Privatization

Illuminating Report On Veterans Administration’s Staffing Shortages

April 3, 2023 Veterans Healthcare Policy Institute. Educate! Health Care, mental health, Privatization, Veterans

Today, the Veterans Healthcare Policy Institute, in association with the American Federation of Government Employees, released a comprehensive report on the urgent struggles of thousands of VA employees, and how they threaten to impede the future of America’s best healthcare and benefits systems. Entitled “Disadvantaging the VA: How VA Staff View Agency Privatization and Other Detrimental Policies,” the 74-page report leans on dozens of interviews, hundreds of written comments, and thousands of survey responses, as well as Congressional testimony, federal watchdog reports, and other previous investigations. It shows how a series of detrimental policies are inhibiting the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) and the Veterans Benefit Administration (VBA) from maintaining its preeminence in providing unparalleled veterans’ services.

‘He Sold Our Schools Off To The Highest Bidder’

April 2, 2023 David I. Backer, In These Times. Educate! Privatization, Public Education, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Shakeda Gaines, former president of the Philadelphia Home and School Council, remembers when Paul Vallas began his term as superintendent of the School District of Philadelphia in 2002. Vallas “brought in his corporate vultures and his spreadsheets and tried to sell us a bill of goods,” Gaines says. Vallas, known for his contempt of teachers unions and his ability to capitalize on disasters to upend public school systems, has gone into Chicago, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Haiti, Chile, and Bridgeport, Conn., to hawk himself as a pragmatic problem solver, someone who will turn around distressed schools. Despite this brand, instead of fixing disasters, Vallas often has a hand in creating them.

Housing Crisis Pushes Once-Thriving Co-op Movement Back Into Spotlight

April 1, 2023 Paul Weinberg, The Breach. Educate! Cooperatives, Democracy, Evictions, Housing, Privatization

When Eric Tuck lost two jobs at separate times in the 1980s, the Greenhill housing co-operative where he lived provided emergency assistance to him and his family. First, Tuck was laid off from National Steel in Hamilton, Ont. Two years later, he was laid off again from Firestone Tire Factory, only six months after he’d taken the job. Tuck was the sole breadwinner back then, raising two young children with his partner. Thrown out of work, he was forced to go on unemployment insurance, which was not enough to supplement his lost wages. But his co-op came through—both times—with a subsidy to reduce his housing charge. The Greenhill co-op was more than just an economic lifesaver.

Report Details Private Equity’s Stranglehold On US Healthcare

March 26, 2023 Brett Wilkins, Common Dreams. Educate! Class Struggle, Corporatism, Health Care, Privatization

Private equity's ownership of U.S. healthcare providers is incompatible with the needs and best interests of patients and should be checked with federal legislation, according to a report published Wednesday by the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen. Critics of for-profit care have long decried private equity's focus on maximizing returns through practices including slashing staff, surprising patients with astronomical bills, and eschewing low-margin care upon which vulnerable populations rely. The new report—authored primarily by Public Citizen healthcare policy advocate Eagan Kemp—examines investment firms' impact on more than a dozen healthcare sectors, from reproductive health through end-of-life care.

Hostile Takeover Of Houston School District By Texas Education Agency

March 22, 2023 The Network for Public Education. Resist! Democracy, Privatization, Public Education, Texas

The Network for Public Education strongly objects to the takeover of the Houston Independent Public School District (HISD) by the Texas Education Agency (TEA). We believe this is a cynical political move to disenfranchise the residents of Houston by yanking control of the governance of their schools from their elected board and giving governing power to political appointees. Network for Public Education Executive Director Carol Burris states, “This decision is clearly a calculated move to put Houston schools under the Governor’s thumb. In the past few years, the elected Board, Superintendent, educators, and students of HISD have made great strides in school improvement.

