April 29th - Private provision is good for some ...

In wondering just what has gone wrong in our world, I can’t help thinking that something is amiss when a recent report showed that the USA allows around 48,000 unnecessary deaths each year for lack of private health insurance.

The majority of US citizens are covered by private health insurance paid for by their employer, but searching through Wikipaedia (as I do!) I found the following: Although (according to the World Health Organisation) the United States spent more on health care than any other nation in 2008, it was ranked last in the quality of health care among similar countries.  No reason to think things have changed in spite of Barack Obama’s best intentions.  I guess in trying to introduce universal health care he came up against the mighty power of the health industry.

Close on 50m people in the USA have no health insurance and in 2004 the Institute of Medicine reported: "The United States is among the few industrialized nations in the world that does not guarantee access to health care for its population”.

So, once again, I’m getting the picture that privatisation of a basic service like health care, which gives capitalists a lucrative investment opportunity, serves some people well but plenty of others are left marginalized and potentially, let's face it, dead.  Which is pretty worrying when you look at the changes being made to the NHS.