Before this Thursday, Stop Centene growing

Public money - people’s taxes - going into the pockets of private companies is just wrong. Do the people of Britain want the government to give their hard earned money away to foreign contracts? . Treating the NHS like a ‘cash cow’ is priming it for corruption and the usual company incompetence.

The commodification of health care inevitably leads to the prioritisation of profits over human life. All private health care must firmly place its financial interests over that of human suffering and need. Not only is this dangerous and immoral, it is highly dysfunctional, as the quality of health care provision and public health in general worsens. Private health care must only focus on what is profitable, not what is required. Also, in order to extract an ever increasing amount of capital from its business, private health providers constantly seek to cut the pay and terms and conditions of their staff, leading to the inevitable degradation in the quality of care. Private health care only cares about money.

No doubt someone, somewhere, is justifying the selling off of our GP practices as a means of saving costs. Will someone, somewhere, put an end to this specious, deceptive, wholly unethical thinking. Private companies exist to generate profits, for themselves and their shareholders. This statement provides the two most compelling reasons against handing our surgeries to private companies. (1) The NHS must never, ever be forced to subordinate the quality or extent of compassionate patient care to the short-term greed of owners for whom the healthcare of UK patients likely does not exist on their list of priorities. The reason that people around the world, and indeed in this country, hold the NHS in such high regard is entirely predicated on a culture made up of people for whom service is the highest value. Forcing the priorities of a corporate culture into this service culture will create the mother of all collisions and I predict the loss of thousands of doctors and nurses from the service as a direct result. (2) Introducing an additional, financial layer into the NHS's accounts for the taking of profits as a sine qua non of the project's existence - ie either we make a profit or we reduce the service we provide, with no actual bottom line apart from the company's desired profits - automatically increases costs, subordinates the needs of patients to the needs of shareholders and can do nothing but deleteriously affect service. The US culture of corporate profit-taking - ESPECIALLY within the health and health insurance industry - is all the evidence we need that there is no happy integration between private and public service. Finally, we the taxpayers have paid for the building and financing of the NHS for 70 years and the government has absolutely no right to sell our precious assets to a private bidder.

There is no place for profiteers in our NHS. It is funded by the taxpayer, and belongs to all of us. Every pound leaking out to shareholders, or paid to overpaid executives, is a theft from the British people and a loss to patient services and staff pay. All privatised contracts should be terminated, but especially those with multi-nationals from the US health management industry, which is responsible for the highest rate of profiteering and the worst outcomes in the "developed" world.

Since the start of the 20th century the American medical business model has demonstrated that profits come first before medical services. Today America's privately owned and operated medical healthcare industry is the worst in the world, with the highest death rates than any other country for medical incompetence, medical malpractice and medical fraud. We do not want the fundamentally corrupt American medical healthcare system operating in Britain and contaminating the National Health Service.

t the NHS was founded so everyone regardless of their situation can access good quality health care when they need it Introducing private companies means they wish to make profits for their shareholders. We need to maintain our money which finances the NHS within the NHS for the benefit of all. No private companies in the NHS they are corroding our treasured service which has been the envy of the world.

If we really want a health service focused on our national health, the only option is to run it for the nation - not for the profit of large corporations. I cannot believe we really want to head towards the American model where so many people cannot get health care. I hope we are more civilised than that.

Profit has no place in health care. Health care must be about people's health. Profit-driven services are worse by design. Selling off GP services to profit-driven private companies is wrong and must not be allowed to continue.

No part of OUR NHS should be for sale. Health is and ought to remain outside the realms of profiteers.

Our NHS and our GP practices should not be privatised and run by greedy for-profit companies that only have money as a priority and not Public Health. The NHS is ours as a nation and should be controlled by us alone for the benefit of everybody and not for profiteers. Please do not renew the Centrene contract and keep our GP surgeries ours.

Our NHS. The British public pay their taxes for the NHS, not to line the pockets of shareholders. All the money that we pay must be directed towards our NHS, not private/corporate business. That’s not how we want it.

No part of OUR NHS should be in the hands of profiteers. Health is not a commodity.

The UK’s National Health Service is not an opportunity for International companies to make profits and particularly not with a company that has paid at least $700 million in lawsuit costs because of inflating prices (amongst other things)!! This service is paid for by the people of the UK and doesn’t require a middleman to skim off profits and provide a shoddy service to patients! How has our government allowed this company to ‘run’ 70 GP practices when they are a common sight in the law courts of the USA? Where was the due diligence?

I want to endorse every single comment that has already been posted. Never has an issue been so clear to so many people. The NHS is not for profit. Full stop.

I very strongly believe in all public services for people and not for profit. I categorically do not trust organisations that say they are for the people yet make profits have share holders and even say they are not for profit. IT should be a public service for people . I am not a number but a person with feeling

Please don't let profit get in the way of providing the health service that we all need. Please don't waste resources that we need to use in making and keeping our health service as responsive and excellent as it can possibly be.

