We’ve always made a profit from the NHS! So what’s changed?

 a con, corporate Communism, corporate lobbies, corporations, NHS, NHS cuts, politicians, profit  No Responses »
Jul 312012
 

Matt tweets sentiments today I’m sure we all can sympathise with:

People still miss the point about the NHS. The point is: should people make a profit from healthcare? Should life and health be a market? No

But whilst sympathy is easy, agreement is not so simple.

Since its creation, and via their hierarchically differentiated salaries, GPs, consultants, surgeons, nurses, cleaners, ambulance drivers, managers and receptionists have all made a profit from the NHS.  Many have chosen their roles as vocations: none could have worked for nothing.

And do we really think those who have supplied blood plasma, oxygen, sterile products of all sorts, medicines, bandages, syringes, hospital furniture, light bulbs, signs, telephone and communications infrastructures, sandwiches, food in general and a whole host of other products and services were not, in reality, motivated by the incentive of the market in order to make as fast a buck as possible for their shareholders?

Back to Matt’s tweet, then: “Should people make a profit from healthcare?” he asks.  The answer is: “Of course.”  And before this awful Coalition government, and maybe before New Labour, we didn’t mind when they did.

So what’s changed?

I think it has something to do with what I alluded to the other day.  It has become all too self-evident that government is no longer the caped crusader and protector between naked capitalism and the rest of society.  Whilst we trusted that the game between governors and corporate capitalists involved some kind of give and take on both sides, we were prepared to contemplate situations and structures that perhaps were a little unwise and risk-ridden on our part.  But that silent social contract between a society which created infrastructures on the one hand and a large corporate base which generated employment on the other has been splintering for more or less a decade now.  And when that corporate base showed that – despite all the favours society had paid it – it was manifestly unable any more to fulfil its unwritten social responsibilities, we began to suspect – and understand far more clearly – that we had been much more than a little unwise in our even-handedness; much more than a little risk-ridden in the way we had chosen to keep our eyes wide shut.

As long as key public services remain free at point-of-use, we should not mind that private companies tender competitively for public provision.  But when corporations accustomed to engendering and working inside monopolistic markets want to do the same to our public sector, we not only gain nothing from the changeover in terms of efficiency, we also lose a tremendous amount in democratic accountability.

We could easily argue, with the evidence on the table, that the private sector is named thus precisely because it generally attempts to keep its sometimes horrific failings to itself.  After all, the light of public day is not generally cast on the boardrooms which take their cold decisions – protected as they are by their legions of lawyerly advice.

Let us, then, understand one point: the truly free market could help our healthcare a thousandfold.  But the market proposed by Cameron & Co is not the free market in question.

And the market proposed is not a problem because it allows people to profit from healthcare.  We understand that a nurse or GP should want to build a life around their career.

No.  In truth, the market proposed is actually a problem because it allows non-human corporations to profit to the ever-increasing exclusion of flesh-and-blood people.

That’s what’s changed.

And that’s why we now find it easy to sympathise with tweets like Matt’s.

The problem isn’t the profit motive, per se.

But, rather, what’s invading our social and emotional landscapes – and taking us over.

It’s not that we shouldn’t make a profit out of our wellbeing but, rather, that – in the future and at our expense -  only others will be able to.

Benefit corporations or corporations on benefit?

 benefit corporations, benefits crackdown, corporations, CSR, in a hole, Milton Friedman, profit, The Nation  No Responses »
Aug 142011
 

There’s a fascinating way forward on the icky subject of corporations at The Nation right now:

[...] a promising alternative [to the current figure of exclusively profit-driven corporations] is emerging: an entity called the Benefit Corporation, which has been written into law in Maryland, New Jersey, Virginia and Vermont, and is moving quickly in other states too. The new laws permit companies to join the profit motive with the purpose of making a “positive impact on society and the environment.” In their articles of incorporation, Benefit Corporations declare their public missions—things like bringing a local river back to life, providing affordable housing, facilitating animal adoptions or promoting adult literacy. Under the law they must go regularly before a third-party validator like B Lab, the visionary Philadelphia-based alliance of more than 400 so-called B Corps across the country, to prove that they are not only meeting their goals but treating their employees, customers, communities and local environments with the same respect as their shareholders. [...]

This piece is worth reading in full.

The issue, of course, as we have known for too many years now, and ever since Milton Friedman’s moral imperative to make a profit crystallised the greedy rights of traditional corporations to be responsible to their shareholders and to no one else, is that too many corporate bodies – if not all – attempt to externalise as many of their costs onto the society they refuse to contribute fully to.  In a sense, and if we are to believe that corporate figures are essentially “people” (more here), then from entities aimed at generating wealth – and making society more functional instead of less – these behemoths of transnational business have turned into corporations on benefit.  Just like, in fact, some of those people in our society which those on the right are happy to accuse of fraudulent behaviour.

Thus it is that these gigantic companies end up sucking so much societal wealth into the pockets of a generally concentrated population of shareholders rather than generating it for a wider interest.

If people on benefit are wrong to live off the state indefinitely, then surely – where we accept corporations are as near to the legal figure of people as makes no difference at all – corporate bodies are also committing a delinquency.

And if not, I am minded to wonder, then please tell me why not.