• conditional_soup@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Came here to say just this. They’ll promise fucking anything, but here’s the reality:

      -The system gets worse for patients AND doctors, because the money is now reserved for the investment firm rather than for paying for services or supporting the hospital. Basically, they’ll determine that there are “inefficiencies”, like maintenance on equipment like ventilators and IV pumps, free parking (not kidding), doctors seeing less than 4 patients and hour (not kidding), nurses having less than eight patients (also not kidding), and having certain specialties on call 24 hours (for the current rate) and “cut” the inefficiencies. Of course, none of that money being saved actually goes towards improving things for the hospital, patient, or provider, it just gets pocketed by the private equity firm.

      -Starting with smaller, more rural hospitals, they’ll start stripping the hospitals for assets while simultaneously yelling constantly about how broke the hospital is and begging for huge taxpayer handouts just to stay open for another year. Eventually, in spite of any government bailouts they’ve received, they’ll still close the hospital anyway, assuring everyone that they’re very sad about it, but it’ll be okay because at least the bigger hospital down the road is still open (for now).

      Don’t do it, you guys. Send these fucks packing and vote out any politician that tries to tell you that they need to let them fuck up your healthcare system.

      • JoBo
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        1 year ago

        vote out any politician that tries to tell you that they need to let them fuck up your healthcare system.

        We’re gonna get the choice to vote for politicians that won’t, right? Right?

    • Syldon
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      1 year ago

      Tories have total control until the next GE. Everything is a smash grab with them right now. They know their card is marked for at least a decade after this lot.

      • femininemasculine [they/them]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        but Starmer’s labour has been saying he’ll do the same: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-66319064

        Labour’s shadow health secretary Wes Streeting said the government should have acted sooner to make more use of the private sector.

        I don’t know how much things will change after the next GE. the current opposition leadership are neoliberals just like Rishi and co

            • merridewOP
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              1 year ago

              Ah yes, those terrible Blair years. If only the Major government had kept going for longer.

              • femininemasculine [they/them]@hexbear.net
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                1 year ago

                where from my comment did you get that I think major was better

                anyway there’s a reason Blair is not very popular anymore, unlike when he won in '97. the Iraq War was not very good imo

                • merridewOP
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                  1 year ago

                  I don’t know. He was re-elected with a majority of 66 in 2005, two years after Iraq started, and then in 2007 the Labour party membership forced him out in favour of Brown, who promptly lost the 2010 election to the Tories.

                  I’ll take Blair Mk II in office over Corbyn in opposition any day.

        • Syldon
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          1 year ago

          What Starmer said was that the private use would run alongside efforts to train new staff and create new infrastructure. People need treatment and we do not have the infrastructure to do that. Health services don’t just materialise out of thin air.

  • breadsmasher@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    This has been the tory gameplan for years.

    The morons who support tories so strongly are generally those who rely most heavily on the NHS (the elderly).

    Shooting themselves in the foot, because they can’t see beyond their racist nonsense.

    Same reason we got brexit. Racist fuckheads

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    1 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    Last month, it was reported that one such firm acquired a staffing agency that employs NHS doctors and nurses, betting that the painful backlog of rescheduled appointments will be good for business.

    The private equity firms of today were born on Wall Street in the 1980s era of the “leveraged buyout”, a technique that involved buying up companies, often loading them with debt and then selling them on at a profit.

    The German healthcare system, which is often praised by rightwing thinktanks in Britain as a model to emulate, has seen numerous private equity deals in recent years.

    Eye doctors have described how they face pressure to make “as much money as possible” by selling patients additional services, such as special examinations and cataract operations.

    “Private equity firms are just the latest in a long line of investors that have seized this opportunity,” Vivek Kotecha, a chartered accountant who runs an independent consultancy, told me.

    When asked how he would deal with the NHS crisis, shadow health secretary Wes Streeting echoed his Conservative counterparts and pledged to use private companies to reduce waiting lists.


    I’m a bot and I’m open source!