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The government on Thursday sold off the NHS-owned company supplying safe blood plasma on which thousands depend. It was sold to a US private equity firm with a reputation for aggressive asset-stripping. Bain Capital owns Burger King, Domino's Pizza, Dunkin' Donuts and much else. Its predatory history dogged Bain's founder, Mitt Romney, throughout the US election.
After contamination by brain disease variant CJD, sourcing plasma from UK donors was banned in 1999, so the NHS purchased its own supplier – PRUK – to regulate quality and safety itself. Campaigners fought to stop a sell-off to a profit-hungry business beyond NHS control. Alarming footnote: I rang the Department of Health press office to find out more, but instead of returning my call I was outsourced – I got a call from Bain's PR company instead.
Privatising gallops on mostly unseen. But people do see blaring headlines claiming 13,000 people died needlessly in 14 dangerous hospitals. The ferocity of the ensuing political battle looked to outsiders like an unedifying scrap over dead bodies. The Tory ambush was pre-planned by Downing Street as well-primed MPs used a report by Sir Bruce Keogh, the NHS medical director, to turn Labour's good NHS record into a liability. Labour's outrage was not synthetic, but indignation within the NHS was even fiercer at seeing the progress of the last decade trashed. The attack was not just on Labour, but on the viability and the future of the NHS itself.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jul/18/nhs-privatising-gallops-on
now they are both corporate and human bloodsuckers...
After contamination by brain disease variant CJD, sourcing plasma from UK donors was banned in 1999, so the NHS purchased its own supplier – PRUK – to regulate quality and safety itself. Campaigners fought to stop a sell-off to a profit-hungry business beyond NHS control. Alarming footnote: I rang the Department of Health press office to find out more, but instead of returning my call I was outsourced – I got a call from Bain's PR company instead.
Privatising gallops on mostly unseen. But people do see blaring headlines claiming 13,000 people died needlessly in 14 dangerous hospitals. The ferocity of the ensuing political battle looked to outsiders like an unedifying scrap over dead bodies. The Tory ambush was pre-planned by Downing Street as well-primed MPs used a report by Sir Bruce Keogh, the NHS medical director, to turn Labour's good NHS record into a liability. Labour's outrage was not synthetic, but indignation within the NHS was even fiercer at seeing the progress of the last decade trashed. The attack was not just on Labour, but on the viability and the future of the NHS itself.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jul/18/nhs-privatising-gallops-on
now they are both corporate and human bloodsuckers...
