Sep 182013
 

In 2005 I had been a retired philosophy teacher in the Netherlands for several years. Pensioned civil servants were entitled to a rebate on their medical costs. It wasn’t much, but I liked this State-run system, called ZVO. In that year the international consultancy firm KPMG began managing ZVO. It worked well until 1 Jan 2006, when the Dutch healthcare system was almost completely privatized (the first in the EU). ZVO was abolished in order to enact a new health insurance law [1]. KPMG engineered this by paying out less and less each year after that, ‘to ease the pain,’ as we were told. I did not know that ZVO was outsourced to KPMG in 2005.

Privatization gave the insurers near-total control over medical financing. Provisions were dangerously downgraded, to increase profits. In December 2008 a specialist informed me that I had a life-threatening illness. I was 66 and found an age limit of 65 for adequate treatment. I moved to Uppsala Sweden, where specialists saved my life [2]. How could the supposedly humanitarian EU allow such practices (many residents were disadvantaged)? I decided to investigate and stumbled upon Atos, an information technology (IT) company that began by fusing the French IT firm Origin and part of Philips (Dutch) in 1996. It acquired the British and Dutch divisions of KPMG Consultancy in 2002 [3], was named Atos Origin and became Atos after further expansion in 2011[4].

The firm’s Atos Healthcare section (UK) began work for DWP in 1998. It is contracted to them through to 2015 [5]. Its morally and medically questionable disability benefit assessment programme has received a good deal of publicity. The revelations, including claims of at least 10,600 resultant deaths, are forcing a reorganisation of this work [6].

 In 2009 Mark Britnell, a former high NHS civil servant, became ‘Head of Healthcare, Europe and UK’ for KPMG; he is now an advisor to the British government. At an international health conference organised by industry in 2010, he remarked that ‘[T]he NHS will be shown no mercy’ in the coming privatizations, and that it would be ‘a state insurance provider, not a state deliverer’ [7]. In effect, it will take your money and distribute it to many businesses, from groups of GPs upwards. The need for profits in this model will necessarily reduce the quality and quantity of care, since when profits are subtracted from the total insurance input, less cash is available for reinvestment. This is happening in Sweden and the Netherlands now, with variations due to differences in their political systems.

Britnell might well be influencing the privatization of the NHS. Since KPMG’s Dutch branch was part of Atos Origin in 2006, its financial destruction of ZVO helped privatize healthcare in the Netherlands. Atos is not just an IT company: it is a danger to EU public health [8].

                                             

1.     https://vpwnet.wordpress.com/2006/02/02/einde_van_de_zvo_regeling/

2.      I describe this affair in Red Pepper, June/July 2009.

3.      https://atos.net/en-us/home/we-are/news/press-release/2002/pr-2002_06_05_01.html

4.      https://atos.net/en-us/home/we-are/company-profile/company-history.html

5.      https://www.atoshealthcare.com/claimants/in_partnership_with_the_dwp

6.      https://mikesivier.wordpress.com/2012/11/03/new-call-to-put-dwpatos-on-trial-for-manslaughter/. Caution is advised here. Although the government released the figure of 10,600 deaths in nine months of 2011, we do not know how many of these are directly attributable to the assessment regime, e.g. from stress, cardiovascular issues, and undiagnosed or untreated illnesses. (Atos does not investigate these. It looks only at basic behavioural and mental capacities, not medical causes of incapacity.)

7.      https://www.spinwatch.org/index.php/issues/lobbying/item/5343-%E2%80%9Cthe-nhs-will-be-shown-no-mercy-says-cameron-health-adviser, https://www.powerbase.info/images/f/fe/Apax_Healthcare_conference_2010.pdf.

8.      I am indebted to Andy Cropper for ideas, information and support during the past year or so. He has done us a service by compiling this thread of data about the NHS:

      https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150607105601288.

    George Berger, Uppsala Sweden, 10 September 2013

With many thanks to George for his permission to repost on DPAC

Originally posted at https://www.dorseteye.com/north/articles/atos-kpmg-and-the-nhs-be-afraid-be-very-afraid

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  10 Responses to “Atos, KPMG and the NHS. Be afraid. Be very afraid”

  1. An outstanding share! I’ve just forwarded this onto a friend who
    was doing a little research on this. And he actually bought me dinner due to the fact that I found
    it for him… lol. So allow me to reword this….

