USA investors hold key to NHS future.

We all love our NHS.  So opinion polls keep telling us.  But will it remain our NHS if we vote to REMAIN?  Good question.  And it is one that Greenpeace in the Netherlands have been keen to get an answer to, amongst other things.

They have managed to acquire a bundle of documents from the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership talks.  And they make uncomfortable reading.  Part of them suggests that the result will be, when ratified, any public sector activity could be under threat from the USA.  Privatisation if you like of areas like the NHS.

So, how would all this work?

Well, one of the proposals from the USA is to have a committee with representatives from Washington and Brussels to meet each year “to review state-owned enterprises and monopolies” which would include the NHS. 

But there would be no guaranteed a representative from Britain would be on this committee, a committee that was requested by American investors. They will meet with EU officials once a year to decide the fate of our NHS.  So who would be speaking up for the NHS when it was most needed?  Someone from Belgium, France?  You can be sure of one thing, they won’t be elected to the post by a popular vote.  

Do you know what it means for something to "distort the market"?  Well, just about anything taxpayer funded it seems some in the USA camp are arguing.  Which is why the EU and USA would seek eventually to end all forms of state intervention in competition with the private sector.

It says: “The parties acknowledge that anti-competitive business practices and state interventions have the potential to distort the proper functioning of markets and undermine the benefits of trade liberalisation.”

I think in anyone’s language, that is a pretty clear message.

Opponents of TTIP have long argued that including healthcare in the treaty will force the privatisation of the NHS or at least make the process impossible to reverse.

EU officials claim they will have wording that allows for the NHS to be protected but have so far failed to provide a full exemption. But that will be challengeable in court by USA businesses.

If you are willing to trust the EU, good on you.  You have more faith in this corrupt institution called the EU that I have.