UK GP practice has been the envy of the world and the crucial backbone for good health of the population. It MUST continue to put people before profit and be run on a not for profit basis to maintain these qualities- or otherwise be sold down the river and we will end up with the horrendous poor quality of health the Americans have. Centrica is not the right way.

Health care is essential it is not a luxury and therefore the national health service is a service for everyone and not as private companies given any opportunity to own and run it would see it, as only a way to make money for some at the expense of others and force those without means to pay, potentially having to forgo care ,privatisation is not what the UK NHS has ever stood for.

The population is ageing, with that comes an ever increasing demand for complex treatments. This naturally means higher costs to the NHS and greater expectations that the doctors, nurses and other staff can continue to perform the miracles we expect of them. By allowing organisations that are profit driven restricts the performance of the NHS and reduces the funding available to the Proper NHS.

Put people first, remove private business; especially American business which will take their profits away from the UK.

Our NHS, of which GP surgeries are an integral part, is not a privatised service which is why it is so fair and why it is admired and envied throughout the world. It is wrong to change it, or any part of it, to a profit making system. So wrong. And we all want this stopped, practically everyone in this country wants this stopped. We pay taxes that fund it, so we own it, and we want it stopped. So stop it.

The NHS is for people not profit! Private companies care first and foremost about making money for their shareholders.

Public money - people’s taxes - going into the pockets of private individuals is a betrayal of the spirit in which the NHS was set up.

The introduction of commercial elements into health care is the beginning of a very steep downward slope.

and is simply WRONG!

This company's main aim is profit not healthcare. Just look at its appalling record. The NHS is about healthcare and not profit.

I have spent a lot of time in the States and used their healthcare system - it is not about CARE it is about Profit. We don't want that here

I believe that the British people have the right to have their health prioritised above the interests of profit making private companies.We pay natinal insurance to fund the NHS, not to enhance the lifestyles of obscenely-paid CEOs, or to keep shareholders happy. I especially wish to express deep concern at the UK Government's obsession with right-wing, ideologically driven privatisation, when this has been shown to be a far from ideal approach to public services on many occasions. It appears that it doesn't matter who owns a slice of British life, so long as somebody, somewhere, is making a profit. We need to start thinking more about the health of UK citizens & less about greedy foreign companies, who must regard this nation with a mixture of greed & contempt. "Treasure Island" needs to change & the time is now.

Our NHS must not be privatised by stealth. There should be no place for profit-making in any field of healthcare - it is a basic human right.

The mark of a civilised is how it treats its most vulnerable members. We need a health service which is run for people, not shareholders.

Privatisation of public services has been unsuccessful with some spectacular failures such as the Probation Service. When will governments learn from their mistakes, and more importantly, listen to the public who they claim to serve.

It is hard to imagine any family within the UK that is untouched by our NHS, we work within it and we receive care from it. It is the heart of the UK, it belongs to us and we belong to it. It does not belong in the hands of private companies for the purpose to making money from suffering.

Even if we are eventually forced to accept US Health Insurance companies into our health service, we should not consider companies with the atrocious legal and health record at home of Centine among them

The NHS is paid for by the British people, it should remain a not-for-profit organisation. I also believe it should remain in British ownership. We have sold off so many of our assets to foreign powers and I think putting the health of our nation into foreign hands is complete lunacy.

The NHS belongs to the British people, it does NOT belong to the government or anyone else who is seeking to make a quick buck on the backs of the poor and those in ill health. We do not need or want to have a capitalist health service. With greedy people pushing medication like they do in America.

The NHS was set up for those who weren't lucky enough to be able to otherwise afford healthcare, and was funded by National Insurance, which we still pay. It was NEVER intended to be a cash-cow for investors and profiteers, at the expense of the public's health, regardless of what the ever-more-Trumpist Tory Party want.

People’s lives and health matter. Do not sell out the NHS to Centene. Do not renew their contract. A lot of people including myself will not be able to afford the extortionate charges they will put on the Health Service. The NHS is a nonprofit organisation and this is how we like it.

Patients not profit, our NHS should not be run by private companies intent on making money from illness and pricing out people who are unable to pay for health care.

The NHS is funded by OUR National Insurance payments deducted from my pay, my late mother and father's weekly pay and everyone in this country's NI deductions. It is NOT for profit making by US or any other privately owned conglomerate to enhance THEIR shareholders dividends.

I am a Brit who has lived in the US for the past fifty plus years. I worked for a social service agency tasked with providing health care for indigent and low income clients. I was a lobbyist who argued for measures favorable to my agency at the Nevada Legislature. During this time I was exposed to the US healthcare system which operates wonderfully when you have money and good insurance, but which fails all other segments of the public.

