Donald Trump, the US Private Health Giant, and Top NHS Officials—Special Relationships?
US private healthcare firm Optum has been ‘planting seeds’ in the English NHS for a decade, new research exposes.
In the UK, we have a simple take on
the US healthcare system as a for-profit, private system that fleeces its customers and fails the poor.
But here’s the secret: the US has its own ‘mini NHS’.
Smaller than the UK’s system, but still a government funded, (mostly) publicly-run
system that serves people according to their need. It’s called the Veterans Health Administration (VHA).
And Donald Trump wants to privatise it.
What’s more, to set the reforms in motion,
the firm that’s been appointed to create and expand new private networks within the Veterans health system is Optum, the profitable ‘healthcare services’ arm of America’s biggest private health insurer, UnitedHealth Group.
Optum and UnitedHealth are familiar names to anyone who has been following
the silent takeover of the NHS by private healthcare firms in recent years,
though aspects of their involvement are fully exposed here for the first time.
Health privatisation, US-style—sounds familiar?
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/12/05/donald-trump-us-private-health-giant-and-top-nhs-officials-special-relationships?cd-origin=rss
Predatory, extractive Capitalism