Global union launches investigation into Department of Health NHS preferred private bidders

At a conference attended by hundreds of trade union activists in the UK, Workers Uniting will launch an investigation into private U.S.-based healthcare providers who are bidding for work in the National Health Service (NHS).

At a conference attended by hundreds of trade union activists in the UK, Workers Uniting will launch an investigation into private U.S.-based healthcare providers who are bidding for work in the National Health Service (NHS). The conference will be attended by senior workplace representatives from the UK, Ireland and USA.

Workers Uniting, the world’s first global union, is a partnership between Unite from the United Kingdom and the United Steelworkers (USW) from the United States and Canada.

Workers Uniting has expressed dismay that a number of healthcare providers who are listed by the UK Department of Health (DoH) as suitable to bid for work in the public sector are actively opposing the public healthcare proposals of the Obama administration in the United States.

The global union which represents three million workers in North America, the UK and Ireland, has been fighting to provide healthcare for all by fixing the broken American private insurance based system – the most expensive in the world – so that no American will go without healthcare, or be forced into bankruptcy because of skyrocketing costs. Some 47 million Americans have no coverage despite health insurance company profits of $25 billion.

Ironically, some of these same insurers are trying to make money by providing services to the United Kingdom’s National Health Service – the successful public healthcare system. The fight in the U.S. has been tough, with the insurance lobby spending millions to stop reforms.

Gail Cartmail, Unite Assistant General Secretary, said: “Just as Workers Uniting is fighting to win healthcare for all in the U.S., the global union is also working to prevent the profits-over-people privatisation of the UK health system.

“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 will be debating the creeping privatisation of NHS services at the conference.”

Carol Landry, United Steelworkers International Vice President, who will also address the meeting, said: “In the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, the fight boils down to essentially the same thing: winning and protecting fair access to quality health care for all.

“Millions of workers from around the world believe now is the time to stop putting profits over people and to recognise that healthcare is a human right, no matter where you live.”

The list of NHS preferred bidders can be viewed on the DoH website.

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- Notes to editors -

Source: Time magazine, “A New and Better (But Still Flawed) Insurance Industry Report,” October 14, 2009. Accessed at http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2009/10/14/a-new-and-better-but-still-flawed-insurance-industry-report/. Also, Center for Responsive Politics: http://www.opensecrets.org

At the conference a motion will be discussed on the fragmentation of healthcare which has allowed an American company to supply healthcare to the UK in order to win a foothold into the NHS.

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