| From Unity, 23 January 2010 |
British and US unions unite to take on private health-care biddersby Gary DennisWorkers Uniting, which describes itself as “the world’s first global union” and is a partnership between Unite in Britain and United Steelworkers in North America, has launched an investigation into preferred private bidders in the National Health Service. After the passage of President Barack Obama’s health-care bill through the United States Senate, the union wants to examine the role of private US-based health-care providers who are bidding for work in the NHS.The union, worried by the creeping privatisation of the NHS, has expressed dismay that a number of health-care providers listed by the Department of Health as suitable to bid for work in the public sector have been actively opposing the public health-care proposals of the Obama administration. Gail Cartmail, assistant general secretary of Unite, said: “Just as Workers Uniting is fighting to win health care for all in the US, we are also working to prevent the profits-over-people privatisation of the UK health system. That is why the global union is launching an investigation of the preferred bidders chosen by the Department of Health to work within the NHS. Union activists from primary care trusts all over the UK are worried about the creeping privatisation of NHS services.” Workers Uniting is an international partnership between Unite, the biggest trade union in Britain and Ireland, and USW, the biggest private-sector union in the US and Canada. It represents 3 million workers on both sides of the Atlantic and has been fighting to provide health care for all so that no American will go without health care, or be forced into bankruptcy because of skyrocketing costs. Some 47 million Americans have no coverage, despite health insurance company profits of $25 billion. Now some of those same insurers are trying to make money by providing services to the NHS. Elsewhere in the NHS, the BMA calls for private firms to be left out in the cold in 2010. The BMA has called on politicians to slam the brakes on private-sector involvement within the NHS in 2010, as part of a New Year appeal to MPs. In a set of resolutions that the body says would “protect the future of the NHS” it puts top of the list a demand for politicians to stop “wasting taxpayers’ money” on what it calls “unnecessary and expensive commercial sector solutions.” The chairperson of the BMA, Dr Hamish Meldrum, said: “The political parties have been grappling with the current financial crisis, and cuts in the public sector are being proposed from 2010 onwards. The BMA is calling on politicians to resist the false economy of making quick savings by cutting front-line NHS services.” |
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