Same United Health lobbyist undermined UK's National Health & US public option

[Hannah Bell]

British journalist Solomon Hughes, a writer for Private Eye magazine and columnist for the Morning Star newspaper, tells how a lobbyist moved from weakening Britain's National Health Service to fighting efforts to reform the for-profit industry in the U.S.

THE LEADING corporate lobbyist against proposals for a "public option" in health care reform legislation helped waste billions of dollars introducing "free-market methods" in Britain's publicly run National Health Service (NHS).

Simon Stevens is UnitedHealth's chief lobbyist and is leading the company's fight against a public option that would establish a government-run alternative to provide coverage for some of the uninsured. As well as sitting on the UnitedHealth board, Stevens is chairman of the newly formed UnitedHealth Center for Health Reform and Modernization.

This means Stevens leads UnitedHealth's campaign against any meaningful reform of America's health care system, lobbying senators and leading public campaigns to stop any modernization threatening UnitedHealth's profits.

UnitedHealth hired Stevens in 2004 when he left his old job as chief health adviser to British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Stevens was the architect of Blair's market-oriented "reforms" of Britain's health service.

http://socialistworker.org/2009/11/04/screwing-up-health-care


Globalization, bay-bee!

There's a similar guy making both British & American school deform policy.

If you're a rich foreigner you have more voice in US policy than the average american.

[laughingliberal]

1. Perhaps it's time for globalized resistance. I know the vultures have been circling in Canada for a

...while trying to chip away at their system.

[Hannah Bell]

2. the vultures are circling everywhere. if i knew a place where they weren't, i'd go there.

the world is run by carrion eaters.

[Norrin Radd]

3. k

I'd rec, but the ancient browser on the PS3 won't let me, and my desktop computer died.

[leftstreet]

4. K&R

[Starry Messenger]

5. recommend.