(it's
not satire - it's ATOS!)
The NHS is not being privatised with a bang
- more with a sly, underhand whimper.
We only have to look to Holland - which
privatised its health care system in 2006 - to see how it's possible for the NHS
to be privatised by stealth.
Following the Dutch example, privatisation
is happening in three stages.
1) First of all provision of health
services is handed over to private companies.
This is already well under way in the UK
2) Then control of the health budget is
handed over to private commissioning consortiums made up of doctors and
consultants.
This has already happened in the UK
3) Finally, the private commissioning
consortiums themselves are taken over by private companies.
In the UK, already over a quarter of NHS Commissioning Consortiums are being run by
consultancy firm KPMG.
Once this third stage is complete, the
health services are effectively privatised - with commissioning, control of
budgets and provision of health services all run by private companies.
In Holland, the commissioning of health
services and overall control of the health budgets were eventually taken over by
the same KPMG which is taking over commissioning in the UK.
So if things continue to go the same way as
in Holland, just one firm - KPMG - will have overall control of our National
Health Services.
The head of KPMG - Mark Britnell - has
already been appointed as an adviser to David Cameron on health and was once
quoted as saying "the NHS will be shown no mercy" when it comes to
privatisation.
But who exactly are KPMG?
Well, they used to be part of a global
professional services and auditing firm.
But in 2002, the Dutch and UK consulting
arms of the company were mysteriously sold off to a French company - which still
owns them today.
The name of the French firm?
Yes - you've guessed it - the firm we all
thought we were going to be seeing the back of - ATOS.
This is the firm whose doctors thought
that cerebral palsy is curable.
And now ATOS could already be well on the
way to taking control of NHS budgets and commissioning - just as it has managed
to do in Holland.
As George Berger in his excellent article
for the Dorset Eye says: