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LPM No 20 (PDF) Labour Party Marxists labourpartymarxists.org.uk Free - donations welcome James Linney denounces the the Tories and their ongoing programme of privatisation uly 5 marks 70 years since the reported to have cut care packages for NHS at 70 foundation of the national health seriously ill children.After failing to secure service, but anyone who values the a contract to provide children’s health principle of healthcare provision services across Surrey, worth £82 million, Jthat is free of the influence of profit will Virgin also decided to sue the local clinical surely feel little enthusiasm to join the commissioning groups - the NHS settled official celebrations: open days, high out of court for an undisclosed amount, street exhibitions, staff awards, glittering said to be in the millions of pounds. services at Westminster Abbey and York Suing an already crisis-ridden NHS is Minster. In fact the NHS’s 70th year has bad enough, but this is nothing compared possibly been the most difficult since its to the potential harm that would result creation in 1948. from a health company like Virgin pulling Yet, as the suffering of those people out of an ACO if it was deemed no longer who use the NHS, or are employed by it, profitable or if the company collapsed. multiplied during another harsh winter, Despite his talent for accumulating vast there are noticeably some who will be sums of money for himself, Richard celebrating; because for them that suffering Branson has left plenty of failed business is simply an opportunity to open the NHS ventures in his wake: Virgin Cola, Virgin up to greater privatisation. Over the past Clothes, Virgin Vie at Home and Virgin 10 years, private healthcare providers have Cars, to name a few. been allowed an ever greater piece of the The case of Virgin is just one amongst NHS brand and, like a shark with a taste several transnational companies who have for the blood of its prey, they have a genius already been profiting at the expense of for exploiting weakness. the NHS and who are queuing up to be In this article I am going to look in part of the next phase of privatisation. more detail at one of the biggest ‘sharks’ The extent to which these companies in the pond: Virgin Care. I will use this as are already embedded within the health a case study to help illuminate how private service demonstrates how the NHS crisis healthcare providers have been allowed is about more than just ‘lack of funding’. more and more access to the NHS and The many thousands who marched in how, if this is allowed to continue, we could Over worked and underpaid February in opposition to all these attacks see the fall of the NHS in the near future. demonstrated that the working class in According to its own website, Virgin by releasing Mike Oldfield’s Tubular bells commissioning groups - supposedly led by follow were others covering community particular is not prepared to let the NHS Care operates “more than 400 health and album, he was quick to establish his very GPs, but in reality headed by bureaucrats services, including ones in West Lancashire, be demolished without a fight. care services throughout the country” and own tax-avoiding paradise, when he bought and management firms who are now Essex, North Kent, Wiltshire and Luton. But a successful struggle needs an has “treated more than six million people”.1 Necker, part of the British Virgin Islands. responsible for contracting out services; Last year Virgin was awarded a £700 effective strategy and this means an Before examining its role in more detail, Here he established his family trust fund no longer from other NHS departments, million contract to run Bath and North organisation able to express the will of let us remind ourselves briefly of how Virgin and to this day it remains the registered but from ‘any qualified providers’ (AQPs). East Somerset council’s community care the working class. In the short term the itself came to be. It was, of course, created headquarters of Virgin Group (the parent Thus, the Tories - always ideologically and health services and another for £108 Labour Party is promising a respite and by Richard Branson - British capitalism’s company to all the other Virgin offshoots). opposed to the principle of free healthcare million to provide children’s health services in the next general election the NHS will favourite poster boy. However, his fame, Of course, living on a remote, - had set up a pincer movement to trap in Lancashire.2 In 2016-17 alone, Virgin be the major issue that could conceivably and indeed his fortune, owes more to his uninhabited island and limiting his time the NHS. On one flank it was devastated won £1 billion worth of NHS contracts, see Corbyn lead the Labour Party to genius for self-promotion and PR than in the UK to less than 90 days is not by cuts in funding, the results of which out of the £3.1 billion (representing 43% victory. But Labour’s pledge to modestly anything else. about denying the exchequer taxes. As were evident this winter: a demoralised of all NHS contracts) paid to all private increase funding and undertake measures Branson himself stated, “I have not left and dangerously overstretched workforce, health firms.3 of renationalisation is grossly insufficient. Criminal Britain for tax reasons, but for my love operation cancellations and corridors full There is no better example of how of the beautiful British Virgin Islands … of patients waiting for a bed in jammed- ACOs illogical and damaging a system capitalism Branson learnt an important lesson early a place where my family and I are able full wards. On the other flank was the is than that provided by healthcare. in his career, when in 1971, after being to truly relax.” Fortunately for Branson, acceleration of privatisation - something The next step - or huge leap more Ultimately the issue is not really that people caught for tax evasion, he spent a short he has not been too focused on relaxing. that has always been present in the NHS accurately - in the privatisation of the NHS like Branson are greedy tax-avoiders (which time in prison: namely, that tax avoidance He was still able to set up a complex web to some extent. But this was privatisation will be the creation of Accountable Care they are), but the fact that capitalism has is best done legally and for that you first of innumerable subsidiaries, the parent on steroids: the AQP process now allowed Organisations (ACOs) - health secretary at its core the continuous accumulation of need money (and a big team of lawyers and company’s status ensuring they pay very private health firms to cherry-pick the Jeremy Hunt’s scheme to allow AQPs (ie, capital for the benefit of a tiny minority. accountants). So when, a few years later, by little in tax. most lucrative services. Initially this health, finance or insurance companies) to Capitalism creates the miserable conditions luck, he made the first part of his fortune Fast-forward to 2008 and Virgin’s first meant winning contracts for radiology, be responsible for all health and social care that are the cause of a good many ailments attempts to profit from the NHS, which got physiotherapy, phlebotomy, elective for a particular region. This idea has been and conditions - and then profits from the off to a bit of a false start. It planned to open operations and so on. But the ability to transplanted directly from the US and is a treatment these demand. 50 large-scale health centres around the throw huge sums of money and teams stepping stone towards a fully insurance- This cycle of misery will not end until country, the idea being that patients would of contractors into the tendering process based, private health service. A group of capitalism itself is replaced by a system attend their NHS general practitioner, meant these transnational firms could doctors and NHS activists secured a full that has at its core democracy at all who would then - for a fee - refer them easily win the service contracts that were judicial review over May 23-24 to test the levels - a system that can only be attained for treatment directly to the onsite Virgin- previously provided by NHS teams. lawfulness of the proposals (the ruling by through the will and organisation of the branded pharmacies, physiotherapists and Virgin was determined not to miss out Mr Justice Green is expected in the next working class l June 14 gyms. The idea was abandoned, however, and in 2010 it bought out Assura Medical few weeks).4 This may delay the process partly because the General Medical Council - Virgin Care was born. In 2011-12 its temporarily, but of course, the medium- Notes raised the point that paying GPs to refer first major contract went live: a Teesside term threat remains. No.020 1. www.virgincare.co.uk/about-us. patients to Virgin raised just a little bit of sexual health clinic. On the outside was No doubt Virgin Care will be one of the 2. www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/ a “conflict of interest”. the familiar NHS logo; on the inside, major players in the setting up of ACOs, the virgin-care-contract-approved-social-care-nhs- At that time, as Virgin discovered, slightly less visible, was the Virgin Care consequences of which we have only seen privatisation-a7411386.html. 2018 the NHS was not organised in a way that branding. This was just the start and since hints of so far.
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