Due to some problems an extensive revision of links and some file
names was performed in August 2005.
If there are problems in linking to any pages from outside the
website check that the file name at the end of the link address is
all lower case.
Alternately use the site maps to find the
material.
This web site examines health care for the shareholder and the corporation contrasting it with health care for the citizen and the community.
It describes the appropriation of health and aged care by the share market during the late 20th century and early 21st century. It documents the startling failings of corporate for profit health and aged care in the USA and in Australia. It records the recent move from market listed ownership to ownership by massive private equity entities even more focused on profits and more distant from the bedside. The underlying social processes are examined to explain why corporate market medicine has failed both those it claims to serve and the community which pays most of the bills. It touches on the move to globalise market health care and include it in international trade treaties.
Marketplace care has been characterised by major scandals and record fraud, as well as the misuse and neglect of sick and vulnerable citizens in order to fuel profit. Financial inducements and coercion have bound those who provide care to the corporate mission.
Many have been conned into profitable treatment which they did not need. Even more were denied care which they needed because it was not profitable. Market medicine has been characterised by mercenary callousness, gross inefficiencies and excessive costs - the very things which market advocates claim commercial competition addresses.
The debate about private versus public health systems is a quite separate issue. This site is not an attack on cooperative not for profit community based private health care of the patient but on for profit competitive care of company stock. In the latter the patient becomes the profit body around whom health care commodified products are traded. This profitable trade in misfortune is justified by an irrational economic ideology. This is a far more critical issue and a major threat to the health of communities around the world.
USING THE WEB PAGES
The site has grown over 10 years so that there are almost 500 pages dealing with many different companies and many different facets of the health care marketplace.
ACCESS
