Before this Thursday, Stop Centene growing

25 May 2021

How to take action: Please leave a comment below this letter, with YOUR reason for not wanting Centene's contract to be renewed. We'll make sure to pass it on to the decision-making committee before Thursday's meeting.

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Dear North West London Primary Care Commissioning Committee*,

* This is the committee which will make the decision on whether to renew one of Centene's contracts in North West London THIS Thursday, 3pm.

American healthcare giant Centene has recently taken over 49 GP practices.

Now, with a total of over 70 GP practices under Centene's control, it has become the largest single private primary care provider in England.

With North West London CCG's contract with Centene up for renewal this Thursday, we, as patients, family members, citizens and defenders of our publicly provided NHS, from all across the UK and beyond, call on you not to renew it.

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Your NHS is so worth protecting. By stopping Centene in its tracks in this area, you will be part of helping to stop the privatisation of our NHS all across the UK! Please comment with your message now.

Comments

Jo Smith Finley 4 years ago

For people's health, wellbeing and dignity - NOT for profit.

Reply
- Audrey Walsh 4 years ago
  
  The National Health Service is owned by those who fund it, that is, all of those paying their National Insurance, etc. It is therefore a National Asset, not a profit making business.
  
  Reply
  - Christine Gibson 4 years ago
    
    The N.H.S. is a wonderful institution owned by the British public. To sell us to profit making companies, especially USA who have a terrible record of public health, would be wrong. It should sound the death knell of the Tory Party who have demonstrated their entire disregard of public health. Why change something if it has worked well for so long?.
    
    Reply
    - Hazel Wilkinson 4 years ago
      
      I agree with all the comments made by the above lady.
      
      Reply
      - Derek Ponsford 4 years ago
        
        Leave the NHS to the UK. It was set up by the British people, for the British people, which has been paid for by our NI.contributions. IT'S NOT FOR SALE
      - Tim Atkin 4 years ago
        
        I think the government is getting a back hander so to push it through.people will not be able to afford treatment if the greedy us take over
      - Catherine Margham 4 years ago
        
        I agree with all these comments. Our NHS is not for sale, and should be for the benefit of our health not private companies .
    - Esmé Towse 4 years ago
      
      I agree with all of the above. In addition, US care is dreadful for anyone who is elderly, frail, disabled or with multiple health issues. I know because I have family there. GP “equivalents” have no co-ordinating role, do not visit people at home, even if they are housebound and no-one seems to practise with the holistic outlook which is at the heart of our NHS GP training. No American profit-making company is going to support the kind of General Practice we have enjoyed because of it being a Public Health Service.
      
      Reply
      - Mo 4 years ago
        
        Well said, I totally agree with all that has been mentioned.
    - Dorothy James 4 years ago
      
      I remember when the National health began and how much we needed this care which has been usually wonderful through the years. Please keep all medical care under government care. Our National health should not depend on how much an individual can pay , that is an enormous step backward.
      
      Reply
    - Vania Terzopoulou 4 years ago
      
      yes that is true I think they just do not want to deal with the spirit and sanctity of the NHS - THEY WOULD RATHER PRETEND TO ENGAGE WITH IT WHILST BEING BORED OF IT AND THEN GOING BEHIND THE SCENES TRYING TO SELL IT OFF. !!!!!!!
      
      Reply
    - Sylvia & John Warner 4 years ago
      
      The NHS belongs to the British people & has been in existence since after World War 2 instigated by Atlee's Labour government.Why does the Conservative government always want to decimate and meddle with all the successful organisation of our people's health care. It works as it is without American influences and pressure of making big profits.America will take over UK if we don't stand up for our British values & loyalties.
      
      Reply
  - Patrick Altass 4 years ago
    
    The NHS belongs to the people. Under no circumstances must it be left in grasp of of these greedy money grabbing companies. If it is wave goodbye to our precious NHS and prepare your selves for a two tier health system where you will only ever get the real help you need if you can afford to pay for it. Centennial and those of the same Ilk must be stopped at all costs!!
    
    Reply
    - Theodore Volpe’ 4 years ago
      
      My wife and I have worked all our life and have willingly paid our national insurance all our working life and do definitely not wish to see our Public Health Service privatised for the financial benefit of these greedy grabbing companies to get rich at our expense . So please stop this at any price. Thank you and kind regards. Theodore and Winifreda Volpe’
      
      Reply
      - Beryl sweeney 4 years ago
        
        NHS for PEOPLE not profit. Greedy companies HANDS OFF
  - Carol Broom 4 years ago
    
    The NHS was designed to provide a government funded service to all residents based on clinical need and not on ability to pay. People contribute via national insurance. Sadly this has already been eroded to some extent by putting various parts out to contract.
    Neoliberalism is an abhorrent form of economics that has polluted our society - and planet - for far too long. Profiteering from ill health is poisonous but is at the heart of the abominable healthcare system in the US. A decent society protects its most vulnerable but in the US it is a case of the survival of the fittest - or rather richest - which is barbaric and inhumane. Keep the US and private companies far away from our NHS. Renationalise any parts that have been farmed out and fund it properly. Raise taxes if necessary but resist any further privatisation at all costs.
    Throw out any government that seeks to do that - certainly the present abominable government of exploiters.
    
    Reply
  - Mary Apio 4 years ago
    
    The National Health Service is not for profit.
    
    Reply
  - Catherine Margham 4 years ago
    
    Our NHS should remain ours and should be for the benefit of people’s health not for private profit. Please stop Centene or any other private company taking over GP surgeries or any of our public health services.
    
    Reply
  - Roger Baker 4 years ago
    
    The NHS is a British National service - its not a profit making enterprise and so not for sale, especially to a US company.
    
    Reply
  - Judith Graham 4 years ago
    
    The nhs must be publicly run. There is no place d’or companies like Centene.
    
    Reply
- Isobel Atlasi 4 years ago
  
  Our National Health Service was created to ensure that people from all walks of life could have access to health and care free at the point of use no matter what...not on their ability to pay for better care. We have a health care system that is envied by the rest of the world and private profiteering companies have no place when it comes to saving and preserving life. I sincerely wish that our healthcare system will remain in the hands of people who sincerely care about the health and welfare of the nation and am happy to support any attempt to rid ourselves of private profiteers who value making money above all else!!
  
  Reply
- Clive Bowden 4 years ago
  
  Dear committee, We have seen the destruction of peoples lives and lack of access to healthcare caused by the US style healthcare system and do not want to even get close to such a situation. The NHS is envied the world over, one true sign of a Social Democracy is that everyone has the right to expect the same health outcomes, and to extend this contract takes us down a road which heads away from that ideal. I exhort you to remember that first and foremost a countries government is tasked with enacting policy that is good for the people, and the NHS remaining under the auspices of British rule satisfies that, and selling it off does not.
  
  Reply
- We finance our NHS, so we should have a say on how it is run 4 years ago
  
  We pay for our NHS with taxes, so we should have a say on how it is run. It should be run forour benefit, not the shareholders of a private company like Centene.
  
  Reply
  - Msri Carmen 4 years ago
    
    Giving parts of the NHS to be managed by contractors makes NHS less efficient and more expensive to the taxpayer. Too many overheads get the cash the NHS should be spending in our health.NHS must be treasured and united.
    
    Reply
- Denis Hall 4 years ago
  
  I have nearly a decade of experience living in the US and seeing the catastrophic impact of so many people who cannot afford to access much needed medical attention. The approach of companies such as Centene is to squeeze the scale and quality of coverage while pushing up costs beyond any reasonable rate of rise.
  
  Reply
- Shirley Koster 4 years ago
  
  The NHS is for people not profit. Private companies only care about making money for their shareholders and they do this by cutting back on the care and services they should be providing. Evidence shows this time and time again. NO to privatisation of the NHS in any form.
  
  Reply
- Rosie Woods 4 years ago
  
  The NHS has been one of our greatest achievements as a country. Free healthcare at point of need. For this to be threatened by profit-making business would be such a violation of a long held principle and also put at risk those already most in need.
  
  Reply
  - Eugene Myerson 4 years ago
    
    I agree with all the above comments, but I particularly admire Rosie Woods' comment immediately above: succinct, to the point, and packing a powerful punch. I ham 87 years old, have lived in the UK since 1958, and benefited hugely from the free NHS system down the decades. It is much admired in foreign countries which do not have free healthcare. For heavens sake, do not jeopardize this superb system for the sake of short-term profits.
    
    Reply
- John Woodland 4 years ago
  
  When the NHS was set up it was to enable access by all to a common healthcare system. It is not right therefore that bits of the NHS are being sold-off to companies whose only interest is in profit. We must ensure that the National Health Service remains national and not another US organisation. If some people want a private healthcare system, it should not be at the expense of the many who still want to enjoy and benefit from OUR NHS. Let those who want private healthcare fund it themselves.
  
  Reply
  - Janet Dore 4 years ago
    
    I wholeheartedly agree with these comments. I was born just before the birth of the NHS. My parents llater told me how much their lives had improved and how dire it was previously if you did not have money for doctors’ bills. The NHS has served me and my family very well. I do not resent having paid NI contributions and tax.
    
    Reply
- Andy Thompson 4 years ago
  
  Exactly this. People's wellbeing is not a commodity that is for sale.
  
  Reply
- Anita Woollett 4 years ago
  
  Please respect the wishes of our citizens, a resounding NO to involvement of private profit. We have seen the contrast between the efficacy of public service in the roll out of the vaccine, and the incompetence of private involvement in the test and trace system. Do they never learn, or do they just not care?
  
  Reply
- Leonie Barus 4 years ago
  
  The NHS is a public asset, not for private profit. Renewing a contract with Centene drives forward the Government’s privatisation agenda for the NHS which will dramatically diminish the standards of public healthcare in the UK and put private profit before public health. This will be a disaster for this country.
  
  Reply
  - Hazel King 4 years ago
    
    Our NHS should be a not-for-profit organisation. We want the best treatment for everyone’s health, not profits for wealthy investors.
    
    Reply
- Brian Eadon 4 years ago
  
  It's in the name. It's NATIONAL ie it's owned by the nation. It works for the HEALTH of the people who own it,not for the profit. It's a SERVICE for all not for the monetary dividend of share holders. It must remain and return to OUR NHS not sold off to private companies.
  
  Reply
- Susan Shah 4 years ago
  
  The NHS is a public good, for everyone. It needs all its resources and any profit to be put back into delivering care, not dividends to shareholders. The history of private initiatives is that they take the easy things and leave the NHS to deliver complex care.
  
  Reply
  - Vic Taylor 4 years ago
    
    So many people in the stored letters above adversely criticise such ventures as Centene into the Health National Service. Some of the letters, from the writers' direct observation and experience of the situation in the USA, warn of the dangers (and possibly dubious legality) of the part played by dominance of shareholder interest in what must surely negate the part that should be played by public interest and involvement. When will Government, of whatever persuasion, see the evidence all round us of non-public intervention in essential services like transport, health and local government activity and responsibility? The role of Government should be to supervise and advise, not to hand over responsibility.
    
    Reply
- Harry Atkinson 4 years ago
  
  The NHS, founded in 1948, was never intended to be a "for profit" organisation like the Health Care (industry !) in the USA where hard working, low income people struggle to pay the inflated insurance payments which go straight into the pockets of "fat cats", it was meant to be "free at the point of use", and originally it's purpose was to look after the health of UK citizens and their families "from cradle to grave". It was also designed to be predominantly run by clinical staff according to clinical need, not some greedy profit target !
  
  Reply
- E.Thurlow Hazelwood 4 years ago
  
  The NHS was established in order to ensure that everyone, whether rich or poor, had access to good quality health provision from "the cradle to the grave". This has been epitomised by the way those suffering from Covid have been looked after and the superb success of the vaccination programme. To allow profit-making agencies to try to take over a national asset is an appalling prospect and totally disrespectful to all those who have worked so hard to make the NHS the success it is since its inception in July 1948.
  
  Reply
- Julian Sheppard 4 years ago
  
  Please stop this greedy company from destroying our NHS.
  
  Reply
- Caroline Wilkinson 4 years ago
  
  The NHS is safe in our hands. Another lie by this government. This is and continues the privatisation of our NHS by stealth, shamefully started by Tony Blairs government. When will the British public wake up? Stop the rot. If Coronavirus has taught us anything its the importance of our NHS not profit making privatisation.
  
  Reply
- Rachel Dolton 4 years ago
  
  No profit from peoples health.
  
  Reply
- C. Mollison 4 years ago
  
  I was fortunate to be born shortly after the creation of the NHS. However, I have lived and worked in countries where people suffered and died simply because they could not afford medical attention. One of these countries is the USA !!! Please do not allow this to happen in the UK.
  
  Reply
- Daphne Kelly 4 years ago
  
  As it's name implies the National Health Service is meant to be for all citizens, not according to how much money they have. private companies are for profit and do not serve the public good.
  
  Reply
- MR PETER SMITH 4 years ago
  
  This is the thin end of the wedge to privatising the whole of the NHS and a defeat for the principal of free medical care for everyone not a two tier syatem with an added tier of insurance companies.
  
  Reply
- Elizabeth Hallworth 4 years ago
  
  Because i dont want to become one of the heartbreaking US statistics of people who have died or been maimed due to their dodgy private healthcare. Even with little private care in the UK currently, one of my friends was disabled by nerve pain at 34 by a private surgeon who operated on two hernia's, the second didnt need an operation and that was the one that disabled her. This doesn't happen so often on the NHS becuase they have rigorous standards. All private healthcare companies care about is profit. SAY NO TO PROFIT MAKING FROM PUBLIC SERVICES.
  
  Reply
- CAntliff 4 years ago
  
  I want our National Health to still be there for my grandchildren & their grandchildren, as it has been throughout my life.
  
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- Pamela Tate 4 years ago
  
  People's health first. Don't renew contract!
  
  Reply
- Annie May 4 years ago
  
  The NHS has shown its mettle steering us through a pandemic. It is vital that every Penny of taxpayers money goes to keep the nation healthy and it makes no sense to symphony off funds to a private firm
  
  Reply
- Toby 4 years ago
  
  I am greatly concerned by these developments. Regardless of the assurances and promises Centene might give, this undermines the NHS. There must be no room for a profit-seeking multinational in public health provision.
  
  Reply
- Brenda Wishart 4 years ago
  
  I was born in 1934, so I can well remember what it was like before the health service was created by the Labour Party. If poor people
  were ill they had no recourse to a doctor or medicines. The Health Service should never be run for profit, do we really want to go
  backwards?
  
  Reply
- Julia Evans 4 years ago
  
  The National Health Service is owned by those who fund it, that is, all of those paying their National Insurance, etc. It is therefore a National Asset, not a profit making business.. The Conservative Government promised to keep and improve investment in our NHS , and protect it for the people of Britain.
  
  Reply
- Adam 4 years ago
  
  Privatisation has been a complete disaster in this country in everything it’s touched.You can’t treat public services like they’re a private company making profit with fat cats at the top and corruption in government causing fragmentation and collapse.
  
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- Simon Hickey 4 years ago
  
  Everything about the American health care system shows us how we should not provide a service in the UK. We should not allow large corporations to buy up parts of the NHS and move profits abroad.
  
  Reply
- Simon Hickey 4 years ago
  
  Everything about the American health care system shows us how we should not provide a service in the UK. We should not allow large corporations to buy up parts of the NHS and move profits abroad.
  
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- Sally Foster 4 years ago
  
  A publicly funded AND provided NHS please. No need for profit making providers.
  
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- nick 4 years ago
  
  Dear committee. Please pause and look beyond yourself, to those in our society that need or will need the healthcare that the NHS was set up to provide. Please do not be swayed by money arguments, there is funding to be had as any bailout has shown. Please be true to the spirit
  Thanks
  Nick
  
  Reply
- Janet Wellings 4 years ago
  
  The NHS is a democratic institution, it is not run for profit, it belongs to the British public and it is not for sale!
  
  Reply
  - Barbara Scrivens 4 years ago
    
    The NHS was set up for everybody in the country and funded by our contributions. We need to support it as health is more important than wealth . Do NOT put profit before health. You do not have the right to sell it to others.
    
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- Jeanette 4 years ago
  
  I believe the NHS should not be run for profit and this will allow for a greater service being provided
  
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- Rob Smitton 4 years ago
  
  Health for profit is a nightmare for anyone unable to pay. Before the NHS people who couldn't pay rarely saw the doctor. Please, no return to such savagery and inequality!
  
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- John Light 4 years ago
  
  I am horified at the idea that foreign companies operating for profit should be able to control the spending on my health care which I pay for in my taxes. I don't want my money going to them.
  
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- Denis Jeffery 4 years ago
  
  If you set a precedent here then that will give the green light to all the other privateers waiting to dismantle our not for profit NHS across the country.Starting with those areas with high social and health deprivation indices which will get "absorbed" into more profitable GP practice configurations.This is happening in Dentistry.Fight for a better Central Government resourcing both financial and medical practitioner staffing.
  Please do not renew the contract.
  
  Reply
- Jess Jones 4 years ago
  
  British people want a British national health service, not an American health system brought in by stealth. We know the American system is a disaster for many individuals, especially the vulnerable. This has not been voted for so must not be allowed.
  
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- Anthony Mason 4 years ago
  
  Please prioritise health over profits. The only way an outsourced service can make money is to reduce the quality and quantity of the service. The company is part of a US multination corporation and will use various tax strategies to minimise any UK tax to be paid
  
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- Claire Swarts 4 years ago
  
  The NHS is funded by us the national insurance payers!!! This service is for the people not for profit !!! Save the nhs
  
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- S. Micallef 4 years ago
  
  The NHS is paid for and owned by the people of the country to provide health care based on need not wealth. I object to it becoming a vehicle for generating profit for the few. This will inevitably undermine the principles on which a much loved institution was built.
  
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- Sandra Marks 4 years ago
  
  It is absolutely imperative that we take profit out of healthcare. The chain goes right back, the reason 2/3 of the population are sick with western diseases towards the ends of their lives is multi corporations (big agriculture big food et cetera) pursuing profit without ethics. We cannot have a multi corporation/ governmental/healthcare complex also gorging on this corporate carnage.
  
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- Peter Williams 4 years ago
  
  Despite my Mp,Robbie Moore (Tory)telling me that this govt.has not privatised any of the health service..I wish to add my voice to those urging health authorities not to renew contracts with any private companies wanting to make profit from a service paid for by uk taxpayers.
  
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- Suzanne Leaman 4 years ago
  
  Heath care should not be run for profit money given to share holders would be better spent providing quality health care for all not trying to provide a cut price service to maximise company profits.the continued privatisation of services has lead to increased bureaucracy, poor communications, company’s competing with each other for contracts this is not in the interests of the public and demonstrated by the scandalous awarding of contracts during the covid pandemic ie PPE
  
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- Nicola Cole 4 years ago
  
  Please do not renew this contract. Healthcare should NEVER be there for profit and the NHS belongs to the British people not private companies and not the Government.
  
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- Rosamond Perrott 4 years ago
  
  As a patient in the Northwest London practice I do not want it owned by an American company. It’s a brilliant practice and I want it kept within the NHS. Which is for the people - free service at the point of delivery.
  
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- Tom Watt 4 years ago
  
  The NHS is our country's greatest asset and greatest achievement. No government or individual has the right or the mandate to sell it - - or any part of it - - off to a commercial enterprise. Far less a commercial enterprise owned and operated overseas. This shameful acquisition of GP surgeries by US profiteers must be stopped before it's too late.
  
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- Tom leaman 4 years ago
  
  The NHS is funded by the people’s taxes and NI contributions privatisation leads to increased bureaucracy putting services out for tender changing providers leads to less continuity of care,the NHS belongs to the people, private for profit companies have no place in health care as their profits are at the expense of poor contracts and wages for staff cut price services for the public and profit for the company with bonuses for directors please would the committee consider the importance of GP access which has been reduced where it has been deemed a practice is not profitable
  
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- Patricia East 4 years ago
  
  We've seen the effect of restricted access to services during the Covid-19 crisis - the general feeling is one of anxiety & fear. It is a very uncomfortable, worrying feeling. Those who can pay probably will be OK - what about the rest of us?
  
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- Shirley skates 4 years ago
  
  Please would the committee consider how important access to quality healthcare is.private company’s are for profit the formation of large practices to Increase profitability and the closure of small GP practices effect the elderly, the disabled and those who are unwell they would have to travel greater distance may not have access to transport or not be fit to drive.The NHS should remain public and accountable to the public as their tax and NI pays for this,
  
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- Alan Cubbage 4 years ago
  
  We have never seen in this country a government so corrupt who have spent millions of tax payers money on lawyers to try and prevent the public knowing how much money of our money they wasted on unsuitable PPE to enrich their friends. We need to take a stand against all attempts by this government to privatise the NHS by stealth.
  
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- Peter Claydon 4 years ago
  
  Where would Centene's profits come from . . . reduced quality of care or by recruiting less qualified staff to deliver the service?
  
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- anton white 4 years ago
  
  We do not want Centene. interfering in our NHS
  
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- Mary McHugh 4 years ago
  
  The NHS has grown through the funds and effort of the country. Training, research and development opportunities were created through national investment. It is a system that protects the rich and the vulnerable despite poor leadership. Creaming off the profitable elements so rich investors with connections get richer is immoral and short sighted. The pandemic has shown the health of everyone ultimately impacts all society. Learn the lesson. Take responsibility for health and well being for all not for profit.
  
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- Sonya Baksi 4 years ago
  
  My father was a doctor before we had the NHS. My parents knew what it was to have to ask people for payment. We all contribute through NI and tax. If you don't need help that's great. But we pool the risk and for those who do need compassion, service and caring at the time of need must receive this. It is vital in a civilised society that we support our wonderful NHS. It continues despite savage cuts and 10 years of under funding with dedicated staff who are exhausted after the pandemic year. Companies that profit from ill health and personal disaster have no place in our NHS. We shall not go backwards.
  
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- Stu Tarit 4 years ago
  
  NHS was established to help everyone, not shareholders in private companies
  
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- Jan Stephens 4 years ago
  
  The NHS is paid for by the British people and it is there to provide health care for all of us. If Centene are allowed to run our GP services they will take money out for the company’s profit - we need those monies to stay in our NHS to go on improving our health care in the UK not to go to shareholders in the US.
  
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- Peter Swift 4 years ago
  
  To have a for-profit American Company running an important part of our NHS is utterly unacceptable. In the long-run it will lead to decisions which will be made purely for economic reasons and NOT for the patients or staff who work in the service. Centene must be dismissed. Management of the NHS must be done by NHS organisations, publically funded.
  
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- joan taylor 4 years ago
  
  Our GP surgeries should never be for profit. They are part of our NHS which should be for the health and well being of the people
  of this country. Raise taxes if necessary to support our health service but don't allow greedy money-makers to take over our surgeries.
  
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- Martin Kilbey 4 years ago
  
  One of the biggest threats posed by privatization is that the generosity and charitableness of health workers will be undermined if they see private companies and investors taking profits which should be ploughed back into equipment, facilities and staff pay.
  
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- Mary Bate 4 years ago
  
  OUR NHS is for the benefit of the U.K.public, NOT GREEDY AMERICAN Companies. It is run on a NOT FOR PROFIT basis in the public sector and funding for those GP Practises in Centenes hands should cease! Keep OUR NHS in the public sector
  
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- Vivienne mugford 4 years ago
  
  The NHS should not be privatised- it is able to run itself for us. Keep the greedy profiteers out, please.
  
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- Lesley 4 years ago
  
  Public services involve caring for people. But private companies make a profit from public services by cutting corners or underinvesting.
  We are against this happening to our National Health Service. No to privatisation! Look what happened when Carillion failed. If private companies are running our public services and are too big to fail, the public has to pick up the pieces when things go wrong. Keep our NHS national not private.
  
