2011-06-02 Daily Mail (UK) - Southern Cross Healthcare destroyed by private equity firm Blackstone

[Minuteman]

Not immediately applicable to circumcision, but a link I want to be able to find again. Modern public healthcare systems that need to allocate scarce resources to priority health areas rarely implement circumcision programs (private clinics after easy money offer this "service").

Notwithstanding their merits one way or the other, arguments about the perils of a privatised healthcare system carry resonance in Australia and the United Kingdom.

EDIT: My sympathies go out any members from the UK affected by this tragedy.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...lackstone.html

Excerpt:

Taxpayers face having to rescue more than 31,000 vulnerable people amid financial meltdown at the UK’s biggest care-home company.

The bill could run into hundreds of millions of pounds after ruthless City speculators left Southern Cross Healthcare in dire straits.

There is anger and outrage that so many lives have been thrown into turmoil through the actions of City venture capitalists.

The U.S. private equity firm Blackstone, led by Stephen Schwarzman, bought Southern Cross in 2004 for £162million and sold it three years later. It is believed to have quadrupled its investment.

But to achieve this it sold off the company’s homes, robbing Southern Cross of its capital and forcing it to lease the properties back from another company.

Downing Street announced yesterday that the Government will use public money to ensure those in the 750 affected homes can stay – amid warnings that moving them would lead to the deaths of the most vulnerable.

The crisis is the worst ever to hit the care-home sector.

[Saracen_restorer]

Financial institutions wrecking the economy isn't restricted to healthcare.

Regardless, I must respectfully disagree that government-run (as opposed to government funded) healthcare is a better solution. The majority of the time (and it was in my case) the parents decide to the circumcise their child.

I think the Canadian style government insurance program is a good compromise between fully private and public systems.