999998th word]

12. Thanks for the info- disappointed to hear about

this crap contaminating British HC policy. It does have the stank of RW ALEC all over it. Hope you can fend it off successfully, and in time.

[sarcasmo]

17. A hospital run by a former Goldman Sachs banker, what could go wrong with that mix?

Sorry insert name here, you have to leave the hospital today even though you are not well, because we need this bed for a more expensive surgery. This country is one colossal cluster fuck after another.

[coyote]

19. The words healthcare and profit should never be in the same sentence.

This is criminal as are all for profit healthcare systems. No public good can come from this...only more money for the top.