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- Cynthia Ankers 4 years ago
  
  This is so wrong. This is privatisation of the British public's NHS through the back door. It is wrong, stop it now.
  
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- Ley Holloway 4 years ago
  
  Profit has no place in health care.Kick out the profiteers.
  
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- Bill Gallan 4 years ago
  
  I am against the privatisation of GP surgeries.
  This is introducing the profit motive to a national service which is already underfunded and cannot afford to pay dividends to shareholders.
  
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- Joe Price 4 years ago
  
  This is dismantling the NHS by stealth,something this shower of charlatans are good at.
  
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- Hilary Foster 4 years ago
  
  We need and want a patient and outcome led NHS not profit led.
  
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- Lynda Jarvis 4 years ago
  
  We must retain control of all our NHS services.
  Outside companies are looking to make money from what is our NHS, this is not acceptable to all the people who have paid for this service over the years since it's inception.
  
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- Sarah 4 years ago
  
  Who in the UK wants to lose any aspect of the NHS - ie National / Health / Service - to a profit driven motive? The core principles of the NHS need to be upheld and supported, not decimated.
  
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- John Morgan 4 years ago
  
  Centene do not actually provide any services that the NHS cannot do itself. The difference is that they are doing it to extract profits from the NHS (funded by people's taxes) and that they do not have any commitment to public health.
  
  Reply
- Vania Terzopoulou 4 years ago
  
  Yes well said - one day it will be noted as silent takeover and these are the ways the silence makes us all complicit.
  
  Reply
- J. Heap 4 years ago
  
  The government repeatedly promised the NHS would not be 'on the table' in trade talks with the US. However, it seems that they're not even waiting for a trade deal before gifting a foreign commercial organisation a chance to access our public purse.
  
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- Dr Brian L Potter 4 years ago
  
  I'm totally satisfied with the N.H.S. as it was originally intended to be. NO PRIVATE ORGANIZATION SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO TAKE PROFIT FROM IT !. Stop trying to privatise any part of it !!!.
  
  Reply
- John Bevan 4 years ago
  
  I am a believer that the NHS is for the people and not for privatisation it should be free from the cradle to the grave
  just as it was set up by our NYE in 1948 so we want all privatisation out of our NHS now.
  
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- bernadette elliott 4 years ago
  
  Health care in USA isn't accessible to many and is profit based - why would we want a company from USA running our practices...
  
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- Helen Prosser 4 years ago
  
  HOW CAN WE SELL OUT OUR HEALTH SERVICE TO AMERICAN BUSINESSES???
  What if it was RUSSIA? or IRAN?
  ALL NHS SERVICES ARE
  O U R S !!!!!!!
  SELL AT YOUR PERIL.
  PEOPLE DIED IN TWO WORLD WARS TO PROTECT OUR SOVEREIGNTY - YOU ARE
  SELLING THEM OUT FOR PROFIT.
  KEEP THE NHS OURS.
  
  Reply
- Adrienne Burgess 4 years ago
  
  The National Health should not be involved with for-profit organisations.
  
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- FD 4 years ago
  
  I agree Good health and social care is a human right and a Not for Profit NHS is the only service which can do this holistically, fairly and effectively
  
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- annie haughton 4 years ago
  
  I am disgusted that these companies can run our nhs services WE PAY OUR TAXES FOR TO PROTECT LIVES for profit, taking their profits out of the uk and not even paying tax here. We are not your cash cow. Profits and health care do not go togther and your lousy bad outcomes usa private health care system proves that.
  
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- Ian Gill 4 years ago
  
  The NHS is for public health in the UK NOT private profit in the US. An absolute disgrace to sell it like this. Not in my name.
  
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Jan Shortt 4 years ago

Private providers put shareholders first not the people they are supposed to give a service to. The history of privatisation of GP practices speaks for itself - closures because they are not 'financially viable'. That should be message enough to the decision-makers - this is the UK not USA and we don't want their brand of health care. Please make sure you do the right thing and not give our money away to those whose primary interest is profit.

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Dr A Winser 4 years ago

Profit-making for shareholders and private interests has no place in a publicly-funded universal healthcare system like the NHS. It amounts to the taxpayer funding the wealthiest people at the expense of the health of the nation.
Privatisation of GP practices must not be allowed.

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Anne Bannerman 4 years ago

Private company Circle took over my local hospital (Hinchingbrooke, Huntingdon). After a few years, Circle pulled out stating that the hospital "was not commercially viable"! Our NHS is far too essential a service to be left to the whims of the free market and EVERY part of it needs to be taken out of private hands completely.

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- joe m 4 years ago
  
  Exactly! it is a NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE. Not some buisness venture, a NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE.
  
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SUSAN Cameron 4 years ago

US companies work for profit and treat their patients disgracefully, squeezing every last penny out of even the most needy. We were promised the NHS was not for sale, so let's keep the US out of our medicine provision altogether. We'll regret it if we don't.

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Michelle Goddard 4 years ago

I believe in a publicly run NHS. Stop Centene from taking over our GPs NOW. GP surgeries should not be run for profit.

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John Murphy 4 years ago

The NHS belongs to and is paid for by the British Public. It belongs to them and them only.
Wish you every success with this really important campaign.

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Joo Ennis 4 years ago

GP surgeries are for the people not for profit making organisations to use them in order to privatise our beloved NHS, that I and everyone else funds!

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martin spiers 4 years ago

Having worked as a GP all my life I respect and enjoy the benefits of the National Health Service. There is no need for privatisation of any part of it so long as it is properly funded and a free health service is an essential part of the British ethos. Letting any privatisation into a state sector will be the thin end of the wedge for privatising the whole lot, which will mean a health service for the well off, and insured, BUT poor health and poor prospects of improvement of health for a large minority of our population. I have witnessed myself how private health care, as in the USA ,is divisive and discriminatory. We do not want that in our democracy.
Martin Spiers, M.B. Ch/B/

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Michelle Goddard 4 years ago

Stop the privatisation of our GP's, care should not be used to make a profit.

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Eric Gendle 4 years ago

Even the Daily Mail have described Centene in very disparaging terms, solely out to maximise profits

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- Julie Miller 4 years ago
  
  The NHS is owned by the British public , it is not for sale!
  As a person with a chronic health condition & an NHS employee, I know the effects privatisation would have on health care.
  Private care requiring health insurance would be a death knell for so many, as in the United States.
  
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David Chisholm 4 years ago

Dear Commissioning Committee
I am writing to request that you do not renew the GP contract with Centene. NHS resources should be used to deliver the best quality healthcare without having to consider private shareholders' interests. I and countless others have paid National Insurance contributions to ensure a top quality public health service and not to put money into the hands of greedy international corporations.
Thank you.
David Chisholm

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- Anonymous 4 years ago
  
  The NHS is and has been paid for by the public It should not be a cash cow for a private company.
  I would ask ,please consider carefully ,not to renew the contract with Centene.
  Thank you.
  Roy Banton
  
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Liz Webb 4 years ago

NO to greedy multi-nationals like Centene making a profit from our health service! The NHS should be publicly run and publicly accountable to the people who use it - not making profits for shareholders.

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Caroline Biebuyck 4 years ago

It's already clear that private provisions within the NHS are a disaster. The profit motive guarantees cherry picking, leaving more complex cases - which are on the rise - out in the cold. Private provision has no place in GP surgeries (or elsewhere in the NHS) and I strongly urge you not to renew Centene's contract.

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Alan 4 years ago

The NHS is a national institution and should never be privatised. It is paid for belongs to the British people

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Sue Cason 4 years ago

My doctors' surgery is run by warm and caring members of our community.Both doctors and all staff at the surgery know their patients. This is an important part of care for those who are unwell and without which, it demeans the whole of a small community.The NHS is paid for, by the British tax paying public and that means the NHS, not Centene.

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Emma Shaw 4 years ago

Private companies have no place in public health. The shareholders have more say about our care than we do as individuals which is inherently wrong. No to the renewal.

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Jenny Shepherd 4 years ago

Operose Health Ltd - the UK subsidiary of the USA Centene Corporation - is answerable to shareholders, not patients. This is not right. They are a loss-making company dependent for survival on Centene Corporation. Their Annual Report shows they drop contracts that are unprofitable. GP patients in North West London deserve a GP practice they can rely on, not one that skims profits for shareholders and that may ditch them if the finances don't add up.

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James Jackson 4 years ago

A company such as Centene should have no role in the NHS.

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June Buchan 4 years ago

This is the start of a very slippery slope. The NHS belongs to the people of this country who pay their taxes and no-one else.

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Tricia Sheerer 4 years ago

Healthcare is everyone’s right. It should be for people not for profit. Please keep our NHS safe.

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ruth coppard 4 years ago

The dentists are an example of what happens when the profit motive becomes paramount, so are the vets.
People don't seem to realise that Centene dont want to encourage our doctors to be kind and helpful and go the extra mile.They are there to make money.
We have to stop them. Virgin seem to have taken over a lot of Bath, and it is not a wonderful thing.

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Kathryn Pike 4 years ago

The clue is in the name - National Health Service. It is NOT for profit, NOT to enrich shareholders, NOT to be faceless and unaccountable.
It IS about people and communities and well-being and trust.
Centrene is NOT about the patient. It is NOT about the best interests of our national health. Stay away!

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Lesli Miller 4 years ago

The NHS - free at the point of access to those in need is the most precious thing we have in the UK and most people access its services via their local GP. Using an American multi-national company to provide GP services risks introducing the profit motive into an essential service on which we all depend and threatens the whole ethos of the NHS.

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Wendy Young 4 years ago

Private companies have no place in the NHS which is funded through taxation to ensure that health services are available to all. This decision in London is important to all of us across the country because it opens the door to these companies. I have never experienced better health care (or any other service)because private providers were involved. Please make a stand for all of us and do not renew this contract.

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Grace Distill 4 years ago

There can be no justification for allowing GP surgeries, or any NHS services, to be run by private companies for profit. If someone is making a profit, costs are inevitably higher - it's just logic. The NHS belongs to the British people, and for governments and authorities to feel they have the right to sell off our services, especially to an American company (look at the state of their unaffordable healthcare!), is anti-democratic at the least, and treasonous at the worst. It's insidious pilfering of the great service we've all been contributing to down the decades. WE pay for it with taxes and national insurance. It belongs to US, the people of Britain.

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Sarah Fawssett 4 years ago

Please do not give any contract to Centene to take over any GP practices. The NHS is publicly funded and administered and must remain so for the benefit of the whole population and so that funds are not diverted to profit making private health companies.

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Mary Broadbent 4 years ago

Please do NOT let Centene or any other private company take over our Health Service. This Conservative Goverment is destroying our NHS and our Country!

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- Diane Chick 4 years ago
  
  The NHS was created 73 years ago for the benefit of the British people,not for greedy companies, U S or otherwise.please do not give out any more private contracts.
  
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Vanessa Mordin 4 years ago

The NHS is paid for by taxes from the UK population and must remain in public ownership, especially as the NHS has such a wonderful record of helping patients. Privatising health care at the grassroots basic level of the GP surgery could result in a further slow erosion of our wonderful NHS, very much including our hospitals. Healthcare for people who are not able to PAY for it would become an issue and the general level of health in the UK population would decrease. All this starts at GP level and therefore privatisiation of GP surgeries must be opposed.

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Kay Murphy 4 years ago

For years we've been warned about American healthcare companies, starting with Michael Moore's 2007 film, 'Sicko'. Why should we put up with having these companies imposed on us? Private healthcare has no place in the NHS, unless you want to be responsible for more sickness and death.

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Gemma Hill 4 years ago

We must stop private companies taking over GP practices and trying to make money off ill people. The NHS has had far too much privitisation by the back door, but most of the people who rely on the NHS cannot afford private healthcare and medicine. Centrene taking over any GP practices will only serve to exploit the disadvantaged more. We did not vote for this! It is totally undemocratic.

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- Rosalie Anne Battye 4 years ago
  
  The idea of Centene taking over my GP Practice is totally abhorrent. My practice is well run, functions excellently and provides necessary help for all who need it. To think of a greedy insurance company trying to take it over is unthinkable. The whole idea of the NHS being privatised by stealth, through companies and practices such as Centene aim to provide would be disastrous. Please DO NOT LET IT HAPPEN!!!
  
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Linda Taylor 4 years ago

We have paid our national insurance for over 50 years and there is no way that our NHS should be given away to a private company, for them to make a profit.

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Malcolm Lyon 4 years ago

There should be no role for a private, profit-making company supplying the most fundamental GP services in a publicly-funded NATIONAL Health Service. As a member of the tax-paying and National Insurance-paying public I seriously object to the concept of indirectly contributing to a company whose motive is making a profit for itself and its shareholders out of OUR public health system. Please don't renew Centene's contract.

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Richard Bateman 4 years ago

It is the National Health Service, not a multi-national health service!

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N Stirrup 4 years ago

The best thing about this country is the NHS, for people not profit. It's priority is health are rather than making money and that's how it should stay. It has saved my life and those of various family members numerous times, care that we could not have afforded had we been in a system like the US

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Jean Wilson Gardner 4 years ago

The reason Centene exists is about making money. The NHS was set up to offer a service and healing to every person who needs it. It was founded on compassion and care. Please do not let it be destroyed.

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Mrs Anthea Leadbetter 4 years ago

It is not right that companies should make a profit from those unfortunate in having ill health. No one should benefit from other's misfortune. Grace not greed.

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David Jones 4 years ago

AS someone who can remember what it was like to be ill before the founding of the NHS, profit should not be involved within the NHS, which belongs to all citizens and have not been consulted on the sale of NHS surgerys.

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Susan Shaw 4 years ago

The NHS is funded from the public purse, that is the taxes paid by everyone. Why should profits be skimmed off by greedy American firms instead of being re invested into the NHS. It is totally wrong, wrong, wrong.

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Christine Hyde 4 years ago

For-profit GP practices are not in the interests of local patients, whatever anyone says. They can withdraw from their contracts if they don't make enough profit, or not renew with only 2 weeks notice as happened locally to me. The patients were left stranded, trying to find another practice to take them and the GP surgeries that were left, some of them with very long lists, were put under pressure to fit these people in. They are also not easily regulated. They will not reveal certain aspects of the practice or procedures due to 'commercial confidentiality'. Remove Centene's role in the NHS, full stop.

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David Everitt 4 years ago

Centene's business model is to buy up practices and then close the one's that are not profitable thus leaving patients in those areas without access to a medical surgery that is within a reasonable travelling distance.
Proof of this has been demonstrated in the USA, as such I fail to understand how this gov.uk can even contemplate having them run any part of our NHS, and as a warning to this gov.uk people will remember come election time and how far off are they?.

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Peter Collins 4 years ago

Numerous American friends and colleagues - some of whom have benefitted from NHS care; one of whom had his life saved - are urging us to resist this creeping privatisation of of the NHS. They can see, better than we can perhaps, the consequences of subordinating clinical priorities to commercial interest, an inevitable consequence of introducing the profit motive into the system. As has been remarked elsewhere, your decision will have consequences country-wide. Please do the right thing!

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Mary Broadbent 4 years ago

This government is the worst ever, they are destroying our country, just looking after the well off! They need to go!

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Viv 4 years ago

I could not put it better than Jan's comments above - Health Care should be about people not profit.
Private providers put shareholders first not the people they are supposed to give a service to. The history of privatisation of GP practices speaks for itself - closures because they are not 'financially viable'. That should be message enough to the decision-makers - this is the UK not USA and we don't want their brand of health care. Please make sure you do the right thing and not give our money away to those whose primary interest is profit.

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Anthony Peter 4 years ago

I pay taxes for the public good. I do not expect my taxes to be siphoned off by private companies for private profit. The services they offer can and should be provided by publicly-owned organistaions operating for the public good.

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Susan Kelly 4 years ago

Please don't undermine the NHS. It's our greatest national treasure in terms of being free at the point of access to everyone in need and should NOT be subject to privatisation and the demands of the capitalist market

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Dr Patricia Macdonald 4 years ago

The NHS should remain in the public sector, and should not be privatised by the back door, or, indeed, by the front door. The contract in question appears to be the thin end of this wedge.

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Elliott Kerslake 4 years ago

If this government persists to outsource our NHS what percentage wise will they cut off our National insurance bills? Why are they selling our NHS to make profit and not passing it down to the tax payer??? When does the poor old tax payer get any benefit from this? Or is this the same old tory way sell and sneak off

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Deborah Cornwall 4 years ago

The National Health is for the people who pay their national insurance into funding it, NOT for private companies who want to make a profit from it. It must remain free at source for all British people at the time they need medical help. Private companies are only interested in financial gains which in turn lead to people not being able to afford to stay healthy. We have an NHS which is the envy of the world & we must preserve this.

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E D Wright 4 years ago

I am writing to request that you do not renew the GP contract with Centene.
NHS resources should be used to deliver the best quality healthcare without having to consider private shareholders' interests. Don't destroy the best Medical Service in the world. Healthcare is everyone’s right. It should be for people not for profit. Please keep our NHS safe from commercial preditores.

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Martin Ludford 4 years ago

I feel compelled to add my name and comment regarding greedy multi-nationals such as Centene from making a grab for our NHS services and running these services for profit:
NO to greedy multi-nationals like Centene making a profit off our national health service.
NO to greedy multi-nationals like Centene closing our GP surgeries and cutting vital support staff making the NHS even more venerable to current and future pandemics.
NO to greedy multi-nationals like Centene prioritising profit over our health, this MUST NEVER happen.
It is quite obvious, Centene are trying to sink their teeth into our NHS, expanding their reach by the year.
North West London Primary Care Commissioning Committee must do everything to end this dangerous grab of NHS services from happening because if you allow this, Centene and others will be given a green-light to decimate further my NHS.

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Jan Birtwell 4 years ago

Our NHS belong to the British public, not multi-national companies, profit for shareholders has no place. Keep our precious NHS public!

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- Erica Waite 4 years ago
  
  Talking to people in the UK, especially England, recently, I have realised that private healthcare contracts mean zero healthcare in reality for NHS patients.
  
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Jacky Smith 4 years ago

The complete collapse of dentistry services illustrates the weakness in the "privatised NHS" business model. Involving particularly US companies in GP provision could be catastrophic because they will have no hesitation in pulling resources from the UK if something happens to reduce their profits.

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Kat Midgley 4 years ago

Centene seems to have become a much too-powerful player in our publicly funded healthcare system. I appreciate that most or all GPs are private 'contractors', but they should be locally based individuals or groups, working for the health of the local community, not the wallets of investors and shareholders. The corporate take-over of so many aspects of our lives is a sad and dangerous development, and local primary healthcare is a much too precious service to go the same way. It needs careful 'handlers' who are in it for the right reasons!

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Trina Palmer 4 years ago

This is our British NHS known worldwide, PLEASE let us do it our way

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Anonymous 4 years ago

The general public want and need all parts of the NHS to be in public hands. Private companies do not have the best interests of the general public at heart. Their main priority is profit and share holders. This is not good for your health!

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Christine Williams 4 years ago

American private medical insurance is unaffordable for the many. UK is a public NHS paid for by all taxpayers.
GPs are the vital part of the NHS, for referral on to diagnosis by free tests for life sustaining medical treatment, NHS consultants and NHS hospital treatments.
The 1950s born pension campaigners' experience of privatised GPs, is that they are not given this help, but ignored, with just painkillers and not wishing to do anything but make profits, and not provide any of the above. This can be fatal.
My life and my ability to function relies on NHS free medication and free prescriptions in old age. As elderly we tend to have multiple health issues and so a profit focused service would not treat us. This is already happening with the frailty score denying us treatment, along with rationing of treatments and surgeries that mostly are for elderly.
And with the DNR notices aka Liverpool Care Pathway, that is denial of treatment based on age. We are medically old with the normal changes of the aged body from 60, but in UK old age / ill health begins to hit from 50.
We already had this ageism by the denial of treatment based on age by the discharge of Covid19 positive older people from NHS hospitals to care homes, that caused the high death rate of residents and carers.
Do not renew Centene's contract to run GP practices tomorrow Thursday 27 May 2021. I am helping the local people, as my life depends on a public NHS.

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Jennifer Budden 4 years ago

Health care shouldn't be governed by profit. It was our NHS staff who worked diligently and beyond all duty to support those during the pandemic. Once you introduce private companies it diminishes the service offered because instead of being based on the health care needs of patients it is all about making money. We don't want an American style health service here in the UK which over time will reduce the level of service offered and discriminate against those whose needs are greatest. Alternatively it will operate an inferior service with taxpayers' money as easy profit. Pay for the service direct. Cut out the middle men - what do they contribute nothing?

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Lynn 4 years ago

National Health services should be for people not for profit!

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Colin Pearson 4 years ago

It is disgusting to provide healthcare as a 'business'. Decisions affecting people's health ought not to be made for commercial reasons. It is immoral.

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- Joe England 4 years ago
  
  End Centene's contract.
  
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Maureen Woodfull 4 years ago

No-one should make profit from another person's ill health. The NHS saved my life by detecting via a mammogram early breast cancer. I will fight to keep it publicly owned because everyone will need it at some time.

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Catherine Odell 4 years ago

The National Health Service is paid for by us taxpayers for the health needs of us all - not for companies to take money from to pay shareholders.
The National Health Service is available to all in the Uk regardless of who they are or where they live and should remain so and certainly not become inaccessible for those in small communities because it is unprofitable to provide for them in their area.

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Denise Phoenix 4 years ago

OUR NHS was created for the people of this country. It's not an old sofa that can be sold on the whim of a greedy Conservative government to Americans who only want to profit from misery and ill health. Hands off OUR nhs!!!!

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Terry Hicks 4 years ago

Once again corporate greed rears it's head with our Health Service being sold off in chunks with all sorts of reasons why. For those that created our health service, if it were possible, they'd be rolling in their graves right now. Tell me government members, can you really look yourselves in the mirror? What's happened to your conscience?
Look at our railways. Privatisation is a disaster. It's more expensive to run to "feed those at the top".
It compromises safety.
Apply the same to the GP services etc and you have another disaster with people who can't afford health insurance suffering the most.
This has to be "NOT FOR PROFIT".

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Tricia Kaminski 4 years ago

We want to safeguard the spirit of the NHS not just the letter. The NHS means nothing if it is free at the point of delivery but it delivers only that which will make a profit for its providers. We want to end the creeping (galloping!) privatisation and aim for a true service called the NHS.

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Anne Bebbington 4 years ago

I was here at the beginning of the NHS a wonderful idea for us. It belongs to us and should be shielded from sale to any company wishing to take over OUR NHS for profit. No one should profit from health problems. The NHS is there for the benefit of people who need it and not to make money for people who invest in it.

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Francis David Pinder 4 years ago

The health of the nation should not be a matter for private profit.

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Rukshana Afia 4 years ago

When the NHS was started decades ago it was the envy of the world and quickly justified itself with the huge positive impact it had on UK health . Why throw that away ? Do you want more to die unnecessarily or is it just that so many of a certain social class have private investments in US 'healthcare' companies ?

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Douglas Uttley 4 years ago

Putting profit into the health system will inevitably lead to un-necessary suffering, pain, & death.

NO to greedy multi-nationals like Centene making a profit off our health service.
NO to greedy multi-nationals like Centene closing our GPs.
NO to greedy multi-nationals like Centene prioritising profit over our health.

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Beryl Sutherland 4 years ago

I live in Scotland but I think if we let greedy multinationals in in England it's the thin end of the wedge & we'll be next. I'm proud of our NHS & it's ethos of care for all when needed. Multinationals should not be able to gain vast profits by privatising services & closing surgeries if not profitable.

