Thursday 19 February 2009

State Capture, the National Health Service and New Labour

Four-letter man Mandelson may have attracted attention for being unable to control his foul mouth but what is interesting about his presence in America, together with the Health secretary, is the aim of obtaining further interference (or perhaps his orders) from multinational pharmaceutical companies.

Any state with a soviet-style health service of the size suffered by the United Kingdom is the target of state capture by multinational corporations with a turnover higher than the GDP of countries in the top 100 for national income.

State capture was the object of study principally in the work on the Transition from communism to capitalism of the emerging countries of eastern Europe and Russia (although it was studied in developing countries too).

It is a measure of the condition to which New Labour has reduced our constitution and our economy when state capture must be considered in understanding the behavior of a regime in a formerly advanced capitalist, mature, pluralist democracy.

3 comments:

Old BE said...

We are not a mature democracy. If we were, then criticism of the NHS would not *always* be met with cries of "you would let the poor die in the gutter!".

hatfield girl said...

The uneasy feeling that the country exists for the national health service and its requirements rather than the other way round is always with us Blue.

The poor have not been dying in the gutter since the early thirties. And even then it was unusual. For it to be a commonplace the mid 1800s might be more accurate.

Do you know any one who has died from lack of health care? I don't but there are an awful lot of people without tooth care and eye care and low-level everyday care. The revolution really will have to come to take the state back from the NHS commissars.

banned said...

Time to sell off the NHS, how much would it be worth ?
Tesco do a pretty good Logistics and Human Resources job.
Future access by insurance ( paid for in benefits for the disadvantaged ).