The NHS operates to provide good primary care for all, secondary and tertiary care being slightly more problematic. When for-profit entities become part of the system, the benefits and potential cost savings are taken by such entities, thus weakening the system as a whole. The US has perfected the maxim of “privatization of profits and socialization of losses” in most areas, with grave consequences now revealed starkly due to the COVID pandemic. Please consider my comments when the contract for continued private sector companies within the NHS are considered. A long term view would show the fallacies of believing the hype of the private sector. Just ask the railway system administrators now reorganizing a system in shambles thanks to privatization.

Dear committee members.

Please do not renew the contract with Centene. The NHS is paid for by the people who pay their National insurance contribution. It is in the public sector and should remain there.

Regards

Ted Exley.

The government has been privatising the NHS by stealth without any electoral mandate to do so. The NHS is a vital public service paid for by the public purse and operated under a public service ethos. The first priority of Private operators is to secure a financial profit which, in order to meet contractual cost constraints can all to often lead to cuts in service provision resulting in poor service provision.

The NHS has, all too often, had to treat private patients, whose private operations have gone wrong. Public health provision provided by the State should not be predicated on an individuals ability to pay for it or be subject to privileged access.

I strongly object to this vital public service being fragmented and off loaded into the profiteering ambit of private operators for private profit.

Our National Health Service belongs to the people and for the people and is the envy of the rest of the world. It should never be run for profit.

My GP surgery has really shown its strengths during the Covid pandemic: above all, local knowledge of the local community. We get a very efficient service, and no-one appears to be thinking of profitability and shareholder payouts. This is close to what Nye Bevan envisaged, not faraway American giants who cannot be dedicated to local needs in the same way. I’m perfectly certain those strengths are needed in London and everywhere else in the UK., so let’s embrace again the founding spirit of 1947!

Profiteering has no place in the life saving work of the NHS. All people should be given equal dignity, respect and access to health regardless of their financial status. The NHS is the pride of Britain and allowing these profit-mongering corporations into it would tear its very soul out. We have seen that when the NHS is given the chance to do its job and isn’t hindered by chronic underfunding or bureaucracy (e.g. the UK’s world leading COVID vaccine programme), the NHS performs remarkable work. Allowing these soulless corporations access to the NHS threatens the fabric of the health of the nation.

Private healthcare companies will always put profits and shareholders' interests above patient care. They should not be allowed to profit from taxpayer's money whilst reducing the efficacy of our fantastic NHS. This should be stopped now. Do not renew Centene's contract for GP services.

The NHS is a public funded body created for everyone's health and is not a profit making organization. Why do we need private companies to run GP surgeries or hospitals when their interests are to satisfy their shareholders with dividends and not the nation's health?

Peoples health before Corporate Greed

The principles upon which our NHS is founded are being seriously eroded. GP practices should not be sold off to major insurance companies based in USA. The principle of 'free at the point of delivery' will not be the driving force of these insurance companies. Please don't renew this contact. Lennie Almond

The N.H.S. is a valued public service and should not be a profit link for companies like Centene . Let us keep it that way !

The NHS is not a 'Corporate Business' where its customer is called a 'Client' and where health care professionals are given a 'corporate induction', the language and the insidious and subliminal way in which this transition into private medical care is being made, through stealth by American companies, is quite frankly sickening. The National Health Service, is a UK based HEALTH SERVICE for ALL WHO NEED IT, WHEN THEY NEED IT, it is a service for OUR COMMUNITIES and the PEOPLE in those communities who need it. The NHS philosophy is 'DO NO HARM', that means taking care of those who who need health care services and NOT DISCRIMINATING against those who you will give health care to or not, dependent upon their health insurance policy. DO NOT SELL OUT to the 'false' American Dream'. Also this is being done under handedly, without National Consultation of the millions of people who pay into this service, I.E 'THE BRITISH PEOPLE'.

Centene is a "for-profit" company, which sets it fundamentally at odds with the ethos of our greatest national achievement, the NHS. Medical care in Britain is not about profit, but about individual need regardless of economic status. It does not exist to further line the pockets of a foreign CEO who took home £18.6 million in 2017; it is about the public good.

Although proudly British, I lived and worked in the United States for several years on a relatively high salary, and saw first-hand that despite the rhetoric and the glamorous depictions in American TV shows, American health care is shockingly overpriced and inefficient. We have the best health care in the world (or could if central government would stop starving it of funds in order to make a publicly-owned health system appear unsustainable). We do not want Americans’ shoddy practices.

Centene has no place in this country — none whatsoever.

The NHS is not for sale. It is the nearest thing in this Country to a national religion.

The National must not become a profit making business! I am so proud of it! Let's not go the American way!