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Gerald SMITH 4 years ago

As I have told Boris Johnson onj several occasions Centene operat in the UK using the name of Operose Health.
The company were £12.9million in debt aT THE END OF 2018 BUT i DIDN'T GET ANY RES[PONSE FROM HIM OR mATT hANCOCK OR Any other member of the Conservative Party.
I knew in July of last year what this was leading to but they didn't take any notice.
So please do not renew the cdontract for CVentene on thursday I beg of you.

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susan tideswell 4 years ago

You should be ashamed of yourselves, even thinking about it.

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Margaret Williams 4 years ago

Please do not renew Centene’s contract. There is no place in the NHS for profit making companies and organisations

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Olivia Agate 4 years ago

We the people pay for OUR NHS through our national insurance contributions. What possible reason could a profit centred organisation want with our GP Practices other than to gradually change the ethos from free at the point of contact/ delivery to paying for services rendered. No private companies should ever be involved particularly Centene with its record of fraud and shabby dealings back in the U S A.

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Bruce Grierson 4 years ago

Any privatisation of our Health Service 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.

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Stephen Smith 4 years ago

The NHS is a public service,, paid for by OUR taxation. It is not for sale nor for profit.

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alison Affleck 4 years ago

This is flagrant privatisation of the NHS. It is a slap in the face to all health care workers that pulled us through 2 giant waves of covid. It is a complete lie from this government who have repeatedly said the NHS would not be privatised. Does the Prime Minister and health secretary not understand the meaning of the word Privatisation?

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Mrs Sandra Thompson 4 years ago

The NHS should remain in our hands we as tax payers should have our gp surgery’s and hospitals in our hands not for the greedy Americans or any other countries taking over our wonderful NHS it is a disgrace that the thoughts of this happening.

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Morris Glenn 4 years ago

Private Companies cannot operate essential public services any better or more efficiently than, if those services remain publicly owned, in public ownership investments can all go to the provision of better services, with out the need to make a large profit or guarantee big dividends to shareholders.

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Anita Pacheco 4 years ago

The NHS exists to ensure that all people, from all social classes, should have good health care that is free at the point of delivery. It does NOT exist so that private companies can make a profit for their shareholders. Please do not renew Centene's contract.

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Liz Woodham 4 years ago

The clue for the reason that the vaccination roll out has been so successful lies in the word 'National', which implies a structure and ethos operating for the wider good and in national ownership and not the short term profit driven motives of a foreign corporation

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Scott Rogers 4 years ago

We're paying for private companies to strip down our health service and make profits over the care of the people who pay for it - this stops now!

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David Brown 4 years ago

The NHS was set up to help those who could not afford healthcare to have an excellent nursing and doctor support to get well. It was not devised so that in years to come, greedy corporations and drug companies could make huge profits at the expense of the sick and needy. The present world seems to condone the stealing of public services. It will not end well.

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Mary E. Pickles 4 years ago

Safeguardeing the integrity of the NHS is crucial. Any attempts to make profit from the needs of people must be rejected at once.

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Pat Mckenna 4 years ago

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.

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vince cullen 4 years ago

The NHS should always be a publicly owned organisation to stay under its originally fixed conditions. It was set up to provide care not to make profit.

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Maria Lear 4 years ago

The NHS is something to be proud of and not destroyed, as it will be, if we allow the greedy money-makers a slice of the pie. All the money raised through the contributions of the British taxpayers that support the NHS should be targeted into services and not profits. Do we really want to end up with a healthcare system like that existing in the U.S.A.? Aneurin Bevan would probably be turning in his grave at such a betrayal of a noble concept.

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Jenni Sinclair 4 years ago

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.

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Barbara Iqbal 4 years ago

The NHS was set up to provide health care for everyone in the UK that is free at the point of delivery. It was not set up to make profits for any organisation be it in the UK or elsewhere. I object to all forms of privatisation of the NHS and this takeover of GP practices is particularly pernicious. I urge you to stop it now. Thankyou for your time

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Richard Tredwell 4 years ago

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.

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Eric Amos 4 years ago

All NHS services should be for the good of the nations health and not be allowed to make a profit for a few already over wealthy people

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Maggi Gilson 4 years ago

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.

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Anonymous 4 years ago

If the NHS were correctly funded and the staff correctly remuniated we would all benefit. Private companies embedded in the system add nothin, they only take away.

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Susan Francis 4 years ago

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.

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Helga Rhein 4 years ago

I strongly object to any GP-practice or hospital being run by other companies other than NHS. The NHS is the proven not-for-profit system, which has created over 3 generations a justified trust in the system, which can never be replaced by companies whose interest is to give shareholders profit shares. This trust would be lost, and the market would be open for any doubtful therapy forms, the quality and trust in the present system would be changed to inequalities and mis-trust and doubtful performance.

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Philip Dawes 4 years ago

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.

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Mel Ackerman 4 years ago

There should be no "for profit" contractors within our NHS.

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sue turner 4 years ago

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.

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Belinda Hinsley 4 years ago

Centene has already shown it is only in the game for the money. It disgracefully left an earlier contract when it could not make money. They should not be allowed to continue with any more contracts. I see the NHS as my birthright. Others before me fought for it, and not just in world wars, l will continue that fight to ensure free universal care at point of need for those who come after me. The NHS is ours don't sell out and sell it to private contractors!

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Charmian Larke 4 years ago

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.

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Anonymous 4 years ago

This company has been repeatedly fined in USA for fraud and medical failures. How can you even begin to consider allowing it into the NHS? Tax payer money, which comes from us all, is to provide services NOT profit.
WHY do you want to be part of destroying one of the things that the UK can be truly proud of? Or are you about to get a kickback from it? for there can be absolutely no good reason for allowing this corrupt company into providing NHS services.

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Julie Taylor 4 years ago

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.

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Jon Risdon 4 years ago

Private companies should not be allowed to run GP practices: they are only interested in profit for the directors & shareholders, not the welfare of patients. Please don't renew Centene's contract this week. Thank you.

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Eileen Procter 4 years ago

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

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martin hogan 4 years ago

Centene have taken over my local GP services (multiple in the town), at least one has been closed. It takes up to 58 phone calls to reach the surgery. They never reply to emails, send out text messages telling me to call them - but I can't get through. Prescriptions are wrong

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Mr John C Brook 4 years ago

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.

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Winifred Waite 4 years ago

The NHS is the greatest achievement that any UK goverment ever created giving access to free healthcare for everyone. Why should a service that the people of this country pay for be sold off to an American company to run for profit.
This is disgusting, in addition this company does not even have a good track record for running healthcare services in Spain or the UK and shouldn't even be considered. This is a sorry path to take which will result in us losing our precious NHS and having a health service akin to that in the USA.

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Annabel Sanders-Hewett 4 years ago

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.

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David Wright 4 years ago

For-profit private companies are simply not compatible with our NHS. Patients and staff are the top priority, NOT shareholders. Healthcare in the US prioritises the wealthy at all times and US companies buying into our NHS must be stoutly resisted.

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Anonymous 4 years ago

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

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Peter McLaverty 4 years ago

The NHS was created as a publicly run health care system, free at the point of use. The involvement of profit maximizing organizations in the running of primary care services goes against the founding principles and ethos of the NHS. Please do not renew Centene's contract.

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Sarah Pritchard 4 years ago

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?

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Ian Hartshorn 4 years ago

Stop the privatisation of our GP's,the health service is run for the benefit of all and should not be run as a profit making organisation!

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David Hill 4 years ago

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.

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Francis Martin 4 years ago

The principle of the NHS is a tax-payer funded service for everyone. There is no room in this model for private providers. Whilst it might seem expedient, even advantageous, in the short term, other experiments in privatisation show that the long term impact will be an increase in costs and a diminishment of services. This is inevitable: with a provider looking to make a profit, there is in effect an extra mouth to feed, and it is the taxpayer that ends up bearing the cost. As decision makers, you have a privileged position. Think carefully about what you are doing, why you are doing it, and what impact your decision will have further down the line.

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Marie Brooke 4 years ago

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

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John Ricketts 4 years ago

I am 80, will soon be 81. In other words for the first couple of years of my life our EXCELLENT GP (Kenneth Lane MD) would bill my fgamily for health care. I never asked my parents if he tailored the bill according to our own financial state (we were a one-salary family
Dad working in a printing works). But I know of their IMMENSE relief when Nye Bevan's legislation was enacted.
We must fight to keep healthcare free at the point of delivery. If some shareholders miss out on "their" financial benefits, too bad.
Thank you for reading this.

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Fiona Henderson 4 years ago

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.

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Jennie Hamilton 4 years ago

The National Health Service was created as a service for everybody, rich or poor, funded from public funds. It is not for profit. Any privatisation of the Health Service by companies such as Centene will erode a service that has recently highlighted yet again its value and compassionate care In the most difficult circumstances. Do not allow private companies to run health services. Properly support and fund the National Health Service.

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Nicola Hall 4 years ago

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.

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Jennie Hamilton 4 years ago

The National Health Service was created as a service for everybody, rich or poor, funded from public funds. It is not for profit. Any privatisation of the Health Service by companies such as Centene will erode a service that has recently highlighted yet again its value and compassionate care In the most difficult circumstances. Do not allow private companies to run health services. Properly support and fund the National Health Service.

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Ruth 4 years ago

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.

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Sue Carole 4 years ago

There is no good reason at all why Centene should be allowed to make a profit out of our health service but many reasons why it shouldn't. The NHS is paid for by and serves the population of the UK - turning it into a profit-making enterprise for greedy shareholders is unthinkable.

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Terry Hart 4 years ago

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.

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A Clifford 4 years ago

NHS Not For Profit - profit in health care is inappropriate. The National Health Service is ours, paid for by us. Of course it should continue to belong to UK patients, not greedy private companies out to make a fast buck. Don't kid yourself that private companies run services more efficiently - that's a big fat lie. The profit motive is this: to make money above all other considerations. The system with its shareholders and highly paid directors demands that. What could be less appropriate?

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William Toker 4 years ago

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.

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Patricia Snow 4 years ago

In the UK we all pay for the NHS through our national insurance contributions. No private company should be allowed to make a profit from the NHS . This is just the start of privatisation and is an affront to all of us . Health must not be a profit making activity. I live in Scotland but if this is allowed to happen in England it could happen here too . We must not let this happen.

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Anonymous 4 years ago

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!

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Jess Morgan 4 years ago

The NHS is one of the best achievements of this country. Health care fir all, free at the point of service. It belongs to us all. It should not be privatised but stealth and not open to private companies to profit from. The private American health care system is only fir the rich who can afford it and leaves many unable to access health care. The private system will mean many cannot afford health care

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Maris Sharp 4 years ago

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

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Anne Page 4 years ago

The NHS is for us as we pay for it from our NI contributions. Renewing Centene's contract is privatising the NHS for profit and no one will benefit except its shareholders.

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Trevor Sykes 4 years ago

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.

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Sue Vaughan 4 years ago

Studies comparing practices run under GMS contracts with those under APMS show better care under GMS. Difficulties in recruitment should be solved by making the necessary investment in general practice so that the all important GP patient relationship can flourish once more. Turning GPs into employees of "for profit" companies will cost us dearly in the long run.

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Lisa Skeggs 4 years ago

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.

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David Saltmarsh 4 years ago

How come do Centene own GP practices already when the argument against a privatised NHS is so powerful and unpopular?

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Laura Wade 4 years ago

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.

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Lorna Newbrook 4 years ago

The NHS was set up and paid for from the taxes of UK citizens to support them at their time of need. It is not for commercial interests at home or from overseas to exploit by attempts at cynical profit-making. You cannot make money out of people being ill or needing treatment. We have seen GP clinics close, having been bought up by companies such as Centene. That denies a basic right of easy access to healthcare in those local areas, free at the point of delivery. Why would we let that happen to our trusted and innovative health service, which has served us so brilliantly? Let's protect it and support its development for the future without interference from companies, which do not understand or share our values of providing good healthcare according to need.

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Karen Nadin 4 years ago

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.

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Leslie Andrews 4 years ago

The private sector should have no place in our NHS. I note that B. Johnson always refers to "our" NHS, yet he is intent on selling it!

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Ruth Smith 4 years ago

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.

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Vivienne 4 years ago

The NHS is owned by the public, paid for over the generations from national revenue. To turn public assets into privately-owned businesses whose priority is profit, is illegitimate and morally reprehensible. As the debacle with PPE showed, it isn’t even efficient. The NHS needs to shed its corporate aspects and re-build from the ground up. Shed a layer of managers. Listen to patients, healthcare staff, and the general public - not those who wish to profit from the sick, or those whose function is to be “economical with the truth” when it comes to accountability.

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Charles David Foulstone 4 years ago

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

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Lynda 4 years ago

The NHS has always cared for everyone and has never charged for it!! Have nothing to do with ANY private company!! Health is a right for all not something that anyone should make a profit from!!

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Anonymous 4 years ago

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.

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Bill Wheeler 4 years ago

This is privatisation by the back door and must be stopped in its tracks. We are seeing, little-by-little this happening within the NHS, under the guise of 'making hospitals and staff work more effectively'. This is simply not the case, and is a direct cover up of the underfunding that has occurred over the last 12 years, plus the removal of 17,000 hospital beds.
The NHS needs more money and resources, not private companies running parts of it. Private companies only care for their bottom line!

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Vikki Miller 4 years ago

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.

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Vicky Barker 4 years ago

Time and time again this Government have said the NHS is safe with us yet time and time again they do deals with the private sector to undermine our precious NHS, it is just a kick in the teeth for our hard working doctors and nurses and all other care staff. Please, please do not give away any more wasteful contracts to profit oriented companies, healthcare should be our first priority. Surely this pandemic has highlighted our need for a well funded, well run NHS with more respect for the sterling work our NHS staff do for us please do not let their sacrifices be in vain.

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Neville Bruce 4 years ago

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.

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Lauren 4 years ago

No to privatisation. Any money made should go right back into the NHS.
Our NHS should not be for sale.

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Franka McNeil 4 years ago

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.

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Lindsay 4 years ago

The NHS: for all people & not for profit, guaranteed access to healthcare for all from birth to death. Not to be run for profit or by private interest. We are all invested in the NHS, which should remain publicly funded, publicly run and publicly accountable.

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Susan Brown 4 years ago

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.

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Jessica Tomey 4 years ago

As someone with mental health issues that do sometimes revolve around my anxiety with money and how much things cost, privatisation of the NHS is my absolute nightmare.
Let’s NOT be like America guys; ya know, THE ONLY FIRST WORLD COUNTRY WHERE HEALTH CARE IS BEHIND A PAYWALL...?

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Robert Walker 4 years ago

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.

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Lucie Mernagh 4 years ago

The NHS was founded on the 05 July 1948.It's ethos has always prioritised people before profit.The NHS is owned by all who fund it, and not Centene

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Susan Campbell 4 years ago

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.

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Brian Wilkinson 4 years ago

So many others have commented very concisely and with passion that there is little to add.
I really cannot see how can stand against such well thought out and fully reasoned points.
If you do then you deserve to be held to account in future elections. The NHS is ours and it is not for sale.

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Ted Exley 4 years ago

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.

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Anthony smith 4 years ago

The NHS is a PUBLIC service which is FREE to EVERYONE. If this contract goes ahead then it is paving the way for the NHS to be PRIVATISED & then we will be back to the days of the rich being able to afford treatment & the rest of us having to suffer. This cannot happen

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Patrick Owen 4 years ago

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.

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Rosemary Sabel 4 years ago

Evidence shows that the huge profits being made through privatisation are leading to poorer services and quality of life

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Moya Hogg 4 years ago

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.

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A Clyne 4 years ago

Allowing companies to profit from people who are ill immoral. It will impact on treatment decisions. The majority of people in this country are willing to pay extra tax to have a publicly funded health service. Our NHS is there to provide health care for everyone not to make money for shareholders.

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Rodney Stanford-Beale 4 years ago

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!

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Julie Porter 4 years ago

Poll after poll shows that a high quality national health service is something that voters across the entire political spectrum agree on. The continuing backdoor privatisation of our NHS is a betrayal of the British people, and a betrayal of the values and principles at the heart of the service. The NHS needs more funding, not more parasites leaching away public money into the pockets of private shareholders. Time after time public private partnerships cost more money than publicly run ones and create a downward pressure on service quality. The only difference here is that the stakes are much much higher.

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Anonymous 4 years ago

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.

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Anonymous 4 years ago

Merseyside does not want private, profit-makind surgeries. Please make an example and stop overseas private companies taking over our NHS -- and DESTROYING IT !

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Jackie Garland 4 years ago

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.

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Ian Clarke 4 years ago

The NHS is this country's greatest achievement and the Tories and other career politicians have been attacking it since it's birth ,resenting us the people getting care when we need it without profit for greedy little money grabbing darwinian capitalists. We got it ( the NHS ) as in lieu of payment for the sacrifice endured by the people in two world wars and the squalor some returned home to from the trenches inspired attlee's new government to build new homes fit for purpose and under bevan's tutelage create the nhs. Keep it public ,keep it for the people and not the idle greedy rich . A country is judged on how it treats the poor and needy not how well it looks after the rich and greedy.

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Brian Bailey 4 years ago

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?

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George Carmichael 4 years ago

The NHS is a service run by the British public for the benefit of the nation as a non profit organisation, don’t let this profit oriented government sell of a great asset to the Americans.

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Thomas Milligan 4 years ago

Peoples health before Corporate Greed

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Thomas Milligan 4 years ago

Health of the nation before corporate greed

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leonora almond 4 years ago

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

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Lesley Pole 4 years ago

The NHS is a mark of a civilised society...don’t let’s give it away to private companies who are chiefly interested in profit rather than healthcare for everyone

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Keith Higham 4 years ago

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 !

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m 4 years ago

The NHS was set up for a reason, that reason and need has not changed, private companies have an eye on profit, when profit becomes important services decline, it is a fact. If people want to operate in private health care, fine, let them, but do not mix the NHS with it. The NHS matters to us, the model in the USA is quite honestly very poor, only this morning I had an American friend bemoaning how bad it was, and how they wished for a universal health service, in India we've heard Doctors and others saying India must have a universal health care, because people are suffering because of the lack of it, we need continuity, and coordination, each person entitled to access to decent health care, they need to be able to trust providers, if you have private companies running our GP practises, how can people trust implicitly that the best is being done, and that infact profit matters more than human health. Keep the NHS public and in the spirit that it was set up in.

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siobhan 4 years ago

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'.

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Barry Woolsgrove 4 years ago

My taxes pay for all the NHS services. I don't want some of that money going, as profits, to some private company instead of to NHS services.

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David Revill 4 years ago

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.

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Sue Flint 4 years ago

I've been around since the 1930's. I was very relieved when the NHS was set up in 1947. I have been able to rely on it ever since - for my own and my family's good health.

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Roger Iain Mason 4 years ago

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

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David Troup 4 years ago

Don't privatise the national health service, it will make it worse

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David Bell 4 years ago

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

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Sue Flint 4 years ago

I've been around since the 1930's. I was very relieved when the NHS was set up in 1947. I have been able to rely on it ever since - for my own and my family's good health.

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Thomas Collett 4 years ago

Money that goes towards Cenetene's profit is money that is taken away from patient care. The NHS is paid for by tax payers to maintain the nation's health not to benefit private corporations.

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Mark Woolner 4 years ago

As shown during the pandemic, The NHS is best placed to look after our health and well being. We don't need an American, for-profit company, running OUR NHS.

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Graham Taylor 4 years ago

People are more important than profits. Public ownership is preferable to privatisation, which is less accountable, less transparent and less caring.

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John Edward Critchlow 4 years ago

It is not in the public interest to allow GP surgeries to be owned or managed by large, profit-seeking companies.

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Matthew Caddis 4 years ago

The NHS has helped keep many members of my family alive for far longer than I would have expected and to ask them to pay a hefty price for medical treatments is not only morally wrong, it goes against the very idea Nye Bevan had for the NHS

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Richard Lund 4 years ago

The NHS should not be run for profit by private businesses.

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Susanne Murby 4 years ago

I am appalled that we are opening up our own health service to American businesses when America has such a poor record of health care for those who cannot afford it. We should not be going down the same route as them.

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Barrie Slipper 4 years ago

The NHS is a service we are all rightly proud of - healthcare free at the point of delivery to all. We must not permit creeping privatisation by profit motivated companies. Centene are profit driven, their activities in the USA are evidence of this. People must come before profit. I urge you not to renew Centene's contract, keep GP practices in GP's control.

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SC 4 years ago

This is just plain wrong. Morally bankrupt. The NHS is, or should be, for people – every person – and NOT for profit. The greed for profit for profit's sake has no place in a just and honourable healthcare system.

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Sheila Hamil 4 years ago

I agree with all these protests above which stand against any privatisation of the NHS. I would like to add my name in standing against profit making companies and organisations attempting a take over.

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A Clyne 4 years ago

It is fundamentally immoral to see health provision as a means of making money. It adversely impacts decisions on what care will be provided. The majority of people in this country are willing to pay extra taxes to fund the NHS. Healthcare provision should be funded by the people for the people. Our taxes should not be used to buy in private companies who divert the money into profit making activities that please only their shareholders. I wonder how many Centene owned GP services have held back on health provision for expensive treatments?

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Nick Doyle 4 years ago

the NHS is a publicly funded health service by the public and for the public. It is not and should not ever be seen as a profit-making business or opportunity for the people who govern this country to sell off for their own personal gain.

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Amanda Wesley 4 years ago

Another disgraceful example of the Government trying to sell what is not theirs to give away - our NHS is OURS, not the Government's. Our Grandparent's (and Parents) generation knew what it was like when receiving medical care depended on how rich you were, and none of them wished for that inequality to return...
Universal Health Care is the one thing that we should always be grateful for and proud of as a nation...
Our NHS achieved an amazing feat when the chips were down in this pandemic - despite the Government!

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Rebecca G. 4 years ago

I have lived through the American style healthcare system, but just barely. When people describe it as a nightmare, they are, if anything, UNDERSTATING the reality of the situation.
Continuing to let private interests into the NHS, a healthcare system that was once the envy of the world, will absolutely destroy us. There is no question about this—even more people will suffer and die or become disabled. Renewing Centene will simply put a large amount of money into the pockets of corporations who have no interest our well-being or that of the UK as a whole. Even from an economic standpoint it makes no sense. Sick people cannot contribute to society, or they cannot do so at full capacity—financially, through volunteering, community work, with their families, etcetera.
Get Centene out!! Protect the UK and its people!

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Helen Wood 4 years ago

GPs were individual businesses, working for the NHS. Instead of moving to corporations taking over our primary care, we should be looking at taking them into the NHS, so that profit and property owning are not part of the deal for doctors in general practice. I want local doctors running local services, and working together in networks to share good practice. Private contractors in the NHS are beyond accountability, hiding behind 'commercial confidentiality' even though it is my money that is paying them!

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sylvia Crosby 4 years ago

Centene is only interested in making profit, the NHS does not make profit so why on earth do the people at the top let people like Centene in?
Not everyone can afford private medicine.

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Reg leach 4 years ago

The NHS is a publicly owned service which has always done a fantastic job, particularly over the last 18 months. Please do not allow any more privatisation of the NHS as it MUST NOT become an organisation for making profit for shareholders.

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Lauren Bourque 4 years ago

Privatised US-style health services are all about profit, not service. We do not want and cannot afford for this system to take over our NHS.

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Martin Bienvenu 4 years ago

Please do not renew Centene's contract. Here in York A & E is reported to be in danger of privatisation and a Centene renewal would set an unhelpful precedent.