How Canadians Are Losing Medicare

March 17, 2023 Dr. Susan Rosenthal, Consortium News. Strategize! Canada, Health Care, Medicare, Privatization

Ontario’s Bill 60 has delivered a potential death blow to public Medicare. If it becomes law, the provincial medical system will no longer operate as a public service but as a profit-taking business managed by the private sector. While defenders of public Medicare blame Conservative Premier Doug Ford, British Columbia, Quebec and Saskatchewan are going down the same road. If we hope to reverse this disaster, we need to know how Canadians won Medicare in the first place, and why they are losing it. World War II saw a global upsurge of labor protest.

Physicians Tell Biden HHS To End Medicare Privatization Pilot

January 27, 2023 Jake Johnson, Common Dreams. Resist! Health Care, Joe Biden, Medicare, Privatization

A national physician group this week called for the complete termination of a Medicare privatization scheme that the Biden White House inherited from the Trump administration and later rebranded—while keeping intact its most dangerous components. Now known as the Accountable Care Organization Realizing Equity, Access, and Community Health (ACO REACH) Model, the experiment inserts a for-profit entity between traditional Medicare beneficiaries and healthcare providers. The federal government pays the ACO REACH middlemen to cover patients' care while allowing them to pocket a significant chunk of the fee as profit. The rebranded pilot program, which was launched without congressional approval and is set to run through at least 2026, officially began this month, and progressive healthcare advocates fear the experiment could be allowed to engulf traditional Medicare.

America’s Very Broken Healthcare System

January 25, 2023 Michael Sainato, The Real News Network. Educate! health, Health Care, Medical Debt, Privatization

The United States is the only industrialized nation in the world without universal healthcare. Instead, Americans are forced to rely on a mixture of profit and nonprofit private and public healthcare insurers and providers. The United States federal government provides healthcare coverage through Medicare to individuals ages 65 years and older, and to some individuals with disabilities, military veterans, and children through Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). Around 26 million Americans, about 8% of the population, including just under 2% of children, have no health insurance coverage at all. Low-income families are more likely to be uninsured, with the high cost of health insurance cited as the main factor as to why people remain uninsured in the US. The lack of coverage significantly worsens Americans’ access to health care and many face unaffordable out-of-pocket medical bills if they do seek care.

Mountain Equipment Catastrophe

January 25, 2023 Half Past Capitalism, Grassroots Economic Organizing. Resist! Cooperatives, Privatization, Worker Rights

Dru Oja Jay is joined by Kevin Harding, one of the organizers of a spirited hail-mary attempt to save Mountain Equipment Co-op from being sold off to a US private equity firm. Kevin is a public policy professional who works with cooperatives and community enterprises. In this episode, he shares about how tens of thousands of members mobilized to stop MEC's sale, and came very close to being successful. Dru and Kevin also discuss the situation that led to the co-operative's demise, what could have prevented it, and what became of the effort to save MEC.

AARP And The AFL CIO Are Pushing Medicare Disadvantage

January 23, 2023 Corporate Crime Reporter. Educate! Health Care, Medicare, Medicare for all, Privatization

Medicare Disadvantage insurance plans induce seniors by offering advantages that traditional Medicare doesn’t offer – like vision and dental coverage. That’s the upside. The downside is that when you actually get seriously ill, the disadvantage is that when you get sick, you might not get the coverage you were promised. Now, about half of all seniors in the United States are in Medicare Disadvantage. The unions should be fighting against the move to privatize Medicare. Instead of fighting, they are joining with the insurance companies to corporatize Medicare. The big daddy of unions, the AFL-CIO, is itself now partnering with the giant insurance company Anthem to push Medicare Disadvantage plans on its retired union members. The first ad for the campaign read: “Introducing AFL-CIO Medicare Advantage group plans, provided by Anthem. Comprehensive coverage available exclusively to retired union members.”

