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.
13 February 2008 Click here for press release from Office of the New York State Attorney General Andrew M Cuomo announcing investigation into Ingenix, the US's largest provider of healthcare billing information, and its parent, UnitedHealth. The company is accused of operating a fraudulent reimbursement scheme. Subpoenas are also to be issued against 16 other companies.
11 November 2007 Click here for Observer profile of Simon Stevens, Tony Blair's key adviser on the NHS. Stevens is now a senior executive at UnitedHealth. UnitedHealth runs two GP practices in Derbyshire, and at the time of winning the contracts he was the head of the company's European division.
4 November 2007 Click here for Mail on Sunday report about NHS Commercial Director Chan Wheeler facing allegations that he benefited from fraud in his job as a director of UnitedHealth.
18 October 2007 Click here for Seumas Milne's Guardian article Only dogma and corporate capture can explain this naming UnitedHealth, Aetna and Humana amongst the companies who have been repeatedly fined in the US.
16 June 2007 Click here for Bloomberg article on Humana, UnitedHealth, and five other US health insurance companies agreeing to stop selling a type of government-funded plan for the elderly after complaints that sales agents forged signatures and enrolled dead people.
A letter from America
Click here for Christopher Balchin's very personal endorsement of the NHS, as seen from the vantage point of New York. The article first appeared in the Times Herald-Record of 21 September 2007.