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Celia Evershed 4 years ago

The NHS is free at the point of access and it is not a for profit organisation. Pieces of the NHS are being sold off to profit-making organisations and this has to stop as it is be detrimental to the health of the people of this country. The more that is sold off, the less likely it is that the NHS will not be able to respond adequately to needs should we find ourselves in the grips of another pandemic. Think on that; the NHS has coped this time with Covid19, but only just. What about the next time. GPs are mostly self employed and the system works; it won't work if money-grabbing private companies take over.

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Judith Pearson 4 years ago

I paid into the NHS for 55 years. It's not up for sale to Centene profiteers. We value our system and after this pandemic a sell out would be an insult to all those people on the front line who risked their lives to care for the sick. I can't even begin to understand why North West London Primary Care Commissioning Committee is even thinking about it.

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Tony Millwood 4 years ago

The US health care model costs vastly more than the NHS and yet fails on grounds of coverage and equity and outcomes. Our tac funded publicly provided NHS is vastly superior. We must prevent our taxpayers funds channeled yet more up the voracious US chain of value extraction.

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Susan Sturgeon 4 years ago

Really concerned about the privatisation of GP surgeries. Health services should be for the public good and not be driven by profit motives

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Richard 4 years ago

The US healthcare system is independently regarded as the worst in the developed world-least amount of care per $1 spend and worst patient outcomes per $1 spend. This is not a model we should look to aspire to.
Profits over people kills and results in a lower quality of life for citizens. GP practices may be privately run, but being privately run by an American insurance company is a very different proposition. I would absolutely not use a GP practice run in this manner-they will not have your health interests as priority.

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david stafford 4 years ago

The NHS was a ground breaking creation that has been the envy of the rest of the world since its creation. It is the only democrat and fair way to provide for a nations health, as so with education. Privatising the health service is not about improving health care, it is about profiting from the ill health of the people. Private health care is discriminatory, very inefficient and hugely expensive and a disastrous money grubbing mess in the USA.
The social fabric of the UK is being eroded bit by bit and undermined, most of it in the misguided idea that privatising something is an improvement and as we have already seen with the rail sell off and bus deregulation to name but two, ends up being a disaster. Providing undeserved wealth to a few while providing an expensive and inadequate service to the people.
The selling off of the NHS, if allowed, will do more damage to this country than all the other sell offs put together.

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peta sandison 4 years ago

Dear Committee
The NHS is an incredible service, owned by us, the public, and providing equal access to health for all. It should not be run for profit; there is no place for private companies with a profit agenda within the NHS as profit will win over ethics and it'll be those who can't afford to resort to private health care who will suffer. We have ample evidence in the US of how it will end here. We should be proud of the NHS and seeking to protect it, not sell it. Don't renew the contract. Thank you

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Anonymous 4 years ago

The NHS was established to provide a government funded service to all residents based on clinical need and not on ability to pay. People contribute via national insurance.

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Soo Frankum 4 years ago

As we already own the NHS and all of its component parts, how can it be sold without any public consultation? There has not been any benefit from selling other parts of this country’s infrastructure , apart from putting money into the corrupt hands of those doing the transaction, and their friends.
How many times have we had to buy back/ take over the railways since they were first privatised? The NHS has been proved time and again to be the most humane and cost effective way of providing health care for all. HANDS OFF!

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Anonymous 4 years ago

Dear committee, We have seen the destruction of peoples lives and lack of access to healthcare caused by the US style healthcare system and do not want to even get close to such a situation. The NHS is envied the world over, one true sign of a Social Democracy is that everyone has the right to expect the same health outcomes, and to extend this contract takes us down a road which heads away from that ideal. I ask you to remember that first and foremost, a countries government is tasked with enacting policy that is good for the people, and the NHS remaining under the auspices of British rule satisfies that, and selling it off does not.

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Lynette Harvey 4 years ago

Please do not renew Centene's contract,NHS is for the people who pay money into it and not for profiteering of companys like this.End their contract now.

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Carol Marshall 4 years ago

Our NHS is the envy of the world, it was designed to provide health care to all not to a privileged few who can afford. We pay for this through our NI contributions. I spent two weeks in hospital recently and the area’s that have been privatised are of a poor standard The Nurses Doctors were amazing even though they were over worked. The NHS should not be for Profit.

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Anonymous 4 years ago

For people’s Health, dignity, wellbeing and not for profit. No to multi national’s

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Anonymous 4 years ago

In August 2020 a US federal court found that health insurer Centene Corporation and affiliates had deliberately underpaid certain frontline healthcare providers since 2014. This incident illustrates what can happen if a a profit element is introduced into NHS service provision by contracting with a private healthcare provider

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Jane Clifton 4 years ago

UK residents pay for the NHS through our NI contributions. It is our service and therefore should not be 'for sale' to American companies for profit. Any finance gained by the NHS should be reinvested in the service to make sure it is sustainable for all people living in the UK. It is despicable that the government are allowing this to happen.

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Lynda Mannix 4 years ago

The NHS belongs to us and we pay for it. We the people value our health care more than the government seems to and this underhand demonstration of how little they care for our wellbeing is appalling and unacceptable. Beven said that the NHS will only survive if the people want it to survive, and here we are, wanting it to survive. The GPs are self employed now, we know, but we do not need or want such a dreadful profit- orientated American company
as part of medical expertise. The Tories will rue the day if this goes ahead.

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Sue Rimmer 4 years ago

Our NHS is sacred and should not be destroyed for profit. Our predecessors fought to create free health care for everyone so we need to fight to keep it for our future generations. Having a health care system we can rely on is so important to our country - so please do not destroy our NHS.

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David Lumsdaine 4 years ago

There should be no place for making profits in health care, or indeed,any public service. Please do not renew Centene’s contract.

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Sue Butters 4 years ago

We, UK taxpayers, own the NHS, and we do not want private healthcare companies involved. Their prime motive is to make a profit. Patient care and services, staff wellbeing are all compromised. There is NO PLACE for these companies in OUR NHS. I work in the NHS and it is fatuous to claim that standards and patient care does not suffer .... it does. This government has been shameful in awarding contracts to themselves without due diligence or going through proper checks. I have contacted my MP on many occasions about this, yet the privatisation continues regardless.

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Lorraine Newton 4 years ago

The NHS is for people not for profit .

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Lorna Knight 4 years ago

Like vultures waiting for supposed rich pickings, this company (Centene) has NO PLACE IN THE UK’s HEALTH SERVICE. We are NOT an appendage to the US. There are many of our leaders who are blighted by greed, forgetting the sacrifices of our elders, forefathers, Commonwealth contributors who have strived against political adversity to maintain the NHS for the purpose it was set up for. NO to Privatisation! NO to Greed! NO to decisions made against the Public Interest!
For those decision makers involved in this contract meeting for purpose of allowing Centene & others like them to carve up our Country’s infrastructure, Think again! You will rue the day for the wrong decisions you have unleashed on your Country’s peoples.
The Ballot Box looms large & transgressions will be remembered long into the future.

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Graham Sangan 4 years ago

Health not profit

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Martin Fisher 4 years ago

The NHS is a foundation-stone of this country. It kept me alive and fully able to work for 40+ years(I'm a Type 1 diabetic). Nobody should be put in the position where their basic healthcare depends on their earnings. Nurses and doctors who trained and gave their lives to caring for the whole population shouldn't find that they now serve the few.

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Peter 4 years ago

Keep OUR NHS publicly funded and publicly run.
NOT for the extraction of profit.

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Elizabeth M. Salter 4 years ago

The GP contract with Centene must not be renewed. The NHS, started in 1948, was for the nation and was paid for by taxation. It should not be funded by a profit making organisation such as Centene, resulting in more profit for shareholders and less cash available for improving our superb health service,
sadly in great need of increased funding

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Helen Spicer 4 years ago

I believe strongly that health services should not be run for profit. The services should be run to benefit the health of individuals and communities based on their need, not based on how profitable it is to care (or not!) for them.

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Ian Barton 4 years ago

No profit from public health!

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jack saunders 4 years ago

The National Health Service is a not for profit service funded by the taxpayer and not given to the private sector to plunder.If this continues there will be limited doctors appointments,limited medicines,limited attendence hours etc.The USA model is clearly broken and not fit for public use and the public of GB do not want it here.We were promised that the HHS was sacrosant and would stay in the public arena ,not privatised by stealth thus the Tory government lied to the british public.Shame on those who facilitate this

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Ann James 4 years ago

The British Public would be shocked and horrified if they knew of this intention to privatise part of the NHS, of which we are so proud. Many surveys have shown that people would be willing to pay extra NI contribution to keep our NHS public. For companies to make a profit out of illness is utterly scandalous. Please do not do this.

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Richard and Audrey Dumbleton 4 years ago

These companies are taking significant amounts of money out of the GP practices that they control. There is therefore less available for the provision of healthcare. We are fortunate that our practice is excellent and is run by the healthcare professionals who work for it, however I understand that an adjacent practice which is company run provides a much lower standard of care and puts intolerable pressure on its employees.

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Mavis Aitchison 4 years ago

We spent our working lives in what was then referred to as Family practice. Day & night we looked after the families in our care free at the point of use but paid for out of general taxation. WE DO NOT NEED a money grubbing commercial incomer.
At this minute a friends sick six year old is having a life saving operation that they could never afford to pay for.

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Sarah Windrum 4 years ago

The National Health Service should never be privatised. Centene is a particular dangerous interloper. They have let people down in the USA. They will surely do the same here by putting profit before patients.

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Caroline Kinney 4 years ago

I both work for and use the NHS, I also have had direct experience of the USA health care system. Do not be fooled into believing that our health care service will in any way benefit from contracts to private companies. We only have to look at the impact of the COVID pandemic to see how much free care at the point of need benefits our whole society. Giving contracts to Centene will do nothing to improve health care... it will, however, line the pockets of shareholders! Health care is not a commodity to be bought and sold by private companies.

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Jaqui Fabian 4 years ago

The American health system, rather than being the best in the Western world with all that “competition” and the huge price of even the smallest procedure, yet it turns out it is one of the worst in the West. Even though the NHS has been having resources drained from it over the past decade, it still performs better than the American one. However, we have gone way down the list in comparison to other European countries. Very sad.

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Warren Lakin 4 years ago

It’s called the National Health Service. Publicly owned for the benefit of the public. It was never intended for private financial gain. Let’s keep it like that and shut the door on greed!

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'bel Harris 4 years ago

Health care is NOT for sale. The NHS is NOT for sale - it belongs to the people of the United Kingdom. PLEASE consider how this can cause people distress. If someone in the UK needs urgent medical attention and treatment they get it. In the USA it might mean having to get a loan, sell your house or business. PLEASE be a trail blazer - health care not profit.

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Lucy Uren 4 years ago

It is essential that NHS services remain free at the point of care. Private companies gaining increasing ownership will bring confusion and financial loss as we have already seen during the COVID pandemic. For the health and well being of our country it is key that these GP services remain out of Centene's control.

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D Steeds 4 years ago

This contract should not be renewed. The NHS belongs to all of us, we pay for it through our taxes as did our parents. The American healthcare system has nothing to recommend it as being what we want in this country. The NHS is a service and should not be profit making for any company, the clue is in the name....National Health SERVICE.

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Anna 4 years ago

I completely disapprove of Public Taxes for the NHS being given over to a huge rich Private American Healthcare Company to make profits for themselves by providing inadequate, unsafe, money orientated healthcare. GP's should not be enticed with money to be told what, how and where they can administer medical treatments, including medication and Social Care to patients on their books in the area they Practice. The Public Taxes spent on our NHS must be kept in the Public Purse to be spent on our Health Care, not given to a private purse to make money out of the sick and infirm.

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Jacqueline Palmer 4 years ago

NHS abbreviation for National Health Service for the nation not to make money!!!!!

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S. Ahmed 4 years ago

If we let the government continue to privatise the NHS then the UK health system will end up like America's where people are being price gouged for everything. The EpiPen for diabetics in the UK costs the patient £8.50, American diabetics have to pay $608.00 for the exact same medication. This will become the norm in the UK if we let money hungry monsters take over our NHS. That is why I don't want Centene to have anything to do with health care in the UK. Once things become privatised they become a money making practice for people who don't care if normal people live or die. Kick Centene out of the NHS at you earliest convenience. Best Wishes.

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Rosalie Anne Battye 4 years ago

The NHS has saved my life on numerous occasions. GP practices should NOT be sold off to greedy insurance companies such as Centene. Healthcare needs to be provided at the point of delivery, doctors and nurses ought to be held in the highest esteem and paid properly so they can deliver care in the way that they know best. If profit is the criterion this cannot happen.
PLEASE DO NOT ALLOW CENTENE TO TAKE OVER OUR GP PRACTICES!!!

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Tom Wichelow 4 years ago

This is a British public health institution that should not be run by an American, for profit company. Private profit is not a healthy motivating factor in the running of public health organisations and will lead to an erosion of the NHS.

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Alan Samwell 4 years ago

Boris said leaving the EU would give us back control over our way of doing things, if you sell off our NHS we will lose control over the most fantastic organisation for good in this Country. At this very moment we are having to pay for treatment that should be free because The Tories have run down the NHS over the last eleven years so they can sell it off. They will say, we cant afford it any longer without private investors. Recently my wife and I have paid £60 each to have our ears unblocked. This will be our future once private companies take over the NHS, pay or go without treatment.

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DR G A RICHMOND 4 years ago

As a retired GP who spent all my life working for the NHS I value it greatly. Two years ago I had a stroke, but thanks to the ambulance service who were at my door within ten minutes and superb hospital care I can now enjoy life once again. No-one knows when they may need this wonderful institution. It is great to have the reassurance that world class health care is there, waiting to respond virtually instantly whenever we may need it. It is a priceless jewel that that the whole country should be proud of and it should be preserved at all costs.

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J Moore 4 years ago

Politics is an expression of will ~ you really want to back a solution. The solution you decide with wisdom & judgement, whatever the tight spot you're in won't involve US Co Centene. Think hard about it & ask your conscience. So much of the NHS is in private hands already. Experience tells us not to make policies which generate profits privately & hand risk to the public.

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karen harrison 4 years ago

Peoples' health should not be a profit-making (or losing) enterprise. I've paid for the NHS, so it is stealing.
How can you possibly justify even thinking about doing this. WAKE UP.

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Janice Lawrence 4 years ago

The NHS was set up so that health care is available to all in need not for proof. Handing over health care to a private company will only favour the wealthy and share holders. Health is not a commodity. Retain our NHS as a public body free to all.

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Roger Hawkins 4 years ago

We need small- and medium-scale GP practices run by doctors who live locally and know their communities - NOT big business.

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Alastair Fleck 4 years ago

The creation of the NHS is just about the only decent and worthwhile thing that this country has achieved in the last one hundred years. It must not be privatised. It must be kept in public hands. Letting profit be the governing principle of an organisation is what has led us to the brink of extinction. The cult of infinite growth in a world of finite resources must be exposed for the damage it does. The health of the public is a public matter, not a private one. The USA has quite probably the worst and most unequal, exploitative health care systems in the world. It is not an example to be emulated.Keep American corporations away from the NHS.

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David Moles 4 years ago

The primary argument given for privatisation is usually that it's efficient. Unfortunately, what for-profit businesses are efficient at is creating profits for their shareholders.
The only way they can increase profits is to either: underpay staff more, or reduce the quality of care.
We need an NHS with fairly paid and motivated staff who are allowed to care for patients to the best of their abilities. So, please don't privatise more of our NHS.

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Helen Whitfield 4 years ago

The NHS is an amazing institution open to all in the country when they need it. It should be kept fully publically owned and under no circumstances privatised and ran to make a profit.

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Sue Butcher 4 years ago

Please do not allow Gp surgerys to be privatized by anyone especially not Centene an American company. The NHS is the envy of the world and it should remain so,being free at the point of use.This is the reason it was originally created to help the ordinary working class people who could not afford to pay for their treatment. Just look at the terrible example in America where people die needlessly because they can't afford private healthcare. The NHS should not be a profit making institution but this will happen and evolve if private companies are allowed to take over any part of the NHS. Stop it now before it's too late. We do not want to copy America at any cost.

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Antony Clinton 4 years ago

The NHS belongs to the people of the United Kingdom.It was founded in 1948 for the specific purpose of providing quality healthcare for the people and to be funded by the people. It was never intended to make a 'profit' and certainly not to make a profit for private individuals/private corporations. What is happening here with this Centene thing is nothing short of a betrayal to the founding principal of the NHS and to the people of the United Kingdom. Profit before people? Absolutely shameful.

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Frank Sowerby 4 years ago

The NHS belongs to the British People. It is the most precious thing we possess. My parents' generation fought a war and sacrificed their lives so that future generations could benefit from a health care system that was available to everyone, irrespective of wealth, and free at the point of delivery. It is the best health care system in the World despite Tory attempts to fragment and undermine it. It belongs to us and must not be sold off to foreign predators.

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Pamela and Malcolm Thomson 4 years ago

The NHS was created as a non profit organisation, to try to improve the health and well-being of British citizens. There should be NO profit motive involved when a patient visits their GP or needs medical help of any kind. Allowing Centene to own surgeries is opening a door to exploiting sick people. In USA Centene has already been fined for malpracice, so as a company regardless of the private/public debate, it should not be trusted with any healthcare!!

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Sarah mere 4 years ago

Shame on our leaders for allowing groups like centene to even be contemplated !

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Anonymous 4 years ago

The NHS is not owned by any private profiteers .it belongs to the people Of ENGLAND . I urge you to stop this blatant selling off of our National treasure

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Simon 4 years ago

The NHS belongs to the taxpayers and citizens of the UK. GP surgeries are an essential part of our NHS network and are not for sale. The British Government must act to halt privatisation by stealth of our NHS and asset stripping by foreign companies of what already belongs to us and which appears to be being sold without our consent.

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Ruth Baker 4 years ago

When I first read about this I actually didn’t believe it, and thought it was yet more ‘fake news’. How can this be possible? It’s the thin end of the wedge, and should be stopped at all costs

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Anthony Bowers 4 years ago

It will be seen eventually as a crime if you do this

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David Kitson 4 years ago

HEALTH BEFORE WEALTH! Especially the greedy private sector. And even more especially the greedy American private sector.

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Julie Bullen 4 years ago

I worry about what will happen to the poor. I worry about private companies putting profit above care. I truly can't believe this is happening, our NHS is the envy of the world

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Mr Gerard Gregg-Smith 4 years ago

Private organizations such as Centene getting involved in the NHS risks losing the public sector not-for-profit motives of the NHS and the protection of the UK public’s health. Centene are trying to make money for their shareholders and management – does that mean they are greedy? Whether they are or not, much if not most of the public does not want the NHS to be privatized.

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J Mckechnie 4 years ago

The NHS belongs to the public of this country, and is FREE to the people who pay for it, The British Public.
To allow a private company in to start running things might look wonderful in the short term, being given ‘sweeteners’ to get decision makers on side. Further down the road will come decisions, by them, to make themselves and their shareholders profit.
WE, the British public are the shareholders of the NHS, and we don’t want to make a profit. We expect to have a free NHS at the point of need, and we expect decision makers to understand that we expect to be able to see our GPS locally.

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Simon Mollison 4 years ago

The NHS belongs to us and no parliamentary majority gives government the right to sell it off to businesses to make profits from. We have seen the damage to services that this can cause from the state of our dental care (nearly all the dentists offering NHS care are companies, most of which offer terrible care and ever-rotating dentists). The whole point of GPs is that they know you and are therefore in a good position to get to the bottom of our health issues. The government has no right to ruin our NHS any further than the last few governments have done. The only way they are selling it to people is by withholding adequate funding from the NHS so that people value it less and less. Bringing in profit-making concerns will further eat away at what the NHS can do. We need a law that will stop governments selling off our essential assets.

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Ianb 4 years ago

Couldn't have put it better than this post.
Catherine Odell replied on Wed 26 May 2021 Permalink
The National Health Service is paid for by us taxpayers for the health needs of us all - not for companies to take money from to pay shareholders.
The National Health Service is available to all in the Uk regardless of who they are or where they live and should remain so and certainly not become inaccessible for those in small communities because it is unprofitable to provide for them in their area.

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ANNE HOLDERNESS 4 years ago

NO to greedy multi-nationals like Centene making a profit off our health service.
NO to greedy multi-nationals like Centene closing our GPs.
NO to greedy multi-nationals like Centene prioritising profit over our health.
Centene are trying to sink their teeth into our NHS, expanding their reach by the year.

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Barbara 4 years ago

The NHS contributes to the wellbeing and health of the people of the UK. It is there for everyone regardless of income. Private companies have to keep their shareholders happy by making a profit.We do not want the NHS in the hands of private company. Please cancel the contract with Centene

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Dr Andrew Wilkinson 4 years ago

I have worked in Child Health in many countries, particularly low-income countries, but it was when I worked in one of the richest cities in the USA that I was frequently struck by serious circumstances where the family had no insurance and just could not pay the fees. Many doctors didn't charge but Practice Managers and Hospitals did. This was absolutely terrifying for many who often sought medical help far too late.
Centene is one of the companies who eagerly profit from private health care which is what they have introduced into the GP practices they own in the UK. Their shareholders are ones who can afford private medicine, which we all know is often not the best medicine. Renewing Centene's contract will send a message to people living in NW London - "We want your money not your good health" and will encourage more expansion throughout the UK.

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Annette Mason 4 years ago

Healthcare is not a business. It should never be about profit.

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John Hall 4 years ago

The NHS is a valued organisation that needs to remain in public hands. One has only to look at the billions wasted on an ineffective track and trace scheme run by private company SERCO. Private definitely does not give best value except perhaps to shareholders.

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Sheila Dorsett 4 years ago

I am furious about this. This is not something that we have ever wanted or voted for. These companies are there to make a profit. Services will be reduced and surgeries closed down. This has already happened elsewhere. If this contract is approved you will not be acting in the best interests of residents.

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Edward Redmond 4 years ago

The NHS belongs to all people. lets keep it that way.
its part of our history, & we're proud of this. Resist any changes.

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Anonymous 4 years ago

Neoliberalism is a con. It means trickle-up. There is no real competition in local GP provisions, or prisons or schools, so the idea that competition encourages a better service does not hold. It is time we voted it out and created something more fit-for-purpose.

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John David Seymour 4 years ago

The NHS is a not-for -profit organisation funded by the population of this country via taxation, e. g National Insurance contributions etc. to look after the health of the nation, and to ensure that free medical treatment is available when required to all. It is NOT for an American associated company to buy up piecemeal in order to fill the pockets of their shareholders. Centene need to return to America for their business, and if so genuinely interested in an American National Health service, (which to my knowledge is near non existing, after being started by President Obama and then being thrown out by his succesor) they can buy into it there! The NHS CAN be publicly funded again IF the population looked beyond the end of their noses and voted in a government that did not make PROFIT their god.

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Elfrieda Callaghan 4 years ago

We need to enhance our NHS, not destroy it with countless private companies who are in this for the money. Look at the private care homes and the shocking behaviour of money over health! The NHS needs to be in public hands not multi-millionaires! We need to control our own NHS, we need more of a say, and we need to stop all contracts! We do not need these companies! Keep the NHS in public hands!

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william mcardle 4 years ago

Please don't don't allow our precious NHS to fall into the hands of for profit private providers. We will end up
like the USA, where millions of their citizens don't have access to medical care. Patient needs will be denied
as these company's see only financial profit as their goal and like many other private insurers will do everything they can to avoid paying claims. JUST SAY NO,NO,NO,NO and NO again

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Beverley Prevatt Goldstein 4 years ago

The National Health Service is a resource for all, free at the point of need. It is far superior to profit driven health services. It must be kept free of the profit motive whereby costs and services are driven down so private individuals and companies can profit. Please keep the NHS safe for citizens and residents and not to be exploited and used for mercenary gain and corporate greed.

