Surgeon warns NHS over sweatshop
instruments
QUOTE
.... implements made in Sialkot [ the one in Pakistan - Editor ] had
"Made in Germany" stamped on them. The small manufacturing operations are
sub-contractors for larger firms which finish the implements to international
standards. Most of these sell their goods on to surgical instrument suppliers in
the developed world - principally Germany. The mark-up is considerable. A pair
of scissors made for $1 (54p) in Pakistan will eventually sell for $80. The
global market is worth around £350m.
UNQUOTE
That kind of mark up is probably legal. It just feels like fraud
and has precisely the same effect. It benefits
from collusion along the supply chain.
PS The Guardian mentions this little matter en passant. It is
not in the business of rocking the boat when it is government fraud and Labour
is in power.
Fresenius Fraud And HMG
Fraud is routine. Fraud is big time. Fraud is
profitable. Why bother earning money when you can steal it?
Health Fraud
This is in America. It is humunguous.
NHS
Colludes With Fraud Firm
Do they know what is going on? They certainly should but the
money floods in and there is plenty more where that came
from.
The National Health
Service - A Libertarian View
At the most fundamental level of analysis, legitimacy and merits have no
connection with each other. The NHS is funded by compulsion. I am forced, as a
taxpayer, to contribute to a system that provides health care of a kind and at
costings that, given any choice in the matter, I would never accept for myself
and those who look to me. I am also forced to pay towards the health care of
strangers........... This should not be taken as a defence of the
NHS. I am simply pointing out that is is no worse on balance than the American
system. They are differently organised and differently funded. Each has specific
advantages and disadvantages. neither has much connection with a free
market............. What is so fundamentally bad about the British
system – its compulsory principle aside – is that it nearly abolishes individual
control over health care. Compared with the system with which we entered the
twentieth century, all real power is centralised into the hands of the
professional bodies............... The growing state involvement in medicine that
began with the National Insurance Act 1911, and culminated in the establishment
of the NHS forty seven years later, was largely a power grab by the medical
professions. Doctors were relieved of having to do business with ordinary
working class people, and could deal instead with officials and politicians of
their own class. These officials and politicians had their own status enhanced
by the ability to spend vast amounts of the taxpayers' money. For the rich and
for increasing numbers of middle class people, choice remained – if at a
cartellised price. For ordinary working people, however, medicine became
something that was doled out by their betters................ This contributed immensely, I think, to the
decay of free institutions in England. Freedom owes much to historic evolution
and to paper guarantees. It owes far more to a people who are accustomed to take
responsibility for their own lives. The main difference between us and our free
ancestors is that, unlike them, we find ourselves trapped within a system that
provides the amenities of life but over which we have no personal control.
QUOTE
During the past week, much of the English
speaking world has been drawn into a debate on the merits of the National Health
Service.........
UNQUOTE
Doctor Gabb explains. He is right about tax. If we spend four days paying tax
and only one working for ourselves we are all impoverished.
