The UK having a seat at the table didn’t stop them almost privatising the NHS under TTIP. It was Trump that stopped it. The EU aren't interested in british exceptionalism, and I'd like to think it's bizarre to see the liberal left arguing for it, but it's not.marlon wrote: ↑4 months agoSid wrote: ↑4 months agoHere's a well researched and sourced article on creeping EU privatisation of healthcare https://corporateeurope.org/en/power-lo ... healthcare
Give it 3 more years of EU membership and the NHS will be privatised. And if we leave, and have a tory government or a centrist one, it will still be privatised.Healthcare is a national competence, not the remit of the EU. Right? Yes and No. Rulings from the European Court of Justice, and the European Commission’s policies of recent years, mean that “Services delivered by national health systems are, as a rule, now considered as an economic activity”.1 For a long time, member states argued healthcare is not an economic activity, as most providers do not intend to make a profit.2 But its treatment as one means EU rules on the internal market (free movement of goods, persons, capital and services), public procurement and state aid, in principle apply to healthcare services. TheCommission’s 2011 directive on cross-border health care, partially based on internal market rules promised to expand the choice of patients in Europe.3 More fundamentally, it answers the question of whether healthcare should be publicly planned or subject to market forces.
According to academic Dr Christoph Hermann, the “public nature of healthcare provision in Europe has been challenged through a series of reforms that amount to what can best be described as the marketisation of health care.”5 The process of marketisation isn’t just the establishment of internal markets in health (ie domestically or via the EU single market); it includes outsourcing, public-private partnerships, competition between different providers, and the sale of public hospitals to private investors.
The labour/corbyn vision for brexit is to stay in the single market/customs union, so if the EU were to privatise the NHS, it would also happen under a Corbyn government - where we wouldn't have a veto, or the 2nd largest number of MEPs, or Corbyn on the European council, or his ministers in the council of the eu, or a commissioner on the european commi
I'm surprised you know what labour's position is on brexit. You must be the only one. The customs union shite was when they were trying to balance all sides. But those days are gone. Now I don't know what their position is - so many people say so many different things.
Truth is there's no hope for the NHS while capitalism exists and while the neolib branch of it is the dominant mindset of the ruling class. And you can piss about with political parties, rebranding the EU, minsters etc. but it's capitalism that has to go. Anything else is reformist. It's that stark nowadays, black & white.