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Silvia Carmona 4 years ago

The NHS has been created and is being run with taxpayers money, the tax I'm paying every month. The Government hasn't got the right to sell the NHS to a private company without my consent. In my opinion this is illegal and we should all make sure the current elected politicians don't get away with it. It has taken decades to build the NHS, it belongs to the people and it works. Take back control from politicians who don't want the best for the people but the best for their personal bankaccounts! The NHS belongs to us!

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Anonymous 4 years ago

Greedy multi-nationals like Centene are making a profit from our health service. Already they control 70 of our G.P. surgeries and are prioritising profit over our health. Our NHS is still the envy of the world and belongs to us, the people and taxpayers. The only people who will benefit from this are the wealthy who will reap the rewards of this privatisation.

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Mark Handley 4 years ago

"God Bless The NHS
If you're feeling sick or ill they'll do their best you know they will
bandage your wounds prescribe your pills save our NHS
wise up before you grind your axe it's paid for by peoples taxes
now you know just what the facts is save our NHS
GOD BLESS THE NHS THE DOCTORS AND THE NURSES
GOD BLESS THE NHS OUR NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE
IS OVER WORKED AND UNDERPAID
BUT WE STILL LOVE IT ANYWAY
MAKE SURE THAT IT'S HERE TO STAY GOD BLESS THE NHS
Politicians open up your eyes it's not yours to privatize
you don't own it now realize it's “our” NHS
try to sell off what's not yours to sell and it's for sure we'll all rebel
take this advice now please pray tell save our NHS
If you get sick in the USA well it's for sure you'll pay and pay
right up until you pass away save our NHS
health care for one and all that's free is what we've got here in GB
I'm begging please down upon my knees save our NHS
Video link https://youtu.be/QOaQIJKTmrc
Words and music by Mark Handley copyright (c) 2016

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Philippa Stafford 4 years ago

Private companies will only take over the NHS if they think they can make a profit . . . . .why doesn't the government run it, and any profit can be ploughed back in???

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Roslyn Jones 4 years ago

Selling off GP Practices to corporate companies whose motivation is profit rather than patient care, is an outrage and privatisation by stealth. At the last count 58 practices had been taken over. What next and what will it mean for us patients? I appreciate that GPs' practices are businesses but they are funded by the NHS which has always been free to us at the point of access.

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lesley george 4 years ago

Government will argue that there are no changes in that the service is free to access, but if profit orientated organisations get in control the standard of service and staff will drop as has happened in the care home industry. There will be minimum attention paid to staff training and professional development and poor quality care of patients and all those needing free medical assistance will find they have to fit within tight tick box protocols or lose out entirely.

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Richard Bird 4 years ago

GP Surgeries are funded by and owned by the people of this country. They are not yours to buy and sell as you wish. They are not there to make profit for anyone and if so, that profit would be payable to us, the public who own it, not any third party outfit. So DO NOT provide any basis for Centene to take over or renew the running of OUR GP surgeries and facilities, they are not yours. This government also committed to NOT selling off or contracting out OUR NHS services. If this goes to court you will lose and once again be seen to be ethically and morally bankrupt. SO be honest, show integrity, keep away from lies and corruption and keep private companies, especially non-UK companies out of OUR NHS.

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Colin Stoneman 4 years ago

The whole principle of the NHS was and still should be that profit-making should play no role in health care. It may be OK that people can choose between different commodities or services, but health is NOT a commodity like buying a car or having a hair-do - WE HAVE NO CHOICE. We didn't want to get ill!

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Evan Pritchard 4 years ago

Putting health care into the hands of big private companies undermines universal free provision. The more this happens the more the NHS is undermined. I want to be a patient of my GP, not a customer or a client.

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Philip Jackson 4 years ago

This has been going on for years, its being driven by business & profit demands & has intensified since the 2012 Health & Social Care Act. We need to kick out organisations like the Centene Corporation, huge unaccountable multi million pound businesses, from providing any healthcare services in the UK. This is privatisation & competition by the back door, by stealth, and decision makers should really examine whether this is in the interests of patients & all those who work in the NHS. All NHS services must be both free at the point of need & delivered by public sector organisations not the private sector.

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david 4 years ago

The NHS belongs to the British people, not some greedy, parasite, corporation, I want my taxes to pay for our health care not their profit margin.

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Richard Smith 4 years ago

The NHS and the GP surgeries provide an essential service for the people of the this country to keep us healthy and treat us when they are not. We pay for the NHS so what we pay should go into the services and not to investors in private companies. Healthcare should be not for profit.

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Anonymous 4 years ago

The NHS was founded for and is paid for by the British public. Foreign profit-seeking companies such as Centene should have no part in it.

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Mrs Ann Howarth 4 years ago

The NHS is the envy of the world designed to provide a public service based on need not on profits. Once it is in private hands the motive becomes not about patient care but about profit for business and private investors. The public in the UK want a public health service not one where tax payers hard-earned money ends up in private hands. It is a disgrace that some GP practices have already been sold off to the American company, Centene Privatisation of any part of the NHS has resulted in more expensive treatment which many people cannot afford. The current state of dentistry in this country is a good example of what happens when our health service is privatised. I request that you do not renew Centene's contract tomorrow.

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Carol Draper 4 years ago

GPs are our entry to healthcare & the signpost for specialist care. People will soon realise how much they are losing & whom to blame.

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Mairi MacIver 4 years ago

The NHS is the envy of the world and health should not be seen as a commodity to be sold in the market place. Save our institutions.

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Sara Katchi 4 years ago

I am writing to request that you do not renew the GP contract with Centene.
The NHS needs reforming to be more efficient and should prioritise preventative medicine. That would be an investment in the long term.
The service should not suffer by an increase in private running of essential primary care services. It is harder to regulate to ensure the quality of services is maintained.

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Linnet Evans 4 years ago

Irrespective of making money for shareholders, outsourcing services isn't necessarily a cost saver - to be effective, these things need to be managed properly, which itself is a drain on the NHS side. As a previous post said, cut out the middlemen. Whatever the 'failings' in the NHS, privatisation won't resolve it by itself. Look at the railways or utility companies.
Operations typically involve recruiting in quantities of people, sometimes with little training or support or background knowledge - witness Track n Trace.
The NHS needs the space to regroup and rebuild following COVID. No renewal, no extension please.

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Grace Jackman 4 years ago

The important word is SERVICE. That will disappear if privatisation is alloed by stealth or any other way.
We cannot lose so important a national lifeline.

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Gerald Harniman 4 years ago

As somebody fortunate enough to have been born on the first day of the NHS, 5 July 1948, I have a lifetime of support by this world leading institution that provides essential health care to all when required. Over the years I have seen this provision eroded by charges for drugs, the slow loss of dental care to private profiteering providers, while the health insurance companies and their selective health care has stripped the NHS of staff and resources.
Margaret Thatcher wanted to destroy the NHS and move to a fully American insurance based system, but was afraid of the political response so avoided the conflict. The Cameron Conservative government, the 'NHS is safe with the Conservatives', has slowly eroded the national provision, initially with Andrew Lansley's reorganisation in 2012, after nine years of meetings with 'private health care providers' to discuss the most profitable areas of health care, the government pre-legislation review was never published not even for MPs who voted on its enactment. Health Trust, Clinical Commissioning Groups intended to place market competition into a non-profit organisation, creating a plethora of unnecessary administration on what was in 2010 declared by the OECD a world leading health provider with its highest satisfaction rating in its history. After eleven years of Conservative governments we now have 4.7 million on waiting lists for treatment, experienced a pandemic with nearly 130,000 deaths and large numbers with lasting medical conditions resulting from the virus when in 2015 response to a global pandemic was researched but the report withheld while Mr Hunt attacked NHS staff on supposed 24/7 service. The continuing High Court cases revealing the processes that led to billions being spent of uncontested contracts given to priority companies associated with Conservative politicians, or political donors to the Conservative Party, many of which failed to deliver, such as £21 million given to a go-between to a Florida jeweller with supposed contacts in China who failed to provide promised PPE; many Conservative connected companies with no connection to health products given priority over those producing necessary items, such as Mr Dyson who failed to produce necessary ventilators to specification while obtaining a promise of tax exemption for a possible return to the UK and a peerage. An associate of Mr Hancock appointed without competition the NHS Improvement, see earlier comment on waiting lists, NHS Test and Trace with disastrous failings to trace even with a £37 billion budget, mainly given to companies such as SERCO who proclaimed the massive profits they would make from the contract, and soon to be the head of the replacement for NHS England. The lady who was in-charge of TalkTalk when it lost is clients data and had to resign given essential health service post because she was pay free, available, and associated to the Minister of Health through her horseracing connection, he being MP for Newmarket reliant on donations from the horse trainers in his constituency.
The new proposed reorganisation of the NHS, supposedly to do away with Mr Lansley's reorganisation, he now being a peer and advisor to private health providers, will likely open access further to private providers, health insurers many of which like Centene will be foreign owned and controlled, stripping taxpayer funding and individuals' contributions to provide profits offshore and untaxed in the UK, while removing any local accountability from health provision. An analysis of the American Health system rated the most expensive providing poor service to large numbers of Americans insured through their employer when not in full employment, or huge crippling costs for normal medical conditions $10,000+ for dental care, $100,000s for cancer treatment, charges to see a GP or ambulance attendance. A future nobody in the UK has faced for 72 years but likely in the next 3-4, or just after the next election in 2024.

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Ann Partington 4 years ago

The NHS was set up to provide free health care for everyone in this country regardless of their wealth, or lack thereof. The citizens of this country pay for it through taxes and National Insurance. As one such citizen, I am sickened by these big US insurance types attempting to get there greedy paws on it. It is NOT a business. It is there for the health and well being of the British public,not to fill the pockets of 'big business'who care for nothing but profit. We do not need or want American type healthcare in this country as it is neither interested in health or care. Please do not renew the contract for Centene to run GP practices. Such contracts are the beginning of the end for our NHS.

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D M 4 years ago

National Health Service is just that, National not private. Keep the American companies OUT. The Tories have never wanted the National Health Service. Also transport and the utilities should be state owned. The profits from each should go into government coffers and not into billionaires pockets.

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Richard Revett 4 years ago

Shame on this government for trading the NHS for party donations from private healthcare companies. This is not what democracy looks like

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Pam Wortley 4 years ago

I am totally opposed to Centene and any other for-profit private companies taking over any part of our NHS. There is a huge difference between a multinational corporation that operates to make a profit, often by cutting staff and services, and local GPs who are part of the NHS family and provide services from the NHS budget but are not beholden to any shareholders. This privatisation by stealth is unacceptable and not what the general public have been promised by this government who have repeatedly said the NHS is not being privatised and is not for sale.

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Hilary Belchak 4 years ago

No-one should make a private profit from the provision of healthcare.

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J Simpson 4 years ago

The NHS is paid for by us tax payers for our benefit, not to line the pockets of people running huge, private companies.

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Catherine Victoria Ruth Kaikini 4 years ago

There should be absolutely no profit motive regarding Health Care! The NHS was founded in 1948 and the people have paid for it since then,
via their Nat. Insce pymts, taken from their wages or salaries. I am completely against this move and urge the decision makers to take into account all the comments here. Also, it is despicable to do this in deliberate secrecy because, if the people knew about this and what will happen to their paid-for healthcare, this would never happen.

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Mrs A Khamon 4 years ago

The National Health Service is owned by those who fund it, that is, all of those paying their National Insurance, etc. It is therefore a National Asset, not a profit making business.

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Peter Etheridge 4 years ago

The only reason Centene are interested is to make a profit. Please don’t desert our wonderful NHS after how wonderful and dedicated they have been over the Covid pandemic

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Malcolm John Larby 4 years ago

We pay taxes in the good faith that these monies will be used for the public good, and to maximum effect. We want mutual support within our society, we want the best possible healthcare delivered free of charge at he point of need. Arranging for a portion of our taxes to be syphoned off as profit by a private company does not help in any way to maximise the delivery of healthcare. Any claim that somehow using public payment to provide private profit is efficient is utterly preposterous. Please get your thinking and principles back onto a sensible track. Stop this privatisation nonsense, we want our public money spent for our public good.

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Anonymous 4 years ago

Any government, tory, Labour any government, should have the welfare of it's citizens as a top priority.
the tories have bitterly opposed our NHS since its inception and have constantly undermined and underfunded it in order prove that it is inefficient and does not work, in order to sell it off to their friends and the American 'health' insurance companies.
serco, a private company, recently made such a mess of test and trace that it had to be taken back into local NHS hands so that it could be done properly - how much did that cost our NHS in wasted taxpayers money, no recriminations for boris the PROVEN LIAR, hancock or anyone else in the tory sleaze squad.
centene recently closed 2 GP surgeries in the south east because they were not making enough money for this profit hungry, profit driven company, the patients were 'left out in the cold' and had to make their own new arrangements at another GP surgery.
branson was compensated with £75.000.000 because one of his 'health' companies could not fulfill its contract - again our NHS had to pick up the pieces and fulfill the contract.
And still boris, hancock and all, want to destroy our NHS (just like the tories did with manufacturing in Britain)
I never begrudged paying national insurance to fund our NHS, it was cheap! I could never have afforded American healthcare, that system is a bankrupting blight on most of the people who use it. AND if boris and co think the 'American Dream'is so wonderfull, why does President Biden want to expand Medicare to include more and more of his citizens who cannot afford insurance?

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Karen S. 4 years ago

Please don’t leave our precious NHS GP services in the hands of Centene. The NHS’s raisin d’etre is responding to need, Centene’s is making as much money as possible. It doesn’t fit. Patient welfare has and will continue to be very adversely impacted if Centene is allowed to continue and given more control over decision-making.

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miranda walker 4 years ago

Our NHS is just as its name says = a NATIONAL Health Service and we want to keep it that way - not to be in thrall to the cynicism of private companies, who don't give a toss about our health or privacy but simply dance to the tune of their own greed. The US has no business taking over our health system and our government has no business to be selling it to them. None of it is about benefitting us or our health.

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Gill Wiltshire 4 years ago

Profit should not be made from people suffering from ill health. The NHS was formed to help and care for sick people without the added worry off having to pay for treatment. Privatising the NHS will lower the excellent service it provides as greedy profit makers don’t care about people, just how much money they can make. Healthcare is not a commercial business but a caring service that puts people first.

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John Harrison 4 years ago

I was born during the second world war and worked until I was 67. Like many of the above commentators I paid my taxes and National Insurance contributions and never begrudged paying one penny as I believed in the NHS providing care when needed, in recent times NHS staff have gone above and beyond their duty in combatting the Covid pandemic, keep the NHS in the public sector 100%, which includes of course G.P. Practices throughout the whole of the UK. People before Profit. Keep greedy American Companies and their shareholders snouts out of the trough!

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Anonymous 4 years ago

Our NHS and GPs need to be in a position to decide how they care for their UK taxpaying and A&E patients. Not some foreign-owned insurance company whose eye will be on their own bottom line and dividends to shareholders. We do not want to be told what US drugs must be used. We do not want to know that our UK GPs are having their hands tied by foreign owners and investors. Please, do not sell our precious NHS, a standard bearer and world leader in world class health care. It is to be copied not sold.

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Brian Evans 4 years ago

Funding of the NHS should be entirely focussed on meeting the healthcare needs of citizens; providing fair payment to staff; and research/development of treatments, not on providing profits for private companies

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Louise Pascoe 4 years ago

Healthcare is a human right. It can not be operated as a for-profit business model, doing so denies patients access to provision of this right.

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Alisoun Gardner-Medwin 4 years ago

Operose Health, which now owns the GP Practices A T Medics Ltd in London. is itself owned by Centene, so Centene can respond to any complaints by a shrugged shoulder, "We're not the owners of A T Medics holdings", while Operose Health can pass the buck upwards. And money from profits goes to the shareholders of both companies, who maximise profits.
Why should a company owned by other people profit from our human right to medical care when we are ill?

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Iris Jefferies 4 years ago

The NHS is at the heart and soul of everything we do in this country; to mess around with its system of care - precarious at times of stress in demands and shortages, but somehow, always striving... to offer solace , encouragement and hope behind every personal caring action .

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Dr John Adey 4 years ago

Health care is a basic right in a civilised society. It is not a commodity but a service and the operative word is 'care'.
The profit motive has no place in the caring services; the profit motive distorts and perverts the whole ethos of our National Health Service which is based on an equality of care funded through taxation.

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Richard Townley 4 years ago

The NHS is a much valued public service that must remain public and not be gradually 'watered down' by progressive use of private contractors or companies. Only by having a public service can we be assured of retaining committed staff and expertise with the ethos of public service for its own sake. Otherwise the bottom line is likely to predominate and you should not be persuaded to let contractors like Centene be appointed by the false economy of appearing to save money or by government diktat.

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Robina Jacobson 4 years ago

Please keep the NHS in public ownership and control, in this way it will be accountable to we tax-payers who will support it with all our hearts.

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barry walsh 4 years ago

Privatisation has failed on so many levels on so many occasions and does not work. It should be kept well out of the NHS on all fronts!

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G Cheung 4 years ago

NO to greedy multi-nationals like Centene making a profit off our health service.
NO to greedy multi-nationals like Centene closing our GPs.
NO to greedy multi-nationals like Centene prioritising profit over our health.
YES to our NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE for PEOPLE NOT PROFIT. PUBLIC NOT PRIVATE.

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Joan Veitch 4 years ago

Healthcare cannot be run for profit - it is a service.

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Harry Chandler 4 years ago

The welfare of people not the needs of irresponsible profit centered companies should be the priority.

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Brenda Billinghurst 4 years ago

Teh NHS is a fantastic resource to which we owe our health. There are limited resources for healthcare. All of the money available should go into the NHS and not into private profits.
The NHS was supposed to be safe and not privatised by this government. This seems to be a lie, and a cruel one at the expense of people's health.
Kick private companies out - people, not profit!

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Iris Jefferies 4 years ago

The NHS is at the heart and soul of everything we do in this country; to mess around with its system of care - precarious at times of stress in demands and shortages, but somehow, always striving... to offer solace , encouragement and hope behind every personal caring action .

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Jude Stratton 4 years ago

The NHS belongs to us all, we do not want our health service sold off to private companies who want to make profits. Health care should be about people not profits.

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- John M Caley 4 years ago
  
  No to privatisation of the NHS. Yes to sufficient public funding, via taxation and NI contributions, of the NHS.
  
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- Linda Goodacre 4 years ago
  
  Keep the NHS public and for all!
  
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Marlene Hounam 4 years ago

All this underhand privatisation is so wrong, this government is supposed to be serving the people of this country not lining their own pockets, shameful

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Maggie Black 4 years ago

Wherever private companies, whose primary purpose is to make profits for their shareholders, become involved in delivery public health and medical care for people, the services provided become compromised. The kind of people that will be treated and the care that will be provided will be prioritised according to how profitable it is to the providers, not how best it responds to the needs of individuals and society at large. Please stop allowing private company intrusion into and exploitation of our NHS, and of our citizens and the employees of NHS practices and services.

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Cherry Lavell 4 years ago

I well remember the excitement when the NHS came into being after WWW2. No longer would access to health be reserved for people who could pay, but would be available to all free at the point of delivery. The tragedy was that some doctors could opt to remain private, and this weakened the whole thing from the start. By all means pay medics an appropriate salary, but making money out of people's dire need is completely immoral in my book. Thee American (and any other) corporations must be kept OUT of Our National Service. The UK government should support it properly -- that is the highest priority service they can provide their citizens.

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Valerie Mulligan 4 years ago

American health care companies are only interested in UK health care in order to make profit for their share holders taking money which should be spent on patient care not on fat cats' portfolios.

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Reinhard Huss 4 years ago

Private Profit is a cost to society. Get rid of it and invest instead in the NHS.

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Eleanor Ellington 4 years ago

Tax payers' money should not be used to generate profits for private companies which are effectively exploiting what are meant to be "not for profit" public services like the NHS. This means that money intended to provide public services is being siphoned off as private profit.

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Tricia Green 4 years ago

I object strongly to the continuation of Centene’s contract. This would be totally detrimental to the GP service and is absolutely not in the interests of the patients. The NHS is a service to the population of the UK NOT a cash cow for foreign companies. Please do NOT. allow Centene any access to the NHS.

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Helen Saunders 4 years ago

It is immoral to sell off our NHS to greedy American private healthcare companies.
We have learnt the lessons from the pandemic that public ownership and cooperation with local healthcare provide much better outcome than private companies who only aim to make profit and bleed the NHS dry. Keep Centene out of our GP practices in Brent . The NHS is not for sale particularly to American private healthcare companies who create briken health care

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Sue Ferguson 4 years ago

I think it is shocking that private companies can be given such a role in our National Health Service. Centene's contract should not be renewed - they should not make a profit from our NHS, they have already taken over many GP surgeries and closed some. How can our Government allow profit over health in spite of telling us the NHS is safe in their hands!

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Jim Ennis 4 years ago

The free National Health Service wasn't set up after the Second World War for the British people, just for American capitalist parasites to worm their way in and suck profits out of it.
Get out of our NHS!

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Anonymous 4 years ago

Centene must be stopped. Privatisation of the NHS cannot be allowed.

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Anonymous 4 years ago

Illness is NOT a business opportunity

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Jan Lucas 4 years ago

Free healthcare at the point of access, that's what the NHS is all about, if we start privatising it, we will end up losing it.

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Benjamin Daw 4 years ago

We don't want companies like Centene taking profit out of our NHS healthcare set-up
We don't want GP practices run for any objective other than free healthcare provision.
This is privatisation and it's unacceptable. Please do not renew Centene

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Patricia Foley 4 years ago

The GP system as first envisaged by the 1946 National Health Service Act is fundamantal to our well being here in the UK.
Our taxes pay for it - Illness is NOT a business opportunity.The notion of making a profit from someone else's misery, is abhorent & shameful. Keep out of the UK's health service Centene!

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G Rigler 4 years ago

The UK has developed a "mutual approach" to providing health services to the nation and it is in need of extending that approach to social services : certainly not shrinking that approach . All resources should be kept available for any such mutual approach to providing nationally approved services and facilities and certainly not "milked" (by anyone) for profits and data that escape from the national pool of resources.

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david honeybell 4 years ago

Our NHS is their for everyone, young or old, rich or poor. It's a worry when you are ill, but it would be a bigger worry if you had to pay to see a GP or see a specialist. We must keep our NHS public and stop private companies from taking over for profit.Our NHS must be for patients and not for profit.

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Maria Haas 4 years ago

I agree with all the comments above - the NHS is for British people who fund it. Selling GP practices to foreign entities to enable those to profit is immoral and unacceptable.

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L Fuser 4 years ago

Access to health services must be available to everyone and it's unethical to gain profits from sick patients.
The health American system has proven to be discriminatory and we don't want this to happen in UK.
I strongly disagree in selling NHS surgeries to Centene

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Catherine 4 years ago

American healthcare is inadequate. The NHS is invaluable - please do not involve private American companies in the management of any NHS services. They cannot be trusted and work against the principle of free at the point of use.
No privatisation by the back door - or through the ‘useful third party’ excuse.

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Rosemary Theobalds 4 years ago

I believe that our NHS should be kept out of private hands whose motivation is profit. I wish our NHS to belong to us, the residents of the UK not to a multinational like Centene.

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david honeybell 4 years ago

Our NHS is their for everyone, young or old, rich or poor. It's a worry when you are ill, but it would be a bigger worry if you had to pay to see a GP or see a specialist. We must keep our NHS public and stop private companies from taking over for profit.Our NHS must be for patients and not for profit.

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Chris Clarke 4 years ago

The NHS, like all essential public services, should not be run for profit. As a taxpayer I am not happy being forced to fund a private company extracting money from essential service to make a profit. Please do not renew this contract.