Privatization Scam Threatens To Replace Traditional Medicare

January 13, 2023 John Geyman, Truthout. Educate! Health Care, Medicare, Medicare Advantage, Privatization

In 2016, the Trump administration instituted a new little-known federal agency, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, which has been moving enrollees, often without their consent, to for-profit middlemen known as Direct Contracting Entities (DCEs). Rather than saving money and supposed greater efficiency, they add to the cost of coverage by taking their own cut of profits. As a redesign of the DCE model, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has allowed an expanded ACO REACH (Accountable Care Organization Realizing Equity, Access, and Community Health) program to start on January 1, 2023, with more than twice the number of DCEs. This is a corporate agenda being promoted and accelerated by CMS, with the ultimate goal to privatize and replace traditional Medicare altogether by 2030, without even a vote in Congress. Despite all those good words in its title — equity, access and community health — the 35-year track record of Medicare Advantage has failed on all of those counts.

Architects Of Medicare Privatization: Congress, Biden And The CMS

December 30, 2022 Sandra M. Fox, Counter Punch. Educate! Health Care, Joe Biden, Medicare, Privatization

It is easy and appropriate to target the private health insurance companies who earn excessive profits from the Medicare Trust Fund through Medicare Advantage plans, especially given the well-documented evidence of overcharging and fraud. But it is essential that we remember that it has been the U.S. Congress and the Executive Office that promoted the privatization of Medicare, to varying degrees, since it was first signed into law by President Johnson in 1965 and enacted the following year. In 2017 The Commonwealth Fund published “The Evolution of Private Plans in Medicare,” which detailed the increasing role in healthcare granted to private companies since 1966 through Acts of Congress and the Office of the President.

Housing Rights Groups Renew Calls For Expropriation Of Private Properties

December 20, 2022 Muhammed Shabeer, People's Dispatch. Resist! Berlin, Germany, Housing, Privatization

Berlin, Germany - A coalition of housing rights activists and groups has condemned the Berlin State’s slow approach in implementing the mandate of the 2021 referendum on the appropriation of properties of large private corporations in the housing and real estate sector. Last week, the Deutsche Wohnen & Co Enteignen (Expropriate Deutsche Wohnen & Co Initiative, DWE), formed by housing rights activists and groups in Berlin, gave an ultimatum to the Social Democratic Party (SPD)-Greens-Die Linke (The Left) coalition to present a roadmap for the socialization of private real estate properties in the city without delay. On September 26 last year, alongside the federal and Berlin State elections, citizens of the city took part in a referendum which saw 59.1% votes in favor of expropriating the property of realtors who owned 3,000 or more residential units.

Labor Leaders Provide Cover For Privatization Of Medicare

December 15, 2022 Ed Grystar, Counter Punch. Educate! Health Care, Labor Movement, Medicare, Privatization

Such a statement from the AFL-CIO would suggest that labor is determined to protect Medicare and even support improving and expanding it to all Americans. Additionally, President Biden and Democrats regularly criticize Republican threats to reauthorize and voucherize Medicare. Meanwhile, what’s left out of both the Democrat talking points and the AFL-CIO’s 2022 national resolution on healthcare is any acknowledgment that the real threat to Medicare and healthcare today is the decades-long tax-subsidized privatization supported by both major parties. With major support from organized labor, including AFL-CIO President George Meany at the signing, Medicare was signed into law in 1965. Before Medicare, only 60% of those over 65 had insurance since it was unavailable or unaffordable via private insurance (seniors were charged 3x the rate of younger people).

The Struggle To Keep Water Services In The Public Is Only Just Beginning

November 24, 2022 Pamela Haines, Waging Nonviolence. Resist! Pennsylvania, Privatization, Public Services, Water

Pennsylvania - In early September, the three county commissioners of Bucks County, just north of Philadelphia, voted down a $1.1 billion bid from Aqua Pennsylvania to buy their sewer system. This response to an outpouring of citizen concern about what would have been the largest privatization of a public wastewater system in the country illuminates a larger story — both of the encroachment of privatization and the potential for victories when citizens mobilize around its costs. Aqua had been systematically buying up smaller water systems for years. In New Garden in southeastern Pennsylvania, Bill Ferguson saw his wastewater rates jump nearly 70 percent in the few years after Aqua purchased his township’s sewer system in 2017.

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