Privatization

Can Britain Re-Nationalize Water Services?

December 19, 2024 Ana Vračar, People's Dispatch. Strategize! England, Labour Party, Privatization, United Kingdom (UK), Water

Social justice organizations in Britain are urging judges to reject a bailout request from Thames Water, one of the country’s largest water providers, serving some 16 million people in the greater London area. Campaigners argue that approving the bailout of the private utility provider would allow Thames Water to continue its mismanagement while forcing consumers to shoulder the burden—raising annual water bills by £250 (USD 317) per user. “This is daylight robbery. There are two people who can stop it, the judge in court today and Steve Reed, the environment secretary.

Privatizing Syria: US Plans To Sell Off A Nation’s Wealth After Assad

December 18, 2024 Kit Klarenberg, MintPress News. Educate! Bashar al-Assad, Hayat Tahrir al-sham (HTS), Privatization, Syria, US Imperialism

In the immediate wake of the Syrian government’s abrupt collapse, much remains uncertain about the country’s future – including whether it can survive as a unitary state or will splinter into smaller states as did Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, a move that ultimately led to a bloody NATO intervention. Moreover, who or what may take power in Damascus remains an open question. For the time being at least, members of ultra-extremist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) appear highly likely to take key positions in whatever administrative structure sprouts from Bashar Assad’s ouster after a decade-and-a-half of grinding Western-sponsored regime change efforts.

Trump Taps Linda McMahon For Secretary Of Education

December 6, 2024 Chrisley Carpio, Fight Back! News. Educate! Department of Education, Donald Trump, Education, Privatization

On November 19, Donald Trump selected multi-millionaire Linda McMahon as Secretary of the Department of Education. The former CEO of the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), she unsuccessfully ran for the U.S. Senate in Connecticut and lost twice. She served on Trump’s cabinet once before as the head of the Small Business Administration and then resigned in 2019 to become the director of America First Action, a Trump super-PAC that kept promoting the agenda of “Make America Great Again” after he lost the 2020 election.

Wall Street Took Over A Vital Sign Language Service

November 24, 2024 Sarah Lazare, In These Times. Educate! Interpretation, Privatization, Sign Language, union busting, Unions, Wall Street, Worker Rights and Jobs

“Do no harm” is the guiding principle of American Sign Language (ASL) interpreters’ professional code of conduct. But when Joe Klug, 28, worked as a Video Relay Service (VRS) interpreter for a Twin Cities metro area office of Purple Communications, he says this principle was routinely violated. The VRS field, which allows Deaf and Hard of Hearing people to make phone calls by video interfacing with interpreters, is difficult and fast-paced work. While some calls are social, others can be serious: medical emergencies, job interviews, jargon-heavy discussions with lawyers or sensitive conversations with doctors.

Medicare ‘Advantage’ By The Numbers

November 16, 2024 Adam Fishbein, Center for Economic and Policy Research. Educate! Health Care, Medicare, Medicare Advantage, Privatization

The quasi-privatized system called “Medicare Advantage,” otherwise known as Part C, was created in 2003 as a means of expanding the role of private sector corporations in the publicly-funded Medicare system. Proponents claimed it would lower costs and improve health care for seniors. It has achieved neither of those goals; instead, MA has become a wildly profitable scheme for private insurance giants, who have become adept at taking advantage of Medicare’s billing model to claim exorbitant profits. At this point, MA is more profitable for many companies than their conventional insurance businesses.

Not In Our Nursing Homes

October 31, 2024 George Goehl, In These Times. Resist! Health Care, Privatization, Seniors, Wisconsin

Merrill, WI — When the phone rang, it was 11 p.m. Still, Gene Bebel, farmer and retired school principal, picked up. It was Al Curtis, a one-time special education teacher and now resident at Pine Crest Nursing Home, a county-owned facility in Merrill, Wis., population 9,000. Curtis was angry: He’d gotten word that Pine Crest was on the chopping block, with the county board looking to privatize it. Bebel, age 84, leapt into action. He first contacted Judy Woller, who for years had run a support organization for victims of domestic violence in this rural county, and who had a reputation as someone who stood up for others. The two began to organize to save Pine Crest, a Lincoln County institution for nearly 70 years.

Are Railroads Slowly Committing Suicide?

October 29, 2024 David Sparkman, Material Handling and Logistics. Educate! Privatization, Public Rail, Railroads, Staffing

North America’s remaining six major freight railroads appear to be committing slow motion suicide, according to testimony offered by rail customers, industry analysts and labor to regulators on the Surface Transportation Board (STB) at two days of public hearings held last month. STB Chairman Robert E. Primus contended that the industry’s growth has not measured up to all of the opportunities that were presented to it over the past seven years, after Wall Street activist investors ignited the fad of Precision Scheduled Railroading (PSR), an operations model sold to investors as a Holy Grail by prioritizing squeezing out costs over growing the business, and which has persisted since gaining widespread acceptance among investors in 2017.

34 Million Seniors In Medicare Advantage Plans Face Rude Awakening

October 19, 2024 Emma Curchin, Counter Punch. Educate! Health Care, Medicare Advantage, Privatization, Seniors

October 15 marks the first day of open enrollment in Medicare Advantage (MA) plans – a time that will deliver chaos and confusion for many of the 34 million seniors who depend on these plans to pay their healthcare bills. It’s yet another reminder that Medicare wastes billions of dollars funneling public money to private companies that are primarily driven by profit-seeking. Last year, more MA members than expected used their benefits to get necessary medical care. One might assume that companies would expect beneficiaries to use health care services. But after years of making outsized profits, the insurance companies that own these plans are reacting to this by downsizing plans, cutting benefits, increasing copays, and raising prescription drug deductibles. In other words, Medicare Advantage beneficiaries are being penalized for using the health care that they pay for.

