Western European News Digest

Private Oligarchical Funds and Nazi Health Policies

May 13 (EIRNS)—Among the various private foundations in Europe which have been pushing for Nazi health and pension policies, a key one is the Rodolfo De Benedetti Foundation. The RDBF is mainly focussed on privatization of the pension system and liberalization of the labor market, but its director, economist Tito Boeri, also runs other operations which dictate policies on health. Boeri is presently committed to promote behavioral economics on a large scale, as "scientific director" at the upcoming international Economics Festival in Trento, Italy.

Financier and publisher Carlo De Benedetti, paterfamilias of the clan, is chairman of RDBF. De Benedetti has been a business partner of the Rothschilds, as well as of George Soros. Every second article/initiative of the RDBF is done together with the London-based Center for Economic Policy Research. For instance, RDBF publishes papers on health policy written by CEPR expert Carol Propper. Other articles on medical expenses are written by the Chicago duo Mariacristina Nardi and Eric French, together with Albany-based professor John B. Jones.

RDBF director Boeri runs an online journal called Lavoce.info, which has an international edition called Voxeu.org that publishes free-market economists of the Fabian variety. Lavoce and Vox push cost-cutting policies in the health sector, called Basic Assistance Levels, which is the quantity of national health assistance affordable by budget-dictated considerations. In the case of Italy, Lavoce rejoices that in 2006, under such policies, hospital beds per capita were cut from 5 to 4.5 per thousand inhabitants; however, it complains, hospital personnel was not reduced! Recently, since Italy's health system is run at regional level, Lavoce proposed that those regions that do not respect budget caps should have their sovereignty taken away by the central government, which then can implement "unpopular cuts."

Attali: Pandemic Could Open Door for World Government

PARIS, May 13 (EIRNS)—In his column in the May 3 issue of French weekly l'Express, one-world lunatic and former advisor to President François Mitterrand, Jacques Attali, as is his practice, indicates the crux of the oligarchy's ideal secret plan for the onrushing pandemics. In short, he says that while so far the financial crash has failed to create the opportunity for a one-world government, pandemics might succeed!

"History teaches us that mankind only evolves significantly when it's dead scared: It then mobilizes defense mechanisms, sometimes intolerable (singling out scapegoats and giving birth to totalitarianism); sometimes futile (to find distraction); sometimes efficient (therapeutic ones that discard eventually all the older moral principles). Once the crisis is behind us, it [mankind] transforms these mechanisms to make them compatible with individual freedom, and to inscribe them into a democratic health policy. The pandemic could provoke such a structuring fear."

Even if the pandemic should turn out to be mild, as one would hope, says Attali, we should learn the lessons before the next one hits. "Prevention and control mechanisms and procedures for the equitable distribution of drugs and vaccines should be created. Therefore a world police should be created, and a world inventory and therefore a world taxation. One would arrive then, far faster than for merely economic reasons, at the grounds of real world government."

German Law Expert Warns vs. Lisbon Treaty

May 16—Prof. Dietrich Murswiek, teacher of Public Law at the University of Freiburg and attorney for Rep. Peter Gauweiler in a constitutional challenge against the Lisbon Treaty at the German Supreme Court, warned that the Lisbon Treaty has an "unnoticed flaw of construction," which will make the European Court of Justice, currently an arbitration court, the Supreme Court of the European Superstate, and degrade national constitutional courts to the level of state supreme courts in a federal state. Murswiek's action is intended to put pressure on the German Constitutional judges, who already heard arguments by the challengers and by the defendants (the German government) in a hearing at the end of March, and are expected to pronounce a ruling before the end of May.

In a long paper published in the Neue Zeitschrift für Verwaltungsrecht, and announced in an article published in the Süddeutsche Zeitung on April 17 under the headline "The End of the Constitution," Murswiek writes: "Sometimes it is enough to alter a single word to give a radically new meaning to jurisdiction of the Court of Justice of the European Union ... the formula 'this Treaty' is to be replaced by 'the Treaties.' The consequence of this amendment is that the Court will have comprehensive jurisdiction to find that member states have failed to fulfill an obligation under the EU Treaty."

Health-Care Disaster in Germany, After Years of 'Reform'

May 14 (EIRNS)—Co-thinkers of Peter Orszag in Germany have created quite a disaster, with 16 years of "cost-capping reform" (Kostendeckelung) modelled on the U.S. example of HMOs. As the public services labor union, ver.di points out in a review of the "reform," this cost-cutting policy has killed more than 100,000 jobs in hospitals and other institutions of the health sector.

The "reform" has furthermore reduced health infrastructure throughout entire regions in Germany, especially in the East during the 1990s; worse, it has transformed the health-care system, originally designed to provide high-quality services to every citizen, irrespective of standards of commercial profitability, into a system dominated by that very profitability. Hospitals have thus been turned into commercial operations opting for the highest revenue, revenue for shareholders of privatized clinics especially, rather than serving as institutions for the citizens.

With practicing doctors, the system has introduced quotas for specific treatments, which means that once a doctor has treated a certain number of patients having a particular disease, he cannot treat any more patients with that illness, unless he shoulders the cost himself. As well, preventive health check-ups are no longer paid by the health insurance.

Resistance to Privatization of British Health System

May 13 (EIRNS)—Britain's new political anti-eurocrat party, No2EU-Yes to Democracy, warned today that the country is "sleepwalking into the wholesale privatisation of the NHS" (National Health System), after the European Parliament approved the extension of EU "internal market" rules to cover healthcare services, paving the way for private companies to take over the UK's national health service.

No2EU is warning that this EU diktat is the biggest single threat to the founding principles of the NHS as a service "free at the point of need regardless of the ability to pay," since it was set up by Aneurin Bevan and the postwar Labour Government in 1948. The approval of the Commission's Health Services Directive has been bulldozed through despite assurances from the Party of the European Socialists, which includes the British Labour Party, that they would "defend public services." Come the crunch they abstained on the vote, without any explanation, allowing it to be bundled through.

No2EU is calling on everyone who supports the principle of a public National Health Service to turn out and vote for them on June 4. The party will hold a national protest rally in London, on June 1.

Peter Orszag's Anglophile Brother

May 13 (EIRNS)—J. Michael Orszag, brother of U.S. OMB director Peter Orszag, lives in Great Britain where he works for Watson Wyatt Partners, a global actuarial firm which has been a consultant for Her Majesty's Government's social policies since 1887. Mike Orszag specializes in all the nasty "reforms" of the last two decades, including pension reform, labor policy reforms, especially the "reform" of the unemployment benefits system, and reforms of health insurance and medical benefits systems. It all appears to be in the same spirit as his "behavioral economist" brother Peter.

He has written and co-authored studies with other authors, which have been financed by the London-based Center for European Policy Research which EIR has exposed as a key promoter of behavioral economics, but more broadly on promoting neo-liberal economic policies throughout Europe for the benefit of the Anglo-Dutch financial oligarchy. It maintains a network of over 700 fellows placed at universities, institutes, central banks, governments, and the European Commission. It is financed by European Commission, the European Central Bank, the Bank of England and most of Europe's other central banks, as well as 33 private financial institutions, including Credit Suisse, Barclays, BNP Paribas, UBS, and Lloyds TSB.