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david Peacock 4 years ago

Please do not let centene have control of our GP service or any part of our
NOT FOR PROFIT NHS.

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janet peacock 4 years ago

Our NHS is a Not For Profit organisation, unlike Centene who only want to look after
their shareholders.
We must not let them take control of our excellent free at point of need services.

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Judith Longmire 4 years ago

The National Health Service is owned by the British people and run on our behalf by the elected government. When were we asked by the present government whether we are in agreement with parts of it being sold off to American companies to be run for their enrichment?

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Stephen Clarke 4 years ago

The whole point about the NHS from it s foundation was that it should be a service. It is not a brand, not a nice badge behind which politicians arrange for the rich to become richer regardless of the consequences, but a means whereby we, British people, pool our resources for everyone’s equal benefit. We began this unique and special arrangement, and foreign organisations with appalling records should have no right of access to take from us what is ours.

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Dr Anne Davidson 4 years ago

I am a retired GP and was greatly involved in practice organization. I was brought up in a GP house and remember the start of th NHS. I watched the ability for all people to access health care, and the great relief it produced. I am horrified by the insidious, but covert , privatization. This must be stopped

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Christine Randell 4 years ago

Private insurance provision needs to make a profit for its shareholders. the patient does not come first in any aspect of such provision. The actual nature of companies contracts prescribes what can and cannot be done by a doctor or they will not be fully paid for their patient's care. This can seriously interfere with the doctor's ability to practice based upon his professional opinion and knowledge of the patient - one size does not fit all. Also,privatized health care is far more expensive than healthcare properly provided and staffed by a NHS, directly financed by the Government from taxation. Indirectly financing the NHS is not only more expensive but it also affects all aspects of standards of service. The system is fragmented between different providers and different specialisms; so becomes inefficient and ineffectual. Consultations have to be paid for so there is no way for doctors to seek informally each others opinions and make quick and simple referrals between themselves, this can particularly affect in-patients.Patients not infrequently have conditions which inter-relate and so can experience being 'half treated' but them being left on some waiting list.
I can see no good reason to make our NHS more expensive, inefficient and less effectual in its work. The Government needs to pay directly from taxation the costs of our NHS and take back the ownership of the buildings and land on which they are built.

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Henry Peacock 4 years ago

In January this year, Trade Minister Greg Hands said there was no need to protect the health service with legislation because “the NHS is not and never will be for sale". He characterised such claims as "offensive and absurd".
And yet, American healthcare giant Centene has recently taken over 49 GP practices. Now, with a total of over 70 GP practices under its control, it has become the largest single private primary care provider in England.
With North West London CCG's contract with Centene up for renewal this Thursday, I ask you not to put the health care of vulnerable patients in the hands of a private company that has already shown that it has a greater concern for profit than for health care.

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Anonymous 4 years ago

GET THE US GANGSTERS' MONEY-GOUGING HANDS OF OUR NHS!

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david honeybell 4 years ago

Our NHS is their for everyone, young or old, rich or poor. It's a worry when you are ill, but it would be a bigger worry if you had to pay to see a GP or see a specialist. We must keep our NHS public and stop private compa
nies from taking over for profit.Our NHS must be for patients and not for profit

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Lise Bosher 4 years ago

The NHS was created and still exists in order to give the UK population a way to protect its health- not a way to line the pockets of shareholders or other profit-makers. The USA does not understand the concept of community- they do not see that to protect my neighbour's health is to protect mine too. They do not have decent state health insurance - they believe in privatisation at any cost to the individual- profit above community and profit above the individual's quality of life. The American way is not the British way. Boris Johnson and the Conservatives do not have permanent license to wreck the institutions of this country. Please don't undermine the NHS by selling out to private healthcare companies.

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Ken Rimmer 4 years ago

Allowed to go through and before we know we'll have to pay to get an appointment to go to the surgery.Then it will be medical insurance.
Keep Centrico out completely.

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Jim Cornford 4 years ago

Most of the world is envious of our NHS, it was set up to provide health care for everyone free of charge and has worked well for a long, long time. If this is changed and is taken over by companies who are only interested in profit there is only one direction it will go in future - DOWN - just like the USA. Keep our NHS safe from such companies.

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Marianne O'Hanlon 4 years ago

I agree with all the comments above. It is not for a semi privatised GP committee to sell the UK's NHS by the pound to any corporation private or not. I also have grave concerns about the protection of citizens private health data being shared with other companies and entities. This theft must be stopped in its tracks.

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christine collins 4 years ago

The NHS is not intended to be a profit making organisation. Centene puts profit before people. Please do not renew the contract.

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John M Caley 4 years ago

The reason is in the title. The NHS is the National Health Service. The NHS serves the general public. It should be funded by the general public through sufficient government taxation. Private health-related companies should be legally unable to provide services for the NHS. An increase in taxation would be justifiable in order to keep the NHS in the public sector.

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Val Smith 4 years ago

The NHS belongs to the people of this country and must not be sold off. You do not have the right to do this, only the people have that right as it is their money that pays for it not yours to do as you like with. The NHS MUST stay and the Pariahs must go. Do not renew any contract.

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Colin Langton 4 years ago

I was born 1 year, 1 month and 1 day after the NHS came into being and have therefore been lucky enough to have lived my entire life under its excellent care. It was created by the struggles of my and millions other people's parents and grandparents in the aftermath of the destruction of World War II as a PUBLIC SERVICE FREE AT THE POINT OF USE to meet the needs of every person in this country. Those generations knew that any healthcare system worthy of the name should be PUBLICLY OWNED, PUBLICLY CONTROLLED AND PUBLICLY ACCOUNTABLE. Allowing private healthcare companies to extract profits from our taxpayer funded NHS, especially ones like Centene from the USA where millions of people have no healthcare provision, is both completely unacceptable and immoral.

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Lucie Mernagh 4 years ago

As a country we maybe politically divided, but from experience I know people from all walks of life are united in their dependency of the NHS. Please do everyrhing humanily possible, and resist the NHS falling into private ownership.

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Roger Brown 4 years ago

I don't believe my father and many members of the Empire's armed forces fought his way across the continent to Belsen and back to have his vote in the election of 1945 squandered by people supporting spivs and black marketeers. His vote and millions placed by the vast majority of people in Great Britain was instrumental in the formation of the National Health and similar vital public services.
Please do not allow this service to be pirated by people who have only belief in their own profit, irrespective of whom it may hurt.

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John M Caley 4 years ago

No to privatisation of the NHS. Yes to sufficient public funding, via taxation and NI contributions, of the NHS.

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Alan Bell 4 years ago

Hardly ned to add anything, I totally agree with thee previous comments, the NHS is funded by tax payers to provide a service, it is not a vehicle for making profits which will be sent out of the country to the states!!

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Danya Glaser 4 years ago

The NHS should not and cannot be made subject to profit making. It is a public service. albe to the public. This contract is unacceptable.

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Daniel Scharf 4 years ago

If the Covid pandemic has shown one fundamental about our health service, it is that the NHS and local public health services have performed much better than the attempts at bringing in private businesses. In fact the vaccination programme goes further than that and has relied onan army of volunteers that would be much less wiling to help if there was a smell of private profit. Keep genral practice a public service for the benefit of all.

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Dr Zoe Stec 4 years ago

American Companies are out to make a profit. The NHS is about improving British people's health . There is a fundamental tension of interests.

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Vivien Ellison 4 years ago

To let our NHS and G.P surgeries be taken over by private companies is to exploit public trust.Very few realise that the NHS has been reassembled over many years to include profit greedy companies.Your health care compromised for their wealth care.It's a shameful betrayal of public naivety and trust.

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Kev Young 4 years ago

These guys will be profit before patients and will only get the cheapest care available. Not like the Wonderful NHS who do what is needed for the patient. NO PROFIT BEFORE PEOPLE

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David Hardy 4 years ago

Stop making rich people richer and lowering the quality of care to line their own pockets. What they are doing here is so corrupt it stinks. The government is wrong if they think the public do not know what they’re up to.

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T Elliott 4 years ago

It is totally amoral to make money out of illness and course the nasty party want to get their grubby dirty little fingers into the pot

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Anonymous 4 years ago

After all the effort put in by NHS staff over the pandemic, I feel it is unacceptable to involve profit focused companies in healthcare. We need public health care in order to solve the many health issues such as obesity that made Covid even worse. We do not need more privatisation where profits are put before people and health.

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Carol Altmann 4 years ago

You just have to look at the state of dental care here to see what happens when privatised.

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Sarah Wilson 4 years ago

The NHS is funded by the people of the UK for the people in the UK.
The UK is not the USA. The NHS is not for sale! Stop it now!

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Kay Lawrence 4 years ago

The tax payers own the NHS it should not for sale. It was founded as a non profit organisation to put people's health and well being first not profits for shareholders

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Mandy Morris 4 years ago

The creeping privatisation of the NHS needs to stop now. The NHS is funded by the people for the people. Outside services are not required or desired. Leave the NHS alone!

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frances dawson 4 years ago

divide to rule: breaking up the nhs is going on behind our backs. we must stop selling to the highest bidder our health system, care system, pharmaceutical system. What is going on? Does the UK not have enough cash to look after its own?

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Debra Howells 4 years ago

The NHS always has been and always should be free at the point of contact. Where other services have been privatised there have been massive drops in the quality of service provided and also huge delays in provision. If GP surgeries follow this pattern, increased delays and reduced services can only impact on the health of the nation. The NHS should remain in the public domain and not for profit.

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Pauline Whittaker 4 years ago

There should be no room in the NHS for a company who’s sole objective is to make a profit out of the ill health of people. No health service should be viewed as a cash cow for private companies and their shareholders. If the NHS is reduced to being an only for profit business the whole ethos of staff working for the benefit of their patients will be lost. Many may find that their future health requirements will no longer be met because treatment will be decided on a profit versus health need basis - and profit will take precedence. The state of the American health care system stands as a clear warning to going further down this route and those that lead us down this path, with false assurances that it will be to our benefit, will not be forgiven when the true outcome is revealed.

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Steve Whitehead 4 years ago

Multi-nationals have profit as their first priority. This is simply not the way a health service should be run.

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Steve Brewer 4 years ago

One of the really great things about the UK is the NHS. Please let's not go down the US model of health care which is clearly broken and grossly unfair.

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Dr Adrian Longstaffe 4 years ago

I am a veterinary surgeon and I see how corporate takeover of veterinary practices has lowered clinical standards and restricted practitioners in the drugs they can prescribe, the procedures they can carry out and the diagnostic services they can use. Not only have standards been lowered but vets are getting less career satisfaction and less commitment to the job. I have lived in America and I know at first hand the miserable standards and high costs over there. Please don't let this happen in the UK.

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Marion 4 years ago

Centene is only one of several American companies that have taken over GP practices across the country. All this privatisation has happened surreptitiously while the public's attention has been fixed on Covid. Has there been any Parliamentary approval requested or discussed. The NHS is paid for by the public via National Insurance contributions and there should be no involvement in private profit taking. KEEP OUR NHS FREE TO ALL PATIENTS, WITH NO PLACE FOR PROFIT TAKING BY PRIVATE COMPANIES. Only the dedication of our NHS workers and scientist have got us through this Covid pandemic, not private companies who reduce staff and often make new contracts to reduce the pay of workers. This will not improve patient care and lessen the dedication and motivation of our brilliant health workers.
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Amy Stilwell 4 years ago

Before 1948 many people did not get the medical treatment they needed because they couldn't afford to pay for it. People suffered and died because they didn't have the money to pay for a doctor. If a doctor was called to a poor person not only did they have to worry of their illness they also had the worry of how to pay the doctor for their treatment. In a lot of cases people died because they couldn't afford to pay for treatment, we must not return to those days. We pay our national insurance to help support the NHS. The NHS is for the people not for profit. Keep private companies out of the NHS. The NHS is there to provide healthcare for the people not profit for the greedy private sector.

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David Green 4 years ago

Even though it was decided in 2004 that GP practices could be owned by corporations, Centene is different in that they are not fit and proper because of their proven appalling track record in the US and because there are no adequate mechanisms in place to ensure true quality of service to patients. It is also deeply troubling that a senior executive of Centene's UK subsidiary has just been appointed adviser to the Prime minister on NHS Transformation. This gives a sense of what the Prime Minister has in mind.

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Nancy Davison 4 years ago

The NHS belongs to the people and without it we would suffer indescribable hardship. My own children would have been without a father many years before they were because we certainly could not have afforded to pay the level of insurance required to keep treatment going. I fear a time when insurance assessors and not clinicians decide what can and cannot be done. No insurance company is there to lose money and will stop treatment once a patient costs more to treat than they can contribute. The whole idea of privatising healthcare appals me.

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Maria McMylor 4 years ago

If we keep privatising the NHS, we'll end up with the horrible US system-the most expensive in the world with the worst possible outcomes. It spends 2.6 times more per capita on healthcare but provides the worst healthcare out of 11 countries. For example, the infant mortality rates in the US are worse than in a lot of poor African countries. Their life expectancy is lower than the average in the OECD. See, for example https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/mar/13/us-healthcare-costs-causes-drug-prices-salaries?utm_source=pocket-ff-recs

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Tim Grice 4 years ago

I'm aware that general practices have always been private businesses selling their services to the NHS and while this model isn't perfect there's generally a reasonable balance between the interests of the practice stakeholders, the body commissioning the services and the public/patients for whom they exist. Throwing a large business (and its overheads, which will far outweigh any "economies of scale") that is legally bound to deliver best value for its shareholders into the mix cannot be a recipe for sustainable service improvements or reduced costs. I urge the Commissioning Group to seek service providers that can more clearly be held to the account for the quality of GP services.

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BiziBiz 4 years ago

The NHS is the best thing any Government has ever done on behalf of it's population , It's truly a gem & Centene corporation must not be allowed any control whatsoever , the only way they can produce a profit for their shareholders is to cut & limit services .

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Peter McMylor 4 years ago

NHS is a public service, run for the people, NOT FOR PROFIT!

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Peter 4 years ago

I am so sick of hearing about privatisations of Our national institutions by nasty profiteering companies after a fast buck At Our Expense. Is there any chance it will stop all the time we have a completely broken political system?

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Arthur Hemingway 4 years ago

Private commercial interests have no place in the NHS. Kick out the alien parasite, Centene.

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Daryll Bamford 4 years ago

We should be allowing the piecemeal privatisation of the NHS. GP surgeries should be about clinical need, not corporate greed

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Alison McCormack 4 years ago

The pandemic has shown just how lucky we in this country are to have the NHS and how important it is that we fight to keep it as is, run from public money, by people who work for its goals and not for those of private companies and available equally to the people of this country. It is one of the greatest achievements of the country and the envy of many countries around the world, please do your bit to help stop it being privatised by the back door. Thank you.

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Robin Goodfellow 4 years ago

This is a slippery slope as, by stealth - deception - we are being led by the nose into an Anglo-American economic 'treaty' these last few years. American Health Business has been waiting in the wings lobbying like hell its U.K political lackies who seem only too willing to step aside for these predatory profiteers who the NHS promises a veritable gold strike. Unless U.K folk wake up their kids will inherit a health business they have to pay insurance to use...or end up like millions of Americans economically forced out of treatment. Centene we don't want you! If U.K can afford a 40% arms update and one of the biggest aircraft carriers ever built it can afford to keep the Nation's Health Service for the people Not profit!

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Garry Whannel 4 years ago

If there is one sure mark of a decent society, it is one in which healthcare is available free to all. Profit has no place in our NHS - please do not renew the Centene Contract

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Joanna Bell 4 years ago

Leave our NHS to be owned by the people of the UK. It is already hard enough see a GP or even speak to a GP without a private company taking over. Our NHS is not for sale or private management. Indeed it needs more resources and the people of the UK will help, so that it returns to being world class and able to care for a bigger population. No private companies, no foreign involvement. Hands off.

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Jo Rathbone 4 years ago

People's health care and well-being should not be dependent on companies which are in turn dependent on profits and their fiduciary duty. The NHS should be run by local people publicly funded for the best outcomes for individual patients. I have seen the results of privatisation in social care (I am a social worker) and I feel very strongly that this results in poor care as profits force down wages of the most important people - the people involved in actual hands on care.

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Richard Philpott 4 years ago

Brexit promised that we were 'Taking back control' I doubt that anyone would agree that US companies running our GP services comes under that heading. Don't allow this as it is the thin edge of the wedge and brings the fear of privatising OUR NHS

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susan evans 4 years ago

boris johnson promised to protect our nhs !it seems that he only wants to do that by making it look profitable to carry on selling different parts off to the highest bidder!shame on him......we the public we the tax payers now or before own it its not up for grabs from his buddies......we all want proper drs surgeries where we can go locally and not have to wait 2weeks for a consultation over the phone......i guess he or carry is not diagnosed in a phone conversation why is this not being covered by the national press................i wonder ..!!!!!!

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Margaret Magee 4 years ago

As a nurse ( now retired) in the NHS I worked very hard for many years trying to improve community services, being the lead manager for STARRS helping to launch the service. We competed going to tender against several private organisations who proved to have poor policies, were for making a profit and did not have patients first and foremost. We must retain NON FOR PROFIT, with all money going to improving NHS services. I have experience of some breakaway private community services with GPs .it looks good on paper and for the first six months and then the holes and weaknesses show through! We must stop a fragmented NHS. No one ever goes the extra mile for patients except the NHS staff. Privatisation is not patient centred, believe me one hears the private companies say “ it is not in our contract.......we will not do such and such” this is no matter what individual sick people need. There is a breakdown in communication, in contact t’induit y. We should in Brent be working rather to coordinating Health and Social care, NOT privatising services. Please NO!

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MD 4 years ago

Stop the back door privatisation of the NHS and GP surgeries, especially after this terrible year of pandemic. Our health service needs protection and investment not selling off to the highest bidders. Cherish the NHS.

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Kate Morriss 4 years ago

GP surgeries should be run for the benefit of the local community by people working and living there. The NHS is working hard to provide care for communities in their neighborhoods we don’t need another layer of management which profits only the pockets of a greedy company. Leave our NHS alone.

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Peter Warrington 4 years ago

We have experienced many failures of the private sector running public services and it would be an outrage to add NHS services to the list. Health services should be provided as a public service - the emphasis being on service first, not profit first! ‘Service first’ would not be Centene’s priority - it has shareholders and investors to satisfy first. Keep them away from our precious NHS. Shame on the Government for outsourcing NHS services in the first place.

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Anne Seifipour 4 years ago

Under no circumstances should a multi-national corporation like. Centene be involved in our NHS. I am totally against private companies & corporations running the NHS for profit. It is a drain on a very valuable system and also it will end up being a two or even a 3 tier system of medicine which means only the wealthiest can receive the best. The NHS was meant to be equal for all. If you feel it is badly run then take it out of the hands of of private companies & build NHS services up so they can run it in the manner it should be run. Not for profit. It is disgraceful how this government but also past governments have deliberately allowed it to run down so it could be criticised by the people doing it to allow shambolic companies to take over & make it worse.

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Mfon 4 years ago

The NHS is a strategic asset and a national treasure. I echo the sentiments above and say a resounding No to profiteering from the Citizenry’s or residents’ health and offshore outsourcing.

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Nicky O'FARRELL 4 years ago

The National Health Service is owned by those who fund it, all of those paying their National Insurance, it belongs and is for the use of the people of the United Kingdom and should remain under public ownership.....It should NEVER be owned or go into private ownership. The NHS was NEVER designed for that. Their motto was from cradle to grave and it should always remain with the purpose it was designed and intended for. It should NEVER be sold or get in the hands of private companies or individuals who are only interested in greed, profit making and are money grabbing individuals who are certainly NOT caring or interested in the welfare and health of the people of the United Kingdom.!! We must never let this happen!! We must save and protect our NHS!!!

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Patrick O'callaghan 4 years ago

The N.H.S should not be be used to make an American company profit but to help people who pay for it in their taxes.

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Karen Luck 4 years ago

Creating the NHS was arguably the best thing any government did in the last 100 years. When governments have funded it properly the NHS service has worked incredibly well. Allowing any company to run any part of it as a profit making enterprise is immoral and destructive. The NHS is for everyone’s health not for lining the pockets of a few. Please do the right thing.

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Anonymous 4 years ago

I want my family's health care to stay where it has always been, in the NHS in this country. I wouldn't trust an American company for all the tea in China.

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Gill Modern 4 years ago

People should not be allowed to profit financially from other people illness. The nhs has always been ‘Not for profit’ until recently. American health care is greedy and corrupt. We must kick them out, and keep them out, of the NHS. STOP privatising the NHS now!

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Cynthia Ankers 4 years ago

We the British public have paid into the NHS through our national insurance contributions since the NHS was set up. Please do not throw this away, do not give it up, it has been tested and endured for the last 70+ years, why are you even contemplating allowing a private company into to delivery a General Practice service. I cannot see any advantages, only disadvantages, they are in it for profit, or to gain further access to other NHS services. Please do not go this.

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Tanya Sinnett 4 years ago

The NHS must remain in public ownership. It is for the benefit of people in the United Kingdom not for rapacious American companies who care only about profit. Please do not let Centene take over the GP practices

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Wendy astersln 4 years ago

The NHS is owned by the British Public and we want to keep it that way. .

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Anne Keeley 4 years ago

I am quite frightened at the thought of my GP practice being taken over by an American Company, which wants to make a profit from my health. The NHS has been developed and paid for by my taxes (etc), and not to make money from treating me when I am ill, and need treatment that I can trust.

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Susan Balbuena 4 years ago

I am writing to express my extreme concern and horror that anyone commissioning public services particularly our National Health Service provision could even consider 'outsourcing' any of it to any private corporate companies and especially USA owned and managed ones. There are so many reasons for stopping this and here are a few: The National Health Service as stated is a holistic, interdependent, complex, system of health care that has been developed over more than 7 decades, with excellent research, training, shared information and implementation of all aspects of health and social care that has made it the world's most successful, efficient and cost effective health service. This OUR NHS belongs to all of us from our grandparents, parents and us, paid and provided for by all of our tax and NI contributions and dedicated labour, it is NOT to be sold off as it doesn't belong to the Government or private providers it is the public's and it is the most important embodiment and cornerstone of our democracy. There is plenty of historic and recent evidence of what happen's to people,s health and life chances without a fully functioning health service and public health provision which depend on each other; it was known after WWI that the long term poor health of many of the soldiers was a vast contributor to excessive deaths and this experienced evidence and the general state of the public's health then, sparked the ideas that formed the implementation of the NHS. Ken Loache's film 'The Spirit of 1945' highlighted the punity of life and terror of sickness prior to the inception of the NHS. The current pandemic has exposed the weakness in societies that do not possess a competent National Health Service that is imperative as only a systemic integrated service can operate on so many diverse levels at the same time, able to respond to needs and amend practices and procedures to keep up with changes and ensure effective treatments by timely information exchange and research. Once any part of this integrated service is privatised it is already out of the cohesive loop and is unable and often unwilling to engage effectively, competitive practises and protectionism prevails, profits demand drops in standards and competencies as service costs are cut; the privatised service, in effect, is operating in it's own bubble mainly run and accountable to it's shareholders and has no democratically maintained oversight or input. Furthermore should these services proove too onerous or unprofitable to run, the operator, as has been shown in the past, just abandons it. This is no way to provide health services that are so depended upon by so many and particularly the most in need in society. There couldn't be a more obvious example of losing rather than 'Taking Back' Control of our services. The vast amounts of public money poured into private corporations for services and equipment during this current pandemic, by this Government, with little return or complete failure to deliver on the contracts has shown the lack of governance or control by the Government and it's commissioners. As usual once outsourced always outsourced, with the public and even their representatives left powerless to intervene, resulting in no provision and huge sums expended that we the public will have to find to pay back and suffer further service cuts; had this money been spent within the public service sector here it would have cost far less and there would have been a service; e.g. Test and Trace: UK spent £37 billion with Serco and others for a shoddy non functioning system-less service that failed, whilst Germany spent only 48 million Euros for a fully public operated successful service. A similar UK disaster with the inefficient laboratory Covid testing services again outsourced to incompetent corporations for eye-watering sums.Please, please think long and hard about the importance of the NHS in your hands and of all those people who depend on it, for now and in the future and don't be persuaded that the private sector, in this case: Centene, is best, because it is established that it definitely is not. We need to protect out NHS and public health as publicly run, funded and democratically managed in order to have public control and to secure it's sustainable and consistent future - we now know more than ever before, in recent times, how life-saving and important a holistic integrated NHS is, please let us all keep it this way and keep predatory private corporate business out like Cenetene. Thank you
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Clive Andrews 4 years ago

I totally agree with the above comments and believe that this PIRACY must be reversed!!! Give us back OUR NHS, which we have paid for and which is NOT YOURS TO SELL!!!