Chris Hedges Report: The Secret History Of Neoliberalism

October 10, 2024 Chris Hedges, Scheer Post. Resistance Report Austerity, Capitalism, History, Neoliberalism, Privatization

Neoliberalism is a stealth ideology, one that at once dominates our lives, but exists in relative anonymity. Its effects have radically reconfigured western societies through deindustrialization, austerity, the privatization of utilities, postal services, schools, hospitals, prisons, intelligence gathering, police, parts of the military and railroads, along with spawning wage stagnation and debt peonage. It has deformed a tax system and gutted regulations to funnel wealth upwards, creating an income inequality that rivals pharaonic Egypt. Yet neoliberalism remains largely unmentioned and unexamined, especially by academia and a media that has been captured by a ruling class that profits from neoliberal doctrine.

Corporations Plunder US West’s Water Amid Worst Drought In 1,200 Years

September 23, 2024 Katie Rose Quandt, Truthout. Educate! Drought, Environment, Privatization, Wall Street, Water

Rural La Paz County, Arizona, positioned on the Colorado River across from California, is at the center of a growing fight over water in the American Southwest. At the heart of the battle is a question: Should water be treated as a human right, to be allocated by governments with the priority of sustaining life? Or is it a commodity to be bought, sold and invested in for the greatest profits? As the West suffers its worst megadrought in 1,200 years, investors have increasingly eyed water as a valuable asset and a resource to be exploited. For years, investment firms have bought up farmland throughout the Southwest, drilling to new depths for their water-hungry crops and causing nearby wells to run dry.

Fighting Privatization Is Good For Mental Health

September 19, 2024 Elena Gormley, In These Times. Organize! Chicago, Health Care, mental health, Privatization

This spring, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson announced a dramatic change in the city’s mental health policy, promising to reopen public clinics shuttered for more than a decade. Today, my administration is taking extraordinary steps to reverse the course and expand our city’s systems of mental health,” Johnson said May 30, outside the Roseland Mental Health Center. “We are standing here on the Far South Side to make it clear that we are prioritizing those who have been left behind and discarded by previous administrations.” In addition to Roseland, the city plans to reopen two more public clinics, in the Pilsen and West Garfield Park neighborhoods.

Football As A Commons

September 15, 2024 Yavor Tarinski, Grassroots Economic Organizing. Create! Privatization, Soccer, Sports, The Commons

In his book Football in Sun and in Shadow, Eduardo Galeano pointed at the commercialization of the world’s most famous sport and its detachment from the grassroots. In it he says that “when the sport became an industry, the beauty that blossoms from the joy of play, got torn out by its very roots. Professional football condemns all that is useless and useless means not profitable.”2 Once again we saw this in the 2014 World Cup in Brazil where modern football appeared for what it really is: a mechanism serving the logic of constant capital accumulation, aggressive towards those at the bottom who cannot afford to participate in this celebration of modern consumerist culture.

Why More Doctors Are Joining Unions

September 8, 2024 Lambeth Hochwald, Medscape. Organize! Doctors, Health Care, Privatization, Social Justice, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

With huge shifts over the past decade in the way doctors are employed — half of all doctors now work for a health system or large medical group — the idea of unionizing is not only being explored but gaining traction within the profession. In fact, 8% of the physician workforce (or 70,000 physicians) belong to a union, according to statistics gathered in 2022. Exact numbers are hard to come by, and, interestingly, although the American Medical Association (AMA) " supports the right of physicians to engage in collective bargaining," the organization doesn't track union membership among physicians, according to an AMA spokesperson.

Out LUMA!: Puerto Ricans Demand End To Privatization Of Energy

July 5, 2024 Pablo Meriguet, People's Dispatch. Resist! Energy, Luma, Mass Action, Privatization, Puerto Rico

Hundreds of Puerto Ricans took to the streets of the capital, San Juan, on Wednesday July 3, to demand an end to the controversial contract signed by the government of Puerto Rico with the US-Canadian company LUMA Energy. During the march, organized by the Union of Electrical and Irrigation Industry Workers (UTIER), workers and activists shouted slogans like: “Privatized energy is rejected by the people”, “We demand electric energy because it is a human right”, and “They privatize energy and steal from us every day”, among others. According to the protesters, there has not been a significant improvement in the electricity service as promised with the privatization. Major blackouts and electricity connection problems continue.

Medicare Dis-Advantage: Overpayments And Inequity

July 2, 2024 Adam Gaffney, David U. Himmelstein, and Steffie Woolhandler, Portside. Educate! Health Care, Medicare, Medicare Advantage, Privatization

Medicare Advantage—the privatized Medicare plans run by insurance firms but funded by the federal government—rips off taxpayers. On this there is little controversy. In March, MedPAC, Congress’s nonpartisan advisory board on Medicare policy, estimated that this year alone taxpayers will overpay Medicare Advantage plans by $83 billion—the savings to Medicare if all of those plans’ enrollees were instead covered by the traditional, fully public Medicare program. A 2022 New York Times exposé, “’The Cash Monster Was Insatiable’: How Insurers Exploited Medicare for Billions,” lays out the gory mechanisms—like fraudulent schemes (known as “upcoding”) to make patients look sicker on paper, which ups payouts from the government.

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