{"id":343888,"date":"2018-01-15T06:51:13","date_gmt":"2018-01-15T05:51:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/virgin-care-and-other-private-companies-seize-another-3-1-billion-of-nhs-assets\/"},"modified":"2018-01-15T06:51:13","modified_gmt":"2018-01-15T05:51:13","slug":"virgin-care-and-other-private-companies-seize-another-3-1-billion-of-nhs-assets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/virgin-care-and-other-private-companies-seize-another-3-1-billion-of-nhs-assets\/","title":{"rendered":"Virgin Care and other private companies seize another \u00a33.1 billion of NHS assets"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"content\">\n<h3 class=\"nomargin\">\u00a0<\/h3>\n<h2>Virgin Care and other private companies seize another \u00a33.1 billion of NHS assets<\/h2>\n<h5>\n<p>    By<br \/>\n    Ajanta Silva<br \/>\n    <br \/>15 January 2018<\/p>\n<\/h5>\n<p>With a \u00a3101 billion ($US 137 billion) budget in the National Health Service (NHS) in England alone, private companies have found a gold mine to plunder with the blessings of the Tory government.<\/p>\n<p>A recent report by the campaign group NHS Support Federation brings to light the aggressive involvement of the private companies in winning contracts previously run by in-house NHS providers. Private, for-profit companies won more than \u00a33.1 billion worth of contracts in the last financial year, 2016-2017, with Virgin Care\u2014run by billionaire business mogul Richard Branson\u2014becoming the main beneficiary.<\/p>\n<p>Over the last four years, the Federation has compiled and analysed publicly available data on how the contracts were awarded.<\/p>\n<p>The Federation states, \u201cVirgin care is now the dominant private provider in the NHS market\u2014winning a third of the total value of contracts won by non-NHS providers over the last year. The number of services the company provides to the NHS has risen from 230 to 400 over last 12 months, according to its website.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Virgin Care is a subsidiary of Virgin Group holdings Ltd, which is based in the British Virgin Islands tax haven. The company is aggressively fighting to establish a foothold in NHS-run services, although it claims it has made losses over the last several years and paid no tax in the UK.<\/p>\n<p>Care UK reaped the second-largest share of the contracts last year, worth \u00a3596.3 million.<\/p>\n<p>Private companies are exploiting the favourable conditions created for this plunder under the 2012 Health and Social Care Act, brought in by their political paymasters in the Conservative-Liberal Democrat government. This Act made it mandatory for&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wsws.org\/en\/articles\/2018\/01\/15\/virg-j15.html\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0 Virgin Care and other private companies seize another \u00a33.1 billion of NHS assets By Ajanta Silva 15 January 2018 With a \u00a3101 billion ($US 137 billion) budget in the National Health Service (NHS) in England alone, private companies have found a gold mine to plunder with the blessings of the Tory government. A recent [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2526,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-343888","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2526"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=343888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343888\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=343888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=343888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=343888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}