The thing
that hath been,
it is that
which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done:
and there
is no new thing under the sun.
Ecclesiastes
1:9
This
summer’s entertainment has been that of the alleged ritualistic sexual activity
of some well known politician.
Why
should so much media time be wasted on such matter or was it a deliberate
distraction from something more important?
No
it was not even about the Junior doctor’s contract but more of that later as TannhĂ€user
is opening at the Met in just a few days time.
TannhÀuser in the kingdom of the goddess Venus, by Henri Fantin-Latour. Photograph: akg-images
The
sexual exploits of the elite Parisians were no different to that of modern day
politicians:
Wagner's decision to place the obligatory ballet in the opening scene
also offended the influential Jockey Club, whose members were in the habit of
arriving at the interval to see their mistresses dance before going backstage for sex. By the third night, dog
whistles could be bought in the streets outside the Opéra for the express
purpose of interrupting the performance.
But what is most important is the new NHS Vanguard:
Without
new legislation or public debate a new NHS is happening or so we thought. The
Cockroach Catcher wrote on September
7 2015:
Simon Stevens spent
some years in the US
I have always admired
Simon Stevens and his ability to quickly picked some of the best loved people
in the NHS to promote Vanguard. The like of which has not been seen in any State run change since Bevan. But Vanguard is going to mean a good deal more than we were led to believe. I suspect that the people working for him are either not aware or they were told not to divulge it. Like Steve Jobs, the smartest people keep their main aim to
themselves. He has picked the people that were very savvy with Social Media and that part of the NHS is exploding with
little reference to the
plight of Junior Doctors or the bribery
of GPs. Nothing should distract now! But is everything about Vanguard new inventions of Simon Stevens?
Remember:
Lets see what Bloomberg say:
Remember:
The thing that hath been,
it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done:
and there is no new thing under the sun.
Ecclesiastes 1:9
Lets see what Bloomberg say:
BRITISH EXPERIENCE
UnitedHealth followed up on June 30 with another report for lawmakers pinpointing $332 billion in savings through better use of technology and administrative simplification. If enacted, those changes would potentially benefit UnitedHealth's Ingenix data-crunching unit. Ingenix, with annual revenue of $1.6 billion, is poised to establish a national digital clearinghouse to ensure the accuracy of medical payments and provide a centralized service for checking the credentials of physicians.
Stevens, an Oxford-educated executive vice-president at UnitedHealth, once served as an adviser to former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. In that capacity, Stevens tried to fine-tune theU.K. U.S. need not follow Britain U.S.
UnitedHealth has traveled an unlikely path to becoming aWashington Minnetonka (Minn. U.S.
Stevens, an Oxford-educated executive vice-president at UnitedHealth, once served as an adviser to former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. In that capacity, Stevens tried to fine-tune the
UnitedHealth has traveled an unlikely path to becoming a
Stevens argues that while UnitedHealth will likely benefit financially from health reform, the company will also aid the cause of reducing costs. He cites what he says is its record of "bending the cost curve" for major employers.
During a media presentation in May inWashington
Asked about the discrepancy, Stevens says the lower figure he is using inWashington
During a media presentation in May in
Asked about the discrepancy, Stevens says the lower figure he is using in
Now 4 days later Steven
Carne in Open Democracy:
And Stevens' PACS (part of
Vanguard) are explicitly modelled on San Francisco's Kaiser Permanante’s
Accountable Care Organisation model (a latter development of the American HMO
model)- despite US concerns about restrictions on which patients can be treated
where, long wait times, and still high costs.
I asked a friend in California
SNAP.
Steven Carne again:
This dishonest vocabulary aims to fool the public into supporting a host of dubious changes. It relies on a counterpoint image of a desperately archaic NHS, crumbling in an inevitable apocalypse of overweight aging diabetic bed blockers who really should know better and die in their own beds – “Care Closer to Home”.
The manipulative buzzword bingo tries to persuade us that when we take part in their endless focus groups, petitions and surveys, we are helping the ‘struggling’, ‘failing’ NHS to meet the ‘challenges of the 21st century’.
It hides the fact that private corporations are moving in and setting the agendas. It hides the fact that behind the trusted blue square of the NHS logo, private health and insurance firms are already operating, mostly unseen by the public.
At a recent event we were given another buzz phrase. “Be the Change You Want to Be...”
We are learning as quickly as we can. But the actions and spin of NHS England and the corporate health, insurance, technology and pharma companies are bewildering and confusing to those of us trying to keep up. Just as we’d begun to get our heads around 2012’s Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) and Commissioning Support Units (CSUs), new NHS boss Simon Stevens’s Five Year Plan ushered in a new layer of jargon and organisational spaghetti – Primary & Acute Care Systems (PACS) and Multidisciplinary or Multispecialty Health Teams (MHTs).
If you read it thinking it made
any sort of reasonable sense - then we need to worry.
One of the key weapons being used
against the NHS, public and campaigners is the growing misuse of socially
minded vocabulary and community development buzzwords.
You’ll all have come across them.
Engaged, participatory, resilient, empowering, co-produced, personalised,
sustainable….
You’ll find these buzzwords all
over the NHS, mixed with a dash of new age personal therapy speak borrowed from
the West Coast of America (as we’ll see shortly, there are other imports from
the West Coast, too).
……. This dishonest vocabulary aims
to fool the public into supporting a host of dubious changes. It relies on a
counterpoint image of a desperately archaic NHS, crumbling in an inevitable
apocalypse of overweight aging diabetic bed blockers who really should know
better and die in their own beds – “Care Closer to Home”.
It glosses over the fact that
public funding is being withheld (and wasted on market bureaucracy).
The thing that hath been,
it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done:
and there is no new thing under the sun.
Ecclesiastes 1:9