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Dr John Ridyard 4 years ago

Profit making companies have no place in the NHS, especially for emergency services. Centene should not be involved in GP practices; why and for what end? I fear the Tories have an agenda to dismantle the NHS as envisaged by Aneurin Bevan in a thousand cuts to feed their ideology of privatising whatever they can. To Tories the very idea of the NHS is anathema.

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Alan J Polley 4 years ago

Since the end of the second world war the NHS has become synonymous with the UK as an example of how a health service provides care to all the population regardless of their means. It has been built and developed by the public purse. It is a national asset that has been passed down by previous generations in trust that it continues for future generations to come. Therefore it is an abuse of power to dispose of any part of it for profit. The asset stripping of various NHS operations is nothing more than a death of a thousand cuts. The practice of dividing a public agency and parcelling the component parts for sale has been proved to be a failing political theory time and time again, the latest example being the railways which are now having to be taken back into public ownership. The original reasons for public ownership was the failure of private enterprises to provide a service in the first place, the lessons of history will have taught us nothing if the continuing sale of public assets carries on regardless. I appeal to your better senses to listen to the wider responsibility of duty to past and future generations and resist the urge for a quick profit and turn back from this full hardy scheme

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Ken Holliday 4 years ago

Privatisation by the back door.
If we continue to allow this to happen I’m afraid the web of privatisation within the NHS will be irreversible.

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Paul Carpenter 4 years ago

For the same money, NHS service or private service + profit? With private there has to be less for the service and pay cuts for staff. Please say no to Centene.

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Paul McCann 4 years ago

This government has an obsession with privatisation. Private organisations are no more efficient than Public funded organisation as we have seen from the rail industry and the many private companies which have failed to produce what they have contracted to produce. Three overriding things which make private industry unfavourable when it comes to running national services 1. the government invariably removes some of the safe guards that the national organisation has in order to make the organisation viable or "juicier" for private industry 2. "profits" are funded by the tax payer and go to shareholders and are therefore funds which are denied to the running of the national organisation 3. the private owners become secretive, and use "confidentiality" and other strategies to avoid public scrutiny thereby distancing themselves from the public they serve. They are not public servants. This has already happened with private companies which have taken over previously public organisations.

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Anonymous 4 years ago

All essential public services should be nationalised to ensure the poor in society are protected by ensuring the service is not a cash cow for profit but a safety net.

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Mark Monument 4 years ago

I cannot possibly accept that there can be any benefit whatsoever to the people of Great Britain in Centene's proposal to interfere in the provision of health care in this country,. The NHS is supposed to be a "Free at the point of Delivery" service, not profit-making, having been designed by Tax Payers for the benefit the Tax Payers of the GB, and NOT to provide profits for greedy corporations and their investors, at Tax Payers expense. To offer this profiteering organisation would be abhorrent and an insult to the people of this country, and our government should be ashamed of itself for allowing -even encouraging!- such disgraceful practice.

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Janet Yates 4 years ago

Mo advantage to this other than for the US and other healthcare industry, who are gaining new marjet, We lose the coherence and accountability of our health service and eventually our right to the health ervicewe know and trust- Slowly but surely it is being pecked apart.
How long do people have to wait to get NHS dentistry now?
Well that will be the future for basic primary care too.

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Anonymous 4 years ago

One of the best things that we as a country have ever done in my lifetime is to act as a community should act, with care towards our fellows, and decide to all put into the common pot so that everyone could have medical care free at the point of delivery. Don't let private sector greed get in the way of this.

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jo mark 4 years ago

Particularly given the current pandemic, the NHS needs to remain publicly owned and accountable, selling bits off to a private company will decrease people's trust which will have serious public health implications.
Not sure how compatable this is with the NHS constitution and principles of universal healthcare, it is likely the most vulnerable will suffer in a for profit system which is highly ethically questionable.

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CF 4 years ago

We need to protect our NHS for the sanity & love for all. Please don't privatise it!

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Marilyn Brown 4 years ago

The NHS was set up to enable the people of this country to get the medical treatment they need, irrespective of their ability to pay. It was NOT set up as a vehicle for greedy private companies to make huge profits.

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Chris Bullen 4 years ago

I have paid taxes and national insurance all my working life to ensure that I and many like me would be looked after at all stages of our existence. I probably would have been born successfully without the NHS care in the 1950s.I do not wish to end my life unable to get proper care because I cannot afford private insurance.

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Nathan Suckling 4 years ago

My mother suffered and passed away after having cancer for 4 years and she received brilliant care from the NHS. The thought of companies trying to take profit from the sick and injured is utterly horrifying not to mention those will be unable to afford it.
The greatness of the NHS comes from it always being there for you. Whether you are rich or poor, you are able to get the support you need. No one should make a profit off healthcare, it is for the need of the public. This selfishness and greed has no place in our healthcare system.

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Janet Feather-Moore 4 years ago

The NHS is a cherished public institution run for the benefit of everyone, rich or poor. How on earth can it be right that private American healthcare providers are allowed to make money out of this vital institution that is paid for, and should be owned entirely by, the British people? This is nothing short of privatisation by stealth. The Government thinks that if this happens on a drip drip basis, the public won't notice until it is too late and we have lost our National Health SERVICE altogether. Health care is too important for organisations whose first and foremost priority is a balance sheet to be allowed any involvement. This must be stopped immediately, before the British people lose control of their NHS to foreign private investors.

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Richard Owen 4 years ago

The NHS is being quietly privatised, and if we are not vigilant, we will lose it to the American corporations eyeing it up.

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Francis Prideaux 4 years ago

Our NHS should be publicly owned and publicly accountable.....not surrendered to private profiteers.
No-one has the right to give it away. Please be vigilant and vocal in its defence.

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Oriel Marks 4 years ago

Count me with all the comments made above. Being the same age as the NHS I have known it all my life - it must remain a NATIONAL organisation, one we all pay for and reap the benefit. It must never be taken over by an American financial instittution. We owe our lives to it and those that work in the NHS.

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Ann Gerrard 4 years ago

Our NHS is precious, it belongs to us all and no government has the right to sell it off bit by bit to profit mongers.

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Jim McHugh 4 years ago

The NHS for the people, paid for by the people-by NI contributions. Do not sell out to American for profit companies.

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susan jackson 4 years ago

Centene et al. you are not welcome here...take your dirty profiteering plans elsewhere.

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Dee Sheehan 4 years ago

The NHS was developed as a national asset for the people to provide healthcare free at the point of delivery. It belongs to the people and is not anyone's to sell or give away.

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Eirlys Jones 4 years ago

We need to keep our precious NHS, It's there for everyone that needs treatment as a caring non profit service. It would be a tragedy if our NHS continues to be privatised. The NHS is the UK's biggest treasure, so let's keep it in safe hands.

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Tricia Ham 4 years ago

I cannot believe that a British Government would allow an American business to take over our National Health Service and benefit from profits that should be ploughed back into the NHS . Please, please wake up to the potential outcomes of this action before it is too late.

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Thomas Rowe 4 years ago

My wife and i have worked all our lives and paid our tax and NI for our NHS, we are now retired we cannot afford to have an American insurance based healthcare system , which will deprive millions of even the basic health care. Stop the rampant privatisation,and lets push for a fully public funded NHS,

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Bipin Thanki 4 years ago

It's called the National Health Service and NO foreign let alone UK company should own any part of it. Hands off our Health Service!

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Sylvia L 4 years ago

The NHS is for people not profit. It was set up to be for the people, funded by the Government (our taxes). Private companies only care about making money for their shareholders and they do this by cutting back on the care and services they should be providing. Evidence shows this time and time again which I have found out to my cost and the NHS should Not be put in the hands of Private Companies. 'Home Helps' are now 'Enablers' who just stand and watch you struggle to cope, people are triaged without even being seen and turn down for necessary operations to mention just a couple of the 'services' provided by a local Private Company

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Alex kerr 4 years ago

The nhs was setup for people and not for profit- it needs to stay that way-please do not go selling this to profiteers who care little for the health of any country they invest in. It must remain a health care system that everyone can access regardless of their income? it’s a system to be proud of, please do not spoil it.

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Patricia Crompton 4 years ago

As a previous NHS worker, please keep our beloved system in public hands so it does not become a service only the privaledged can access. It was set up for the benefit of all. Please keep it accessible to all. It must stay in public hands!

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Duncan Davidson 4 years ago

Privatisation will be expensive, inefficient and deleterious to effective management of the National HealthService. It should be prevented.

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Celia Hawkesworth 4 years ago

British taxpayers own the NHS - it must NEVER be allowed to become the profit-making asset of remote shareholders motivated by greed.

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J.winton 4 years ago

The NHS is a National treasure and belongs to the people of Great Britain not foreign asset strippers and profiteers.

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Anonymous 4 years ago

The NHS - should be free at the point of access to those in need is the most precious thing we have in the UK. The majority of people access its services via their local GP. It is only those who are financially well off who can access private health care. Using an American multi-national company to provide GP services risks introducing the profit motive into an essential service on which we all depend and threatens the whole ethos of the NHS. During the General Election campaign we were told by the Tory Party that NHS privatisation was NOT on the agenda. They were not telling us the truth.

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Kerry Carr 4 years ago

The priority for GP management must be patients' health and wellbeing, not profit.

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Ruth McNichol 4 years ago

Our greatest national asset must never be run for profit.

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Kathryn Barber 4 years ago

The NHS belongs to the people of this country. It is paid for by the people of this country. We do not want a substandard health system like they have in America. Hands off our wonderful NHS.

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gillian rowe 4 years ago

Hands off our NHS. If the USA are so envious they should concentrate on starting and supporting the same
system at home. OUR NHS is not for sale or take over!!

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Steve Bell 4 years ago

We don’t want rapacious American corporates plundering our national healthcare service and making profit from suffering. We are civilised. Keep them out.

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Anonymous 4 years ago

As should have been pointed out to Thatcher in the '80s and all the other culprits since, our national assets DO NOT belong to whoever happens to be in power at any time, they are placed in trust with them for future generations - just a pity we've had no-one worthy of that trust for decades, but I hope to live long enough to see the day of reckoning come!

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Christine Sunter 4 years ago

The NHS belongs to the UK. It was set up by the British people, for the British people and is paid for by our NI.contributions. IT'S NOT FOR SALE. We don't want any business from the USA interfering and making a profit from the NHS.

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Gemma 4 years ago

The NHS is not for sale! COVID's only shown us just how vital it really is, more than ever.

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Angela Morton 4 years ago

Centene doesn't care about providing healthcare; only making profits and if denying patients services makes them more profits, they'll do that!GP Practices need to be run by people emotionally in the area in which the GP Practices are based. Companies like Centene just see our National Health Service as a cash cow; to milk till it's dry!

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Anonymous 4 years ago

The health system must be based around wellbeing, not money.
Something for the people - NOT for the corporations.
Something helpful - NOT greedy.

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Colin Smith 4 years ago

Equity in the provision of healthcare to its citizens is one of the hallmarks of any civilised country. In this endeavour the UK has lead the World and continues to enjoy a health service that is fair, effective and cost efficient. It enjoys the support of the UK population and the respect of the rest of the World. This is in contrast to the state of healthcare provision in the US which is the most expensive, most un equitable in the World. The reason - simply that in the name of the so called "free market", healthcare in the US has become a marketable commodity. There is of course no such thing - Governments set the rules of the market in terms of what can be traded and what not and it is reprehensible that a UK Government,should be so controlled by big business interests that they allow the NHS to be opened to commercial healthcare providers, who having squeezed as much profit as they can from the poor people of the US, attempt to do the same here.

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Linda Stevenson 4 years ago

Please stop this uncaring greedt American healthcare firm taking over our GP surgeries. The NHS is owned by the public keep it that way.NHS is not for sale.

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Linda Stevenson 4 years ago

Please stop this uncaring greedt American healthcare firm taking over our GP surgeries. The NHS is owned by the public keep it that way.NHS is not for sale.

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Robert John Montague 4 years ago

Privatisation is definitely counter productive when the situation is considering between the extra cost to the patients and profits to share holders. It doesn't work in the best interests of the patients who are out of work with no income to pay for a privatised industry. It did not work satisfactory before the NHS was formed to give everybody equal access to health care.

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Al Manton 4 years ago

We all contribute to our Nationalised Health Service solely to provide for our health. Private companies partake solely to extract maximum financial gain.

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Richard Davies 4 years ago

The NHS should be a UK-based, publicly-owned, publicly-run, NOT-FOR-PROFIT, and should NOT be included in any trade-deal with any country, I do NOT want any foreign company (where profit before patient-care is rife) to be able to have an influence over MY healthcare.
That's the benefit of "Socialist-based healthcare" because only 2 (two) people are truly involved - me and my GP (who will refer me on to specialists if required, etc...) unlike the USA where any number of "gate-keepers" do all they can the PREVENT provision of patient-care in favour of profit.

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L Jones 4 years ago

The NHS exemplifies who we are as a nation. To dismantle it would be a tragedy, which will go to the core of what we stand for, when greedy company fingers result in it’s demise.

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kit 4 years ago

The NHS needs support from everyone NOT Privatisation. Government intervention/meddling has been destroying the ethos of a public system for the good of all that is funded by NI contributions/taxes. We do NOT want a US style of private medical care that people can not afford.

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Alan Hearn 4 years ago

Privatisation/Theft:
As should have been pointed out to Thatcher back in the '80s and every other culprit since, our national assets DO NOT belong to whoever happens to be in power at the time but are placed in their trust for future generations - a pity we've had no-one worthy of that trust for decades, but I hope to live long enough to see the day of reckoning!

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Alan Partridge 4 years ago

It's about equality and justice, not party politics. Everyone deserves equal healthcare, paid for by everyone's taxes, and delivered to all who need it, regardless of their ability to pay. Contracting primary health services to profit making corporations is the start of a slippery slope. Please keep the NHS public.

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Kevin Allen 4 years ago

We pay taxes for a health service free at point of contact and don't expect companies profiteering from people's illness.
A patient's data must remain secure and not be put in the hands of privateers.
A disjointed system costs more to run than an integral system, even before companies skim off their cut
The British public have never been balloted on privatisation of services - why the secrecy?

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Sue Kember 4 years ago

Please please please,no to the renewal.

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Sara Bellisio 4 years ago

Renewing Centene's contract will ultimately cost lives, as this corporation closes down GP surgeries that are "not profitable" for them, leaving thousands of people without GPs, and therefore without access to routine checkups, therapy, operations, etc, as all these things have to go through a GP, first. This contract must end, NOW.

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Gisela Melwani 4 years ago

Dear People on the Commissioning Committee
Renewing Centene's contract to run the GP surgeries that they run at present would be PRIVATISATION of the NHS by stealth. Medical professionals have, over time, sounded the alarm over this privatisation of this part of the NHS. The Guardian newspaper has also reported on this matter. But any calls for an ending into this takeover, which many medical professionals have requested, have been dismissed by Matt Hancock. I know that Centene, via its UK subsidiary called "Operose Health Ltd" bought a company called "AT Medics" and with THAT purchase they acquired the GP practices which we, as NHS users, are so concerned about. With the acquisition of those GP practices Centene then took over the medical care of half a million patients.
To top the stealth with which Centene is inveigling itself into our NHS, our Prime Minister has employed at No.10 (at a civil servants' salary) a lady called Samantha Jones who had been the Chief Executive & President of Operose Health Ltd in the UK. Her new title at No. 10 is "Expert Advisor for NHS Transformation and Social Care".
Yes, our NHS does need transformation in the form of more support for the hard-working medical people in it, and more money. What the "National" (created FOR the benefit of the people in the UK) Health Service does NOT need is a US company which operates for profit!!
I call upon the persons on this Committee to take heed of the fact that people are watching you, even thousands who may not write in, and you will be judged. With that in mind it is hoped that your decision will be FOR the interests of the NHS and NOT for the interests of a for-profit US company.
Yours very earnestly, Gisela Melwani

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richard fellowes 4 years ago

It is morally obscene in principle yo generate profit from people's health problems and runs contrary to the ideal of the NHS as a national public service that was set up to be funded through taxation and to provide health care free at the point of use based on clinical need. So much damage has already been done to the NHS by past Labour and Tory governments by introducing the internal market, creating Trusts to act as autonomous business units and contracting out essential services to the private sector.

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Nigel Jones 4 years ago

The NHS is our jewel in the crown supported by and belonging to the British people, so all elements of "OUR" NHS must remain a publicly owned institution NOT run for profit by the likes of Centene. The slippery slope to Privatisation and a dangerous route that would exclude the less well off in society who can't afford expensive insurance cover from receiving the care that is their right currently.

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Dee Roye 4 years ago

DO NOT RENEW CENTENE'S CONTRACT, THERE WAS NEVER A PROPER CONSULTATION AND EVERYTHING WAS DONE UNDER THE COVER OF COVID, SHAME ON EVERYONE INVOLVED. THE NHS IS UNIQUE AND CRUCIAL AND SOMETHING THE UK SHOULD NEVER SELL, IT IS NOT FOR SALE. IT HAS SAVED MY LIFE, AND THE LIVES OF FRIENDS AND FAMILIES, EVERYONE IN UK HAS BENEFITED FROM IT

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Roger Morgan 4 years ago

Please enact the will of the People. We do not want grasping and exploitative American involvement with our NHS services. Bar Centene and similar companies from any involvement.

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Barbara Davis 4 years ago

This is the thin edge of the wedge, We don't need private enterprise getting involved in our National Health Service Once this happens the needs of people are put on the back burner and profit is the motivation.

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Shannen Kelly 4 years ago

Healthcare is a right not a privilege. It’s sickening that this government wants people to die if they’re not wealthy enough to afford healthcare. It terrifies me as I love the NHS. It’s always been there for me.

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Anonymous 4 years ago

How can introducing private companies,whose primary objective requires them to make profits to provide their shareholders dividends into the running of the NHS be good for the future of it? Experience shows and logic dictates that the profits private companies require can only be acheive by syphoning funds which would otherwise be spent on the operational needs of the service, or ny reducing running costs resulting in innefficencies and cutting corners.

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Kathryn Hodges 4 years ago

Excellent comments made so far, thank you. We Absolutely DO NOT want any US company taking over our NHS. Ours being an important word, as our NHS is funded by our National Insurance contributions and taxes paid by us. It is not owned by the government they are merely managers of our money we have asked them to spend on the NHS etc. This current government have wasted millions of pounds during the pandemic on various schemes and products (PPE)that were not fit for purpose, trace and track and contracts with unsuitable companies. They should focus their attention on giving the NHS staff a good pay rise, and improving the services.
Is it ethically and morally acceptable to 'sell off' any service such as our NHS that is paid for by us and can be considered 'owned' by us.? It should be ilegal to sell off the countries assets?
STOP PRIVATE COMPANIES FROM TAKING OVER OUR HEALTH CARE SERVICES TO MAKE PROFIT FOR THEMSELVES THAT SHOULD BE INVESTED IN IMPROVING THE SERVICES.
SAY NO TO CENTRENE

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Alexis 4 years ago

The NHS should be publicly owned and run. Health care is and should be a human right and not based on whether a person can pay. Health care is for people, not profit. PEOPLE, NOT PROFIT!

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Gillian 4 years ago

the NHS is paid for by tax payers, we pay for a high quality profit zero service, moving services into private hands is corruption. Conservatives have already wrecked education in England and back door privatization of the NHS paid for by the general public is just pure theft of public good. If we lose the NHS we lose it forever and move into a hell-health situation that other countries in USA and Asia are living in

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Gillian 4 years ago

Selling care to Centene is corruption pure and simple; dont move to hell-health systems like USA and Asia

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Ruth Waring 4 years ago

NO to greedy multi-nationals like Centene making a profit off our health service.
NO to greedy multi-nationals like Centene closing our GPs.
NO to greedy multi-nationals like Centene prioritising profit over our health.
Centene are trying to sink their teeth into our NHS, expanding their reach by the year.

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Anna Harvey 4 years ago

The public were assured that the NHS was safe from privatisation by this government. It is totally shocking that our GP Practices are in the process of being sold to a profit-making AMERICAN firm, CENTENE. This needs to be stopped before it becomes the norm by stealth - this has not been publicly announced by the government.

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Kevin Roberts 4 years ago

WE own the NHS... YOU cannot sell it until EVERY British person gives you permission. STOP IT NOW .
NO MORE BACKDOOR selling off of OUR services that WE paid for .

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john burns 4 years ago

My late wife died in misery pain and despair, having been utterly failed by the current fragmented healthcare system another aspect of which is it allows private enterprise to profit at the expense of sick people by buyng up sections of it such as GP practices. Once the "money men" get their hands on an enterprise it leads to increased costs or reduced services or both.

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Sue Hatherly 4 years ago

The National Health Service should be just that ‘National’ and not for profit. It’s one of the best things about this country. Don’t let it be ruined by private enterprise.

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Anonymous 4 years ago

When the NHS was set up it was to enable access by all to a common healthcare system. It is not right therefore that bits of the NHS are being sold-off to companies whose only interest is in profit. We must ensure that the National Health Service remains national and not another US organisation. If some people want a private healthcare system, it should not be at the expense of the many who still want to enjoy and benefit from OUR NHS. Let those who want private healthcare fund it themselves

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Jean Munson 4 years ago

I am very concerned that this Government is turning a blind eye to our National Health Service which was founded to support everyone, no matter their needs or ability to pay. It should be kept that way and not given over to fat cats to make money. I had not realised until recently that private companies have been taking over GP practices and it should be stopped now.

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Cassy Firth 4 years ago

Last year's disasters with PPE contracts and the Test and Trace fiasco provide stark evidence of what happens when the profit motive is put above the public good. Privatisation costs money and lives and it's the taxpayers who will suffer the costs. Please don't allow this.

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Mary Duncan 4 years ago

Any necessary improvements/changes in GP surgery management and NHS generally can be done within the UK where what is required can be assessed and implemented within Great Britain. Medical care in the UK is not for profit but for the benefit of all.

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Felicity Ashworth 4 years ago

Please do not allow Centene, or other similar companies, to come in to make a profit from providing general practice.
They will not improve provision of primary health care as their focus is to make money for their share holders.
The Government has to look at other ways to resolve the funding issues - not handing over to private companies.

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DELLA NEWTON 4 years ago

The NHS belongs to the Patients, not to private companies. It needs saving.

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Alison Green 4 years ago

Profit motive is totally inappropriate for clinical decision making. Our NHS is a jewel of our nation and should not be for sale.