    Thank YOU for the meal!! But yeah, thanks for spending time to discuss this subject here on your website.

  2. BROKEN BRITISH POLITICS –MATERIALISM MORE IMPORTANT THAN LIVES.
    The Care Bill is in the House of Lords for consideration at present ,the Government & Media BS are on a propaganda exercise of Elderly Care-they are trying to brain wash us that the Elderly are better off staying with a relative and how lonely they are.So you can guarantee when passed the Bill will release the Government of their Duty of Care they have at present and the onus of cost and care put on the Recipient and their Families.
    This is the last piece of the jigsaw in Dismantling Welfare as we know it .The Liverpool Care Pathway became Public too early where they were legally starving elderly people to death only supplying their bodies by a driver syringe containing diamorphine, midazolam and cyclizine.to “give them a dignified end” so it was terminated so we are told.
    People don’t realise that is all Hitler did was put a plan into operation without Public Knowledge and nobody was any the wiser until it was too late it had become the ‘norm’ by then.
    We give £12 Billion in Foreign Aid.£54 million to the EU daily but they want another £4 Billion the Media & Cameron have kept quiet on that ,so will they get it.
    “Could we be spending £40 to £80 billion on things that would be of more benefit to the economy, I’m pretty sure the answer is yes.” That was a comment from Henry Overman, professor in Economic Geography at the London School of Economics concerning the New proposed Rail Line.Even academics nothing to do with Welfare Economics feel that Government priorities are wrong.
    https://brokenbritishpolitics.simplesite.com

  3. Now Atos appears to have won the service level agreement for the General Practice Extraction Service (GPES) which will sell health information about conditions and medication outcomes from patient records to third parties. Why this hasn’t caused a stink I don’t know.

  4. “ACT NOW to keep your medical records private and confidential.”

    https://medconfidential.org/how-to-opt-out/

  5. “Catherine Austin Fitts was interviewed on The Power Hour on August 29, 2013. She asserted that we are in transition between the Old Economy and the New Economy, which are parallel worlds so to speak. The New Economy will seize the assets of the Old Economy while casting off all its liabilities. Examples of this are cities that are declaring bankruptcy where billions of dollars in the pensions of the retired public employees are being eliminated, freeing the Elite to take over the unburdened assets of the municipalities by starting anew.

    Fitts believes this is a planned agenda by the Elite that has been in effect since 2001. The Elite in any major financial crisis will come out on top and not suffer serious consequences such as what happened in the meltdown of the economy in 2008, which was a goal of the Elite’s agenda.

    It would appear from her argument that the primary goal of the Elite is to bring about The Great Default, probably sooner than later. This way they can engineer the elimination of all liabilities from the Old Economy, such as social security, and begin anew with the New Economy that will be under their total control and to their exclusive benefit.

    So The Great Default in inevitable if for no other reason than the Elite see it as a way to achieve their agenda.”

    https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?s=aa8d242dc7bb733c4e72e04f24d32874&showtopic=20431&hl=

  6. I recently tried to get hold of a copy of my industrial injury entry in the accident book for a place that I worked for that was wound up by KPMG.

    They claimed that the accident records, which I should point out that they have a legal obligation to keep, they claimed that they were damaged in a fire and received water damage.

    So… A year on I thought Ooooh Fire Service, I will check with them about any reports of the building catching fire… Nada, Nowt, Non, Zilch, Zero reports of a fire in that building.

    So KPMG are not only purveyors of untruths but first sniff of a possible claim against an asset that have wound up, the defense’s go up.

    We know ATOS can’t be trusted and it is no different with KPMG, if they can lie about accessing an accident record the why not other areas of business that they are involved in.

  7. An excellent and well referenced article with a frightening glimpse of what is to come.

  8. Atos Need To Go Along With I.D.S and Camerom make Cameron Disabled and give him a WCA with Atos let him know how we feel

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