NHS Colludes With Fraud Firm

The Eye gets sued for libel - sometimes but not that often. They also happen to be the only main stream media outfit reporting on the corruption and collusion that goes on when Brown robs  us of £500 billion plus every year then complains that he has not got enough to waste. Let us not forget the happy grunts from capitalist swine as they hear the rattle of the swill bucket and race to get their snouts in the trough - all the way up to their trotters.

From page 28 of Private Eye 1215

United we scammed:-
HEALTH ministers' determination to hand more and more NHS services to the controversial American healthcare care giant UnitedHealth grows ever more curious.
While the UK wing has always been at pains to stress its independence from its parent company, the UnitedHealth Group, the UK board has been quietly filling up with former directors from the US. Most ominously, three of them have come from Ingenix, the UnitedHealth subsidiary at the centre of allegations of a massive health insurance fraud on taxpayers, patients and doctors in America.
In February New York attorney general Andrew Cuomo said he intended to sue the UnitedHealth Group and four of its subsidiaries, including Ingenix. Until recently Ingenix was a little-known company running a database used by many health insurers to determine the rates at which they reimburse patients for treatments and services. He claimed the rates were deliberately manipulated so that patients or the taxpayer had to assume more of the costs and the insurance companies less. The American Medical Association has already filed a similar legal claim.
In May Lee Valenta and David Ostler, formerly chief executive and vice-president of Ingenix, took up new posts as directors at United over here, joining former colleague Brigid Spicola.
Even before the identities of the new arrivals on the UK board were known, former UK health secretary Frank Dobson summed up everyone's concerns when he raised in parliament United-Health's creeping influence in his north London constituency. He told the Commons earlier this month that since United had taken over three GP practices in Camden (Eyes passim), appointment times had been reduced and a baby clinic had been closed and only re-opened after a public outcry. He was concerned that UnitedHealth would win the contract to run the proposed polyclinic at University College Hospital (replacing many more GP practices), as well as the GP-out-of-hours contract.
"If so, that will be despite the fact that its owners have been indicted for fraud and every form of swindling of taxpayers, patients and doctors in the United States," Dobson said.
Given public concern at handing vast chunks of the NHS and taxpayers' money to private companies, why would United UK want to invite on to its board people whose activities at the helm of Ingenix are under investigation? A spokeswoman said: "The allegations of the New York attorney general have nothing to do with our day-to-day operations in the UK and in fact only relate to the US insurance market."