Nemesis Project: The danger of corporatised health care

Saturday, August 11, 2012

The danger of corporatised health care

More evidence in this Guardian piece of the dangers of allowing corporations and private business to run health services that should be provided by the public sector.

Six people are feared to have suffered irreversible sight loss because of the failings of a privately run clinic at an NHS hospital, raising fresh fears about the government's plans to open up the health service to the commercial sector.

In an unprecedented move, GPs have been advised to consider alternative clinics for their patients because of "worrying concerns" about the services offered at a hospital in Hertfordshire. The surgical clinic, owned by Carillion, a construction firm which was formerly part of Tarmac, has only carried out NHS services at Lister hospital since October but it has already been the subject of criticism from the Care Quality Commission regarding waiting times for a range of services.

The government's drive towards NHS privatisation is leaving patients vulnerable to poor care and support at surgery centres like the one at the Lister hospital. It is potentially the tip of the iceberg in terms of the clinical risk of fragmented health services.

"The Conservatives talk about patient choice, but many patients would have been unaware of the difficulties that they would face by choosing the privately run Surgicentre. These companies see the Health and Social Care Act as a big opportunity to increase their business, but safeguarding patients has to be the number one priority

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Reflections

“A corporation, essentially, is a pile of money to which a number of persons have sold their moral allegiance.”
Wendell Berry

"Corporations are to democracy what a T-Rex is to your checkers game"
Rebecca Solnit

"Political systems merely reflect the society which gives rise to them. And we live in a society-and a world-where the power of corporations is much greater than that of "ordinary people". Corporate power can readily be seen in our homes, our workplaces, our public spaces and our national debates"
Josh Fear

"The deep irony is that it is the unfettered rise of corporate power that presents the biggest threat to free markets, and to the ability of free markets to promote individual freedom, equality before the law and equitable prosperity"
Stephanie Blankenburg and Dan Plesch

" Wealth privilege remains embedded in the ancient institution of the corporation. It is a privilege out of step with market ideals, which has led to wealth disparities that threaten our political ideals. We can never really have political democracy without economic democracy".
Marjorie Kelly The Divine Right of Capital

"Democracy is not an outgrowth of free markets. Democracy and capitalism are antagonistic entities... A functioning democracy must often defy the economic interests of elites on behalf of citizens.."
Chris Hedges

"The privatization of public services and functions manifests the steady evolution of corporate power into a political form, into an integral even dominant partner with the state"
Sheldon Wolin, Democracy Inc: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism

Limited liability is at the heart of this rise of corporate power: it constitutes a blanket exemption of a special-interest group from accountability for the actions of their companies. While the mantra of "no rights without responsibilities" is used to regulate the behaviour of poor people who benefit from social-security payments, "the unaccountable few" enjoy feudal privileges"
Stephanie Blankenburg and Dan Plesch

"The economic, political and cultural signs of corporate colonization are increasingly abundant and readily visible in the contours of daily life"
Carl Boggs, The End of Politics

"Adult working Americans are more likely to die young as a result of organized corporate crime than any other form of criminal activity"
Michael Woodiwiss, Gangster Capitalism

"Without doubt corporate power and wealth shape politics today more than ever- in corporation's very growing presence in the economy, their extensive lobbies and influence over legislative activity, their ownership and control of the mass media, their preponderant influence over election campaigns, their capacity to secure relief from regulatory controls, their massive public relations apparatus, their general subsidies to the two parties.."
Carl Boggs The End of Politics

Our Agenda

The Nemesis Project is a Western Australian based civil society project that aims to shed light on everyday examples of corporate power and bring corporations under civil society and citizen control. We aim to highlight the ways that people are affected on a daily basis by corporate power.

We comprise a network of people and groups concerned that corporations and business have become too powerful and dominant within our society. Corporations and business have extended their power and influence into many sectors and aspects of life that should be preserved for the public good.

Corporations now exercise control over most aspects of the economy and society and use their power and money to exert control over the democratic process. In many cases the power and wealth of corporations and business have outgrown the restraints of democracy.

Although there is considerable concern about these issues efforts to address the problems have been limited and when they exist, fragmented. Strategies are needed to explore and structurally challenge the power exercised by corporations and business. The Nemesis project aims to develop an agenda to address the underlying causes of problems generated by corporate power and domination.

This blog is the first step in developing a citizen's agenda to re balance the relationship between corporate power and the power of ordinary Australians.

The Nemesis Project is an initiative of the WA Social Justice Network.

Nemesis Project

Saturday, August 11, 2012

The danger of corporatised health care

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