Thread by @Owaahh

Part two of the healthcare conversation we’ve been having is in today’s meat wrapper as well (up on the blog soon, part 1 is already there).

Part 3 tomorrow is responses from regulators, hospitals, probably their owners, doctors, patients...

https://twitter.com/dailynation/status/1221629147769819136

While writing this story, my focus was on describing how global finance has been driving up the cost (in both money and lives, for doctors and patients alike) of healthcare in KE. I used publicly available info to map out some of threads, and I barely touched the magnitude...

There are so many global corporate interests in Kenya’s privatization of its healthcare sector (as per the plan within Vision 2030) that it’s hard not see it as a hostile takeover in all but name. Hostile to us, as Kenyans, that is.

The @WorldBank, for example, has directly and indirectly invested in multiple private hospitals you mentioned last week e.g Nairobi Women’s, AAR...

It’s also invested in several of Kenya’s big pharmacies.

See partial list finances.worldbank.org/api/views/pb5k…

What’s clear now (than it was then) is that Vision 2030 was not about making sure we are better 10 years from now than we were 10 years ago. It was about priming us for harvest; building a new slavery system, perfect for the age of modern finance.

Ignore the cuddly language in press releases, this has been a systematic takeover of everything Kenyans have built for themselves, and private healthcare is just one sector. Look everywhere else and see the same threads: education, retail have been extensively covered.

The PE funds that now run Kenya’s economy, are using our “business environment” (read greed and naivety) to spread tentacles across Africa. Most, if not all, are registered in Mauritius and other tax havens; despite milking us for everything, they pay little tax here, if any.

GOK knows what’s happening (remember “data is the new oil”, yup, yup) and tried, albeit weakly, to tax these raiders last year.

As it also tries to tax us to death.

businessdailyafrica.com/markets/market…

And in aping Westerners even more, the government has been encouraging pension funds to join in in the PE-fund game. Given that these same networks and structures of funds own hospitals and are killing us, nani tunawachia pension? 🤔🤔

standardmedia.co.ke/business/artic…

Our finance laws were built for a different time, when everything was brick and mortar. The big game of PE funds, where wealth is purely on paper (as numbers, ideas and promises, and absolute lies) requires new laws.

academia.edu/25604870/THE_L…

Either we systematically regulate how private equity funds acquire, run, and exit our enterprises or,

We ringfence critical sectors such as healthcare against corporate raiders and Savile Row robber barons.

Or we just go on keeping our heads down and singing spirituals...

To understand the scale the problem, we need to map it out as an attack from all sides, targeting everything we own. Don’t look at one sector only, look for what else those funds have bought into, and who owns and funds them. See what they do to shore up their “investments”

Most of this paper wealth focused on Africa esp Kenya, South Africa and Nigeria, after the ‘08 financial crisis, which followed the “Age of the Mega Buyouts” (2005-2007). They fled here because the West made laws to make it harder for them to buy, strip, grow on steroids, and run

If we still want to insist on private equity for healthcare, then we need to grow a litigious culture like the US, where you can sue the hospital for not giving you a hug when you walk in 🤷🏾‍♂️

So anyone can sue about anything they and their lawyers can think of. Milk them too.

This might be an idea for lawyers on the TL. Start a pro-bono project, find aggrieved patients (this is quite easy, you might just need to ask on your family WhatsApp group), and sue the owners of these hospitals for everything. They can afford to pay money, but not bad publicity

For doctors though (my apologies for that blurb in yesterday’s meat wrapper), we need solutions on how we can help you help us stay healthy and alive. Point us to where the rot is, and tell us where it hurts, so we can treat this society as you treat our bodies.

I know you (doctors) have tried to tell us before, and even gone to jail for saying it, but please tell us again. And financial lawyers can tell us how to draft laws to watch what these robber barons are up to.

If anything should be sacred in this life, it should be healthcare.

I should challenge @KRACare to tell us how much private equity firms, especially the many that have come over the last decade, have paid and are paying in taxes.

PE firms are masters at the game of tax evasion (‘avoidance’ is just an insult to our intelligence)...

🤔🤔