The International Monetary Fund (IMF) http://www.imf.org/external/about.htm is once again serving notice on the UK to ‘reform’ healthcare and pensions - to repair the long-term damage to public finances caused by the global recession.
This is duplicitous opportunism. These same demands of the IMF long predate the 2008 ‘credit crunch’ induced crisis and have been demanded of numerous countries with welfare states.
Much to the delight of the Tory Party, Olivier Blanchard, the IMF's economic big shot, is quoted in the Guardian as saying "that means reforms of the retirement system; that means reforms of the healthcare system. These reforms have basically to be confronted. The idea of (just) introducing these fiscal rules and not doing these reforms is a joke".
The Guardian confirms that ‘the fund has long been an advocate of increased private provision for health in the UK, and is concerned that the structural deficit in the public finances will be exacerbated by the rising long-term care costs of an ageing population’. http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/oct/01/nhs-debt-imf-britain
