Plans are being made which could mean American companies are handed contracts of up to ten years to provide care.

With the consultation exercise on Jeremy Hunt’s transformation of Americanisation of the NHS now closed, the plan is that from April 2018, CCG’s will be transformed into the American model of healthcare organisations: Accountable Care Systems (ACS) and Accountable Care Organisations (ACO).

The ‘National’ element of the NHS is being destroyed with the setting up of localised Accountable Care Organisations that will decide how the NHS services are utilised within their area.

Greater Manchester is one of the first ACOs to be set up and Hunt has stated that ALL STPs will be turned into ACS’ and then ACOs

Separate budgets for each ACS will be funded from the NHS budget, but with total local financial control by each of the 44 current STP areas of the NHS making them autonomous from the State.

The next step will be to turn the ACS’ into 44 separate ACOs making their individual wholesale buy-out by US healthcare companies an easy exercise.

As funding gets further reduced in line with the Tory’s plan of continued savings being made by the NHS, the country will be told the only way to sustain the NHS is for the newly formed ACS/ACOs to put out to private tender all of their NHS services which will then allow US healthcare companies to bid to provide services.

In the view of those opposing this continued transformation of the NHS, stripping it down of assets, cutting funding and maintaining unsafe staffing levels; the aim is one of making it ready for Liam Fox’s UK/US trade deal plans for the NHS.

So desperate is Theresa May for a UK/US trade deal after the country leaves the EU, she refuses to join other world leaders in condemning Donald Trump, no matter what he says or does.

The UK aligning itself with the US in terms of culture, business practice, and employment legislation; does not bode well for our NHS as it is clear May will agree to anything in order to get that trade deal following Brexit.

The US made it clear to the EU through the now abandoned TTIP talks, that access to EU members states healthcare services by American healthcare companies was a deal breaker; and therefore it is quite obvious that UK’s NHS will be included in any UK/US trade deal.

Indeed Theresa May has refused to rule this out on every occasion the question has been asked of her!

With Simon Stevens, former head of United Health (US 6th biggest healthcare company) in Europe; now head of our NHS, the Naylor Report’s policy of selling all NHS properties including hospitals to the private sector together with the CEPs and STPs now set to strangle funding and services altogether; the NHS will not survive until the next general election scheduled for 2022!

The £9 billion per year pouring out of the NHS to private healthcare companies is set to be dwarfed by the setting up of an American – system of healthcare by Jeremy Hunt in the form of Accountable Care Systems (ACS) and Accountable Care Organisations in place of existing CCGs.

As stated above, ACO/ACS’ are based on the American model of healthcare organisation and is obviously intended to ensure compatibility with US healthcare culture in order to allow for easy take over by American healthcare companies once they are given cart blanche access to our NHS as part of any UK/US trade deal.

As part of his new and secret Sustainability and Transformation Plans (STP) being rushed through, along with the sale of all NHS land and properties, including of course hospitals; the end of the NHS is in the final stages before the planned introduction of medical insurance in addition to national insurance contributions and eventual sale of healthcare in the UK to the US  healthcare companies as part of a UK/US trade deal.

These organisations will be private companies with no accountability to the secretary of state whatsoever, facilitated of course by the fact that the HSC Act 2012 removed the responsibility from the Secretary of State for Health to provide an NHS! This of course is a necessary change, without which the privatisation of the NHS would not be possible.

Liam Fox has been given free range to set up any form of proposed trade deal with the US, including giving American healthcare companies full access to the NHS, whilst Theresa May uses the old smokescreen statement that the NHS will always be "free at the point of delivery" assuming that the public won’t care who delivers healthcare as long as it is free!

Apart from the fact that the NHS is NOT at all free, as we pay for it from our national insurance contributions, the £9 billion of NHS money has gone to private healthcare companies such as Circle Health, and VirginCare. That is even without the estimated up to £2 million that Virgincare has been awarded in an out-of-court settlement with the NHS over their loss of their existing contract to provide healthcare services.

With American healthcare companies, whose costs build in 10 to 20% profit margin providing majority of NHS healthcare, and owning the hospitals and land; will result in additional costs that can only be met through the American system of healthcare insurance.

NHS England has outlined the plans for the 44 sustainability and transformation partnerships (STPs) to evolve into ‘accountable care systems’ (ACSs), and proposes that these ACSs will become Accountable Care Organisations but only after ‘several years’.

That is, until we have left the EU and signed a UK/US trade deal!

The plan is that ACOs will be separate autonomous healthcare organisations providing NHS services – in other words – private healthcare companies with no accountability to the State!
 
In the USA, where the ACO system has been introduced over the last few years, the key to the model is a capitated payment system under which the partners can retain any savings they achieve.

Such payments are dependent on the ACO achieving numerous quality and outcome measures that incorporate patient experience, patient safety and preventative care, claims Hunt.

Savings are NOT put back into the US Government Healthcare budget, nor will they be ploughed back into the NHS in the UK!

According to NHS England, the contracts for this new model of care can be held by a community interest company, a limited liability company or a partnership, or by a statutory NHS provider.

In order to facilitate the easy access to the NHS by US Healthcare companies as part of a UK/US trade deal, organising our healthcare services in the same way is of paramount importance to a Tory party that has always hated the whole concept of the NHS, and incidentally the EU, because whilst we remain in the EU, our NHS healthcare system cannot be privatised and taken over by US private healthcare companies.

We will now see a bonfire of the NHS as American companies wade into our healthcare system with private bids that will undercut every UK based healthcare company in order to monopolise healthcare in this country and turn the NHS into their own cash-cow.

Once this is done, it will be impossible to ever get back to having an NHS which is a healthcare system acknowledged across the world as being the most effective model of healthcare on the planet!

Source: The Independent /  The Kings Fund / NHS England /NHS Support Federation / Dept of Health /