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Allyson M. Pollock, with Colin Leys, David Price, David Rowland, and Shamini Gnani. NHS plc: The Privatisation of Our Health Care. London: Verso, 2004. xvi + 271 pp. Ill. $U.S. 30.00; $Can. 40.00; £15.99 (1-84467-011-2).
Allyson Pollock and her four co-authors, all of them from the Public Health Policy Unit at University College London, argue that the National Health Service (NHS), which was for many years an internationally praised exemplar of effective public service, has been "progressively dismantled and privatized" (p. vii) by successive British governments since the 1980s. The NHS, they write, is "being transformed into a network of local corporations" and "private companies" (p. 75) by proponents of markets. Powerful policymakers have "belittled" and "dismissed" the "historic achievements" of the NHS in large measure because, in their zeal to impose free-market ideology, they do not acknowledge that the "USA epitomizes all that is wrong with making health care a market matter" (pp. 195-97).
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