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Rosie Atkins 4 years ago

The sole purpose of the NHS is the health of the public, because it is funded by taxpayers for taxpayers. The primary purpose of any private Company is to make profit for its shareholders. Private Companies therefore essentially do not act to safeguard the health of people. The NHS is being privatised by stealth, with the NHS "logo" being used as a cover. The pandemic has shown that people's lives and wellbeing should be the priority in any society- not profit for shareholders.

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Odette Swann 4 years ago

Health care is a human activity; it is fundamental to our survival and wellbeing - and as such, it should be above and beyond politics... AND IT IS CERTAINLY NOT, AND NEVER WILL BE, A 'BUSINESS'!!

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Johnathan Sharpe-Smith 4 years ago

This is OUR NHS. It was founded for The Nation.
It should be totally free. At source. For everybody. Not a tool for the greedy.
It should be run by Local Authorities. For the commubity. Not by shadowy suits in some far flung boardroom slashing and cutting for profit.
Say NO! to Centene. Say NO! to all privitisation of OUR NHS.

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Tom Pitts-Tucker 4 years ago

The Covid pandemic fiasco in this country showed how important it is to have proper well run publicly funded local health services. The UK Government failed to support the NHS at a critical time for whole country. The shameful world beating UK covid death toll, due to bungled political decisions but to the effects of years of inadequate funding for the NHS, social care & local government is evidence of this. We need good primary care services as an essential part of the hole NHS & Social care. We do not need to sell off large chunks of it to private American companies driven by dubious commercial ethics of profit in a country with even worse health & social inequalities than the UK. Please stop the proposal to give away what our vital publicly owned national assets.

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Diane Christina Kichenside 4 years ago

Our NHS is the envy of the world. Do we want to be like America where only the rich dont have to worry about getting sick. I have relations in US who HAVE to still work in their late 70s and worry all the time about losing their jobs because their employers supply them with health care. No work, no money and then you have to worry about how are you going to get treatment. Let Centene in and the NHS will go.

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Patrica Hurley 4 years ago

The NHS is a not for profit organisation. Centene is all about profit. To grant Centene the contract on a GP practice is wrong as it is another step in the direction of privatising healthcare in the Uk.

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Christopher Atkins 4 years ago

The NHS was founded for the well-being of the British people and is funded by us. It is already strapped for cash WITHOUT greedy American outfits syphoning off OUR cash. Kick them out before they destroy it. Sadly, buffoon Boris and his money-mad cohorts cannot be trusted to act in OUR interests....so sad.

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Dr. J. Gibb 4 years ago

Now that NHS England have undertaken to release patient medical records to 'third parties' it is critically important that ethical standards should be strictly maintained in the practical application of that data.
On past performance, Centene/Operose do not qualify - and there is every sign that central Government are reluctant to ensure that adequate safeguards are put in place.
You are now, therefore, the 'front line' of defence against encroaching 'privatisation for profit'. Please deploy your forces vigorously!
Best wishes,
Jim Gibb

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Helen Field 4 years ago

Why would an American company want to run parts of our NHS? Simply to get its hands on our public money. Private companies have no place in public services. Their loyalty is to their shareholders and increasing profit for them. Their loyalty is not to do the best for the health of UK citizens.

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- Emily Parkes 4 years ago
  
  This is bang on right.
  
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Emily Parkes 4 years ago

I already know people who can't get to see a doctor when they need to, struggle to see the same doctor for compound/comorbid conditions, and now I hear surgeries closing because they aren't 'profitable'?! I'm sorry what do you mean by profitable? Are we closing surgeries for well people (who of course tomorrow may find themselves very not well) because they're not gardering enough profitable need for taxpayers to pay these fat cats for the service? Or is it a case that they get money by default, but they're closing surgeries where people most need doctors because actually *providing* the services means they get a smaller proportion of that money given by default, to keep for their back pockets? No mater how I look at this, it's awful.
Why isn't tax payers money going back into our nation? Why is it being syphoned off to foreign businesses? Why is health even about profit anyway? It's a needs-based market. People sacrifice one need to meet another, because meeting a need isn't a 'purchase' that they can walk away from. It's not optional. People will pay in blood and organs. Is that what we want?

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Deborah 4 years ago

It would be a disaster to allow further privatisation of any sector of our NHS and GPs are its cornerstones, giving us continuity of care at a local level - not for nothing are they often known as family doctors. It's bad enough to find practices merging, receptionists being replaced by call centre systems, but we can protest and try to change that through patient participation groups and Healthwatch. Big corporations will disregard that, greedy for profit even at the expense of patient health and wellbeing. These are not products to be marketised, but essential rights for which we pay out of our taxes.
Stop CENTENE and all the rest of them. Save our NHS.

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Frances Wagstaff 4 years ago

No one should profit from UK healthcare!

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Hugh Pendleton 4 years ago

We don’t need outside managers and profit-takers in the NHS

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Amelia Mills 4 years ago

To the Commissioning Committee: Keep the NHS ipublic. There is no place for greedy private companies whose interest is to make money for their shareholders, not people's health. I request that you do not renew the GP contract with Centene. People's health, not private greed! Thank you for listening. Amelia Mills

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Anonymous 4 years ago

Our NHS should not be privatised. Our GP surgeries should not be run for profit. Please stop Centene from taking over our surgeries. Please do not forget that the NHS stands for a National Health Service designed to take care of the health of all British people.

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Catherine Margham 4 years ago

Our NHS should be for the benefit of our health not fused to provide for private companies. This includes our GP surgeries which are there to provide a public service for us all.

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Jennifer Ross 4 years ago

This is supposed to be a National Health SERVICE - not a commercial company making profits for shareholders. Any country's greatest asset is its people; elected representatives are there to look after the people's health first and foremost.

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Alice Mander 4 years ago

Keep GP practices within the NHS! Vote for parties that will do this! And even if a contract is renewed - vote again for those who will bring practices back to the NHS. Our well-being depends on free access to quality primary care. We shouldn’t have to restrict ourselves to ‘10-minute/2-item’ appointments, or accept privatized treatments that used to be available under the NHS. Push for full access to primary care facilities and treatments. A civilized nation gets what it expects, and if we expect accessible services for all, we’ll adapt to meet this quality expectation. Save on some things but not on primary care access, treatment, and facilities.

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Hazel Wood 4 years ago

The NHS is the single most pride-worthy institution we have in the UK. An organisation run by the people for the people,to ensure fair,equitable and quality treatment for all, it must never be allowed to be carved up with bits handed out to private entities with an eye only on private profit. Once this starts it will be the thin end of the wedged and we will wake up one morning and realise,too late,we have a health care system that is unrecognizable. This is not and should never be an organization in which any part of it is run for private profit.

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Tony Walker 4 years ago

Rest assured, with control of GP services falling to the likes of Centene, the primary focus will cease to be providing best care for patients but rather the financial ("bottom line") health of Centene.

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tessa trappes-lomax 4 years ago

I strongly support this campaign to prevent our GPs being bought up by American companies: So far it has not reached Devon, where I live - probably because as a mainly rural area, with an ageing population, there is less profit to be made. But North West London will be the thin edge of the wedge: unfortunately the move towards primary care networks is likely to facilitate block take overs: It is common knowledge that the American system fails a sizeable chunk of the population and has much higher admin costs than the NHS.

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Rod Whitworth 4 years ago

Health for all, not private wealth fo a few.
Do not renew this contract.

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Janette Holt 4 years ago

My best friend who now lives in Kent has had her practice taken over by Centene and struggles now to get the correct medication as ordered by her London Hospital. Centene want her to have cheaper (incorrect) versions.

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Jeremy Freeman 4 years ago

It is supposed to be a National Health Service, not a commercial activity run for private profit and doubly not for overseas companies to take our money out of the country.

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Gillian Parsons 4 years ago

I am horrified at the undermining of our health service by the under publicised privatisation of GP’ surgeries - there is virtually no coverage of what is happening in the news media. The NHS should never be exploited for profit..

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Marc ROGERS 4 years ago

Even were I not ill, I think we have one of the finest institutions in the world with the NHS. It guarantees us all treatment, whether or not we can afford it. As someone who is disabled, however, it wouldn't just be an inconvenience if our government carried through with their efforts to sell it off, it would make getting my medication almost impossible! I am in enough pain even WITH that medication, without it, life would be intolerable!

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Frances Ashling 4 years ago

The policy of privatising parts of the NHS is wrong, as the whole principle of its set up was to provide care for the people by the people. We neither want nor need private companies coming in.

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Catherine Packard 4 years ago

Privatisation means the wealthy can afford to stay healthy, whilst the the general population suffer poor services, and a terrible decline in health and wellbeing. The NHS must continue to be Not for Profit and serve and care for everyone equally! There is absolutely no place for Centene in the running of our GP practices or any of our health services.

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Alison Cotterill 4 years ago

Private companies have to extract profit to operate so will always drain resources away from the delivery of services. There will always be an incentive for private companies to find more an more ways to increase the amount they can extract - by employing less expensive (and qualified) staff, by cutting the numbers of staff and by finding reasons to only give people access to cheaper services or withhold services altogether. None of these is in the interests of patients or in the quality of health services. Privatisation will always undermine health services. For this reason I do not want Centene taking control of any more GP practices.

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Martha Zenfell 4 years ago

The NHS is for preserving lives, not pumping up bank accounts.

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Alexander Blackburn 4 years ago

I second the above comments regarding Centene's unsuitability in having any involvement in owning GP practices. I have written to my MP (Cons, Sir Mike Penning) about this along with many other constituents in this area (Hemel Hempstead), and he passed the letter on to Jo Churchill MP, the Parliamentary Under Secretary for Primary Care and Health Promotion.
He sought to reassue us that as Centene is the owner of Operose Health's holding companies, it will not have any direct invovement in running the GP practices in question.This may be so, but given the track record of US private healthcare companies with respect to fraud and negligence, as well as the deeply flawed nature of the whole US healthcare model, I cannot see how Cenetene having a financial stake in any part of the NHS can be justified.

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Anonymous 4 years ago

I was born in 1941 and clearly remember my mother’s consternation when I was ill enough to require a visit from the doctor.
I have been fortunate enough to have lived through the years during which the fear of not being able to receive good treatment had disappeared. Now, I can feel it creeping back. Private dentistry has made treatment by public health dentists seem second rate! I’d hate medicine to go the same way and we are seeing the thin end of a very big wedge!

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Safir Ahmed 4 years ago

General elections have never asked the people if the people want the NHS privatised.
Let's have a referendum in the UK on whether the people want the NHS to be fully renationalised with a simple Yes or No choice.

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Ken Kirk 4 years ago

By agreeing to Centene's take over of GP surgeries you, the North West London Primary Care Commissioning Committee, will become an agent of Americanising and corporatising our NHS, instead of defending our health services from greedy profit-seeking private firms. You should be ashamed of yourselves.

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Jack Czauderna 4 years ago

On behalf of Sheffield Save our NHS we urge the North West London CCG and ALL CCG's in the country NOT to renew contracts to Centene / Operose and NOT to award any future contracts to Centene / Operose and similar shareholder private companies

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Mike 4 years ago

I am fed up with greedy U.S. firms highjacking UKfunds

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richard 4 years ago

Protect the NHS from those that seek to make a profit from healthcare. It's a human right and the US system makes people pay thousands for minor treatments and finds pre-existing conditions to deny health care when the procedures are costly. People lose their homes paying medical bills. The NHS is one of the greatest achievements of this country - hands off.

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Bahadur Najak 4 years ago

It is shocking that this Company wants to profit from the illhealth of the people of this Country who have paid into NHS.
Let us STOP them ans take back control of our NHS !

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S Evans 4 years ago

American profit making companies do not care about the health and wellbeing of British people.Why sell our health services to them then?Please stop this madness,our health is not for sale.It is our right and should be protected by publicly owned british run health services.We are the best in the world,let's keep it that way.

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Gill Modern 4 years ago

I do not believe people should be allowed to profit from the illness of others. The nHS has not been for profit until recently. STOP handing contracts to companies who have shareholders and are therefore trying to make profit and dividends for them, rather than putting patient care first.

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S Costa 4 years ago

The NHS is funded by every individual in the UK and only those paying for the NHS should have a say in how it is funded. It must not be sold off to the highest bidder. I have had experience of the US system and it is set up to take as much money from those who can afford it and neglect those who cannot. We have been assured by all political parties the NHS would NOT be privatised and must stop any organisation creeping in by the back door!

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Julie Parry 4 years ago

I do not want Centene’s contact renewed because I do not want our National Health Service privatised. It is our most important public service and private companies have no right to be part of it just to make money.
Multinationals have no part in our NHS. It was created for the good of all people not to line the pockets of companies who are guided only by profits. It is obscene to consider our NHS to be a money making machine for the USA.
The NHS is paid for by tax-payers to ensure we all receive the health care we need as and when we need it. People should not have to worry about being ill and not being able to afford treatment. It is morally wrong.
I and millions of others have received NHS care. Not because we could afford it but because we needed it. That is why the NHS is the envy of the world. I don’t think anybody would envy the USA’s unethical health care system. The US care only about money and people with money.
Surely it is clear from the company Circle’s treatment of my local hospital Hinchingbrooke in Huntingdon. When they found it “Was Not Commercially Viable” they quite simply pulled out.
It’s not a department store for goodness sake, it’s a hospital.

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Anne Mowles 4 years ago

There should be a public vote as to whether the NHS should be handed over to these American sharks .We were assured by Boris Johnson that more government money was to be put into the NHS not that it would be handing out contracts to greedy American companies who put profit before people. The ITV programme”In Cold Blood” shouldered shown again at a prime viewing time,not very late at night as before. We all need the NHS. Send the sharks home.

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Charlotte Williams 4 years ago

I was born of poor parents. Since 1948, the NHS has given me the best medical care and transformed my quality of life. We must preserve the NHS.

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EMF Kent 4 years ago

The NHS, when it was properly funded and organised, was well-renowned around the world and envied. The American system is despised for its waste and drive for profits before health. In what sane world would you want the former to be replaced with the latter! This private company has already been found wanting and should never have been allowed accessto our health system

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M Parris 4 years ago

Centene is not fit & proper to have this contract. It has a dismal track record including questions of honesty & transparency.
Centene is an inappropriate provider. It is from a culturally in appropriate origin & background, it does not understand or seek to participate in our expectations & methods of providing a universal NATIONAL health service free at the point of delivery.
N.H.S. Funding should be provided to persons/organisations motivated to provide a service NOT to make a profit.

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Anonymous 4 years ago

Please save nhs GPs. With NHS Everyone can access no matter how poor. Once things are privatised they become more interested in profit not health or wellbeing. We dont want discrimination against the poorer people like in usa.

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John H 4 years ago

Make no mistake- We are nothing to the crooks that help themselves to profit at our expense.

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Xenia Coventry 4 years ago

THE NHS IS NOT FOR SALE. IT IS A BRITISH INSTITUTION PAID FOR BY OUR NATIONAL INSURANCE. LEAVE THE NHS TO THE UK - NOT FOR PROFIT IT IS NOT FOR SALE

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Steve Johnston 4 years ago

Phrrrrrrrrrrr!!! No Brainer!?!?!?!?!!!

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marta FALCO AINLEY 4 years ago

the NHS was started so that we who are UK citizens could have a free National Health Service . Tax payers fund it. there is only 1 reason why this present right wing gov have involved Centene , an american compnay, to involve itself and that is to profit financially . We need to stop this NOW quickly

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Deborah Darling 4 years ago

The NHS is one of the last-standing British institutions. It is the envy of many other countries who are not so fortunate to have 'free' healthcare. There is no need to privatise the NHS. It is a resource for us all and should not be sold off to the highest bidder. Privatisation is not the answer to much-needed reforms in the NHS. I've met people from other countries (e.g. USA) who have to pay to have a baby; is that the future we want?

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Philip Hartley 4 years ago

Another step along a profitisation road. The NHS belongs to the people of this country and NOT to the government, we are in effect it's shareholders and MUST be consulted before and Private Deals are considered. We all know that Privatisation just hasn't worked for the benefit of the public and this will be no different. The USA has an appalling record of Health care, especially for those in most need or at the lower span of income. We MUWST NOT adopt any Private Healthcare system in the UK. Peoples well being is NOT FOR SALE and NEVER should be.

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Mike McCluskey 4 years ago

Has the last year taught us nothing? Our NHS is precious and should not be sold off to greedy companies in order to allow them to turn everything private once they have a big enough stake in the system. Healthcare FREE AT THE POINT OF DELIVERY is what the country needs, wants and pays for!

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Martin Darling 4 years ago

It's called the NHS, the National Health SERVICE. It IS a public good and should not privatised so that shareholders, who may not be British and therefore have not made a contribution to it, can make a profit. Equally, without a specific political mandate to privatise it, the government does not have the authority to sell it, and the health service is currently the property of the citizens of this country. (Apologies, this message isn't meant to sound nationalistic in tone - just stating the blessed obvious)

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John & Clare Prangley 4 years ago

The Government have made3 promises to protect the NHS, have boasted about their care for it. Why is their hypocrisy not being blazoned across the media. Our lives have been made safe, secure and free from anxiety by this wonderful institution. To destroy it further is a crime

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Jean Munson 4 years ago

When I first read about the Government selling off doctor's surgeries to private companies, I didn't believe it. How can they possibly carry this out when the National Health Service was started and has been successfully delivered to us all since then, free at the point of need. We are all contributing to it one way or another. It is essential that the politicians listen to members of the public instead of lining their coffers. They should be ashamed of themselves.

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John Newman 4 years ago

The basis for a decent civilised society must be measured by the health of its population. The NHS ensures treatment and well being for all, and should be funded through taxation for the people of this country, and these funds should not be siphoned off by corporations seeking profit from ill health and immiseration.

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DIANE CORBIN 4 years ago

My husband and I are so annoyed that the NHS is being taken over by rich business companies that has no interest in the poor of this country. It is our NHS and should stay that way.

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Maggie King 4 years ago

Stop private companies making money out of out N.H.S. Stop privatisation now

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geoff matthews 4 years ago

NO sale of NHS for private profit. NO sale of NHS at all.

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Christina White 4 years ago

I do not want private companies making a profit from people’s health nor do I want them paying dividends to their shareholders and taking money out of the Health Service - money which should be used for the benefit of patients - not to used to line shareholders’ pockets.

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Marjorie Pearson 4 years ago

Leave our NHS alone, it is not for profit, it belongs to us, we the people of Great Britain. Get privatisation out of our NHS. Any foreign country/organisation should not be making profit out of our National Health Service. Boris Johnson promised our beloved NHS would not be ‘for sale’ for any outside company to make profit from our taxes. Centene we don’t want or need you.

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Mary Broadbent 4 years ago

This government is the worst ever, they are destroying our country, just looking after the well off! They need to go!

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Jean Munson 4 years ago

Our family and everyone in this country have paid into the National Health Service all our lives. It has served us well all our lives and has proved its' worth during the pandemic. Without it, it would be a very different story.
It was as you know, set up by our NYE in 1948 so we do not want it to be privatised now or at any time in the future.
So please listen to everyone who has their say in this matter, they deserve to be heard about something so important.

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Susan Ives 4 years ago

I Tagore with all that has been said. We must retain control of our NHS services

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Stephen Riggott 4 years ago

As many others have said already, OUR NHS was set up as a Socialist policy, and became law, in 1948 with the help of Aneurin Bevan and the rest of the Labour Government of that time, and I, like many other people in this country, am NOT prepared to allow this despicable current administration to dismantle any more of it!! Why did I say "more"? Because they have already started to do just that, not just recently, but for some time now, by allowing private companies, from the U.S. in particular, to take over the running of GP practices, for example! If it continues, we will end up with a system like that of the U.S.A, where everyone will be forced to pay massive Health Insurance Premiums, for a Private Healthcare system, that will not only be very expensive, but also vastly inferior. This will also be a massive INSULT to all the wonderful staff that work, or have worked in the past, for our NHS, usually, and particularly under so much pressure during the Pandemic, for long hours, and in most cases low pay and conditions!! THESE GREEDY CHARLATANS, known as the Tory Party, are only interested in making as much money as they can for themselves, and, more importantly, for their Party's donors and their Big Business pals, and they MUST BE PREVENTED FROM DESTROYING OUR WONDERFUL NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE AT ALL COSTS, and I for one am prepared to MARCH and PROTEST and PETITION, for as long as it takes to achieve that aim!!!

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Marion Walter 4 years ago

The National Health Service is owned by us. We fund it. It should never be for sale - especially to a business like Centene. They will be making money out of our PRIZED asset, the NHS. We fund it, through the "national insurance" we pay when we are in work. This can always be seen on our wage payment slips. It is therefore a National Asset owned by us all and cannot legally be made into a profit making business.

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Jill R 4 years ago

Privatisation fragments health-care. Integrated health care is not possible with it. Please STOP IT!!

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Dr J Fisher 4 years ago

It is vitally important that a stand is taken against the privatisation of the NHS. This cannot persist as you can be sure this is just the first step. Once the majority is run by Private multinationals the next step will be made much easier - changing the funding model to an insurance one. We are just a few short years away from healthcare being based on income rather than need, with all but the richest unable to access complex medical help, and the majority living a degraded life due to health spending choices, whilst cynical corporations use loopholes to deny treatment to even those who can afford to but insurance. Sound familiar? if it's what you want it's just a short transatlantic flight away!

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KW 4 years ago

Please stop NW London Commissioning Committee from this appalling takeover by Centene. Stop this underhand government from stealthily selling off the NHS. The NHS belongs to us, the people of Great Britain. I’m ashamed it has come to this.

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Mick Aves 4 years ago

Nobody should be taking over our NHS. Especially the USA. They only think of money. We pay our National Insurance all our working lives, now it looks like we will have to pay again. As a pensioner, this is when we may need it most. Definitely keep American companies OUT, they are money only, not interested in our health at all.

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Mrs Elaine Hawking 4 years ago

Having been both a Community Midwife and a District Nurse I know how central out GP Practices are to our National Health Services.
It is vital to keep our Doctors and or Community Medical Support Staff attached and controlled by the LOCAL GP Practices.

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Heather Dearlove 4 years ago

I have Complex Regional Pain Syndrome. In modern medicine it is now recognised as the most painful condition anyone with a chronic condition can suffer from. Can and does lead to amputation.y only option is to attend a Pain Management Programme. That should have taken place well BEFORE the pandemic but due to cuts caused by decades of austerity to by the Tories this is likely not to happen at all. Also deaf and require a hearing test. That isn't going to happen anytime soon. Our local hospital shuts by 10pm. The nearest is 25 mike's away. So if someone has a heart attack around here they are likely DOA. What about the 5 million waiting for cancer treatment and children with leukemia etc . Wouldn't surprise me if this current cock up with reopening the country on 21 June has been deliberate to act as a smoke screen to deflect attention from all the crap being pushed through in Parliament. This government is the most incompetent, corrupt and evil ever witnessed in my lifetime. Time this bunch of jaboni's were OUT

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Heather Dearlove 4 years ago

The NHS is a state enterprise and not up for sale. That was promised in Tory manifestos. GP practices are central and critical to this. Should be legal to flog it to the USA as is trying to push through selling of our medical records by June 23rd. My own gp practice has had little information on this latest cunning plan. Health is a basic human right and allowing the sale of price medical information should surely be illegal as well

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Irshed Mahmood 4 years ago

The NHS has been funded by the sweat and blood of the people, for the people and the people need a patient and outcome led NHS, not profit led.
Hands off our property.

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Maya 4 years ago

Healthcare should never be about profit. My generation was given the legacy of amazing, free healthcare which is something that I want to be able to pass on to my children. We have seen countless times that when organisations within the public sector become privatised, services are degraded and it is us as individuals who pay the price. The NHS is about the people and for the people, not greed and profit.

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Before this Thursday, Stop Centene growing

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