Covid-19 didn't cause the care crisis--privatisation did

[Celerity]

The scandal of Europe’s biggest eldercare operator highlights how a public good has been turned into a private asset class.

https://socialeurope.eu/covid-19-didnt-cause-the-care-crisis-privatisation-did

Imagine discovering your elderly loved ones in a care home were receiving half-portions of meals, just so a corporation could cut costs and pump up profits. This is just one of many disturbing revelations by the French journalist Victor Castanet from his three-year investigation into Europe’s largest care operator, Orpea.

Yet not only patients are paying the price. A report released last month by the Center for Investigative Corporate Tax Accountability and Research (CICTAR) exposes how Orpea has siphoned taxpayers’ money through subsidiary companies in Luxembourg, a renowned tax haven, to fuel an expansive property empire. Meanwhile, workers at Orpea’s facilities across the continent have raised the alarm over the company’s appalling record on workers’ rights, understaffing and safety.

Care-industry lobbyists will claim that these are isolated incidents—while doing all they can to water down any meaningful regulatory reform—and that governments are not paying private providers enough. But as the leader of Public Services International, the global union federation for public-service workers, I’ve heard more than enough horror stories to know that Orpea is not an exception: these practices are all too common.

Across the world, public funding is extracted from our care systems and diverted into offshore bank accounts or transformed into massive dividends—while patients suffer and workers are left exhausted, under-resourced and unable to do their jobs properly. Pumping more money into this broken system won’t solve the problem. Revaluing care as a public good will.

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[pansypoo53219]

1. i watched the end of repo men again. for profit health care is so wrong.