Bain Capital buys the majority of Britain's blood plasma supply

[Liberal_in_LA]

http://www.alternet.org/economy/sorry-britain-bain-capital-now-owns-majority-your-blood-plasma-supply

Sorry, Britain: Bain Capital Now Owns the Majority of Your Blood Plasma Supply
"Is there no limit to what and how this coalition government will privatise?” exclaimed former UK Health Minister


 
Mitt Romney's private equity company Bain Capital is in the news again, this time for buying the majority of United Kingdom's entire blood plasma supply. The Department of Health has sold the state-owned Plasma Reources UK (PRUK) to Bain Capital for  £230 million.  According to The Independent, the government "overlooked" perhaps better-qualified purchasers like healthcare/pharma firms and "at least one blood plasma specialist" before making the sale, raising calls for concern. 

While the deal is said to safeguard British jobs (more than 1,200 people at the two plasma supplier and collector companies in question), it is raising concerns about the seemingly limitless opportunities for privatization. PRUK had been dedicated to using low contamination risk populations, and critics fear the privatization of blood plasma could prompt profit-incentivized shortcuts and a contamination of blood supply. 



PURK, the UK plasma supplier, makes about $110Em in sales annually and provides the majority of the National Health Service hospital plasma supply. Employees at DCI Biologicals in the US collect plasma from American donors, and send it to the Bio Products Laboratory (BPL) in England. BPL separates the samples into clotting factors -- blood proteins -- and sends them back to NHS hospitals for the treatment of "immune deficiencies, neurological diseases, and haemophilia,"  The Independent said. 

Former Health Minister Lord Owen wrote to Prime Minister David Cameron earlier this year and urged him to stop the sale. 
 
“The world plasma supply line has been in the past contaminated and I fear it will almost certainly continue to be contaminated,” he wrote.
Now, Owens told The Independent, “It’s hard to conceive of a worse outcome for a sale of this particularly sensitive national health asset than a private equity company with none of the safeguards in terms of governance of a publicly quoted company and being answerable to shareholders." 

[TDale313]

1. I knew they were vampires.

Just not quite so literally.

[MADem]

8. Not only were you first, but that was a THREAD WINNER, right there! nt

[reformist2]

14. Indeed. They even outdo Dracula - he never thought to resell the blood for a profit!

[hollysmom]

2. Uh. How can you make a profit doing things right?

[delrem]

3. 1. ugh!

2. how did it come about that the UK NHS plasma supply was put to (#$*&ing) tender?

[eShirl]

4. Mitt's revenge for #romneyshambles

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/07/the-best-of-romneyshambles/260393/

[Enthusiast]

5. Just horrible........nt

[silvershadow]

6. Soon they will own us, from the cradle to the grave. nt

[DemocratForJustice]

7. So basically the UK has sold it's blood supply to a bunch of amoral fraudsters

Bain Capital have already been involved in a number of major Healthcare frauds.

E.G. Damon Corp, which got fined the largest amount ever (at the time) for it's fraud.

Romney Blood Money (Damon Fraud)
http://sgtreport.com/2012/01/romney-blood-money/

Unsurprisingly the video from Newt Gingrich's SuperPac has disappeared from youtube.
A longer video produced from the same SuperPac is available here.

Sick Money: How Mitt Romney's Bain Investments Are Exploding
the Deficit and Harming Our Health
http://www.alternet.org/election-2012/sick-money-how-mitt-romneys-bain-investments-are-exploding-deficit-and-harming-our

Few individuals or organizations have been as influential as Mitt Romney and Bain Capital in worsening our runaway healthcare costs, causing unnecessary suffering, or accelerating our government's long-term deficit problem. Their highly leveraged investment strategy puts healthcare companies under enormous pressure to increase revenue. They often respond by overbilling -- or worse, by encouraging unnecessary medical treatments that can include anything from non-invasive tests to heart surgery.

I spent many years working in healthcare economics: running health service companies, projecting health plan costs for governments and employers, and analyzing healthcare investments. I've reviewed hospital bills in detail and seen shocking things: Thousands of dollars for bandages and gauze during a surgery; a 12,000-percent markup on ointments; a $250 charge for the lightbulb in a projector the hospital claimed was used during surgery.

I've seen hucksters put red filters over an ordinary flashlight, call it an "infrared" healing device, and charge insurance companies or hapless patients for their use. And I've seen hundreds of cases of human tragedy brought on by unnecessary surgeries performed solely for money. I can't say I was always on the side of the angels, but I can say this: Before Bain, I had never seen behavior that was as consistently bad as we're seeing today.

Mitt Romney and Bain Capital paved the way for other investors in healthcare. Their greed has caused explosive growth in a cost and overtreatment spiral that's threatening Medicare, our healthcare system, and arguably -- us.

Medicare fraud costs taxpayers well over $100bn a year.
Bain and Romney take their cut of this fraud.

Romneycare also increases bills for everybody outside of Massachusetts.
50% of Romneycare is funded by US Federal taxpayers, not Massachusetts taxpayers.
Do people like paying other people's bills?

Despite being 50% subsidised by the Federal taxpayer, Romneycare is still underfunded and going bankrupt.

[LeftishBrit]

11. Yes. That sums it up.

It's what the privatizers in the UK have been doing for years, only now they're doing it literally.

[HiPointDem]

9. kr

[davidpdx]

10. Why does this not surprise me

It is too bad they didn't sell it to someone in Europe if they absolutely had to. I can see Bain squeezing this deal for every drop of blood it can.

[tofuandbeer]

12. Romney/Bain want to rid the world of bleeding heart liberals...meh...it sounded better in my head.

move along.

[TalkingDog]

13. Bloodsucking done right.

n/t