US private health assault
Who do you think you are kidding? Download our postcard about the US health care giants who are amongst those bidding to take over the organising and purchasing of NHS care.
Order postcards from olivia@nhscampaign.org. Bulk orders - £5 for 50.
The corporations are coming....
Read John Carvel's Guardian report http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianpolitics/story/0,,2184995,00.html of 6 October 2007 about the 14 private companies approved by Health Secretary Alan Johnson to advise primary care trusts on local health needs . The approved list of 14 includes the US "big four" health care companies Aetna, Health Dialog Services, Humana and UnitedHealth.UnitedHealth - not a clean bill of health. See the Keep Our NHS Public factsheet at http://www.keepournhspublic.com/pdf/UnitedHealthfactsheet.pdf.
NHS Commercial Director Chan Wheeler is facing allegations that he benefited from fraud in his job as a director of UnitedHealth. Click here for the Mail on Sunday report of 4 November 2007.
Tony Blair's key adviser on the NHS, Simon Stevens, is now a senior executive at UnitedHealth. UnitedHealth runs two GP practices in Derbyshire, and at the time of winning the contracts Stevens was the head of the company's European division. Click here for the Observer profile of Simon Stevens on 11 November 2007.
Humana, UnitedHealth, and five other US health insurance companies agreed to stop selling a type of government-funded plan for the elderly after complaints that sales agents forged signatures and enrolled dead people. Click here for Bloomberg article.
UnitedHealth, Aetna and Humana are amongst the companies who have been repeatedly fined in the US. See Seumas Milne's Guardian article Only dogma and corporate capture can explain this at http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2193282,00.html.