Assignment Of Rights To Medical Support And Third-Party Payments: Fill & Download for Free

This is an EXCELLENT question! Thank you for asking me! There are a number of ways to manage a malignant narcissist that you HAVE to deal with because you have children with them. It isn’t going to be easy, but, if you stay the course, you can navigate getting your children into adulthood without the narcissist driving them OR YOU crazy! Let me explain.You are going to begin your process by actively and consciously deciding and focusing on what is most important to you. This is important because understanding your mission, and formalizing it, will allow your mind, spirit and body to consciously AND unconsciously work toward achieving your goal. Many people think this unnecessary, BUT this is like your “mission statement” for the “business” of parenting you are embarking on with your malignant narcissist. This is exactly how you need to think about it - as a business you are guiding. It is ESSENTIAL to have the focus and direction a mission statement imparts and essential to remove your emotions from the equation. For example, your mission statement for this may be something like the following:I am going to be a responsible parent to my child and limit my communications with my coparent to only things related to my child. All agreements and initial discussions will be handled via text message or email and verbal communication will be limited or non-existence and recorded, with the other party being notified of the recordings at the start of all conversations.This may sound extreme, however, you need a guiding principle to govern what is going to be a stressful situation without it. You are, in essence, setting up a business process here and once you have that mission statement, we can begin the real work. Again, you are going to handle this situation like a business, which means ALL business and NO emotion! If you are an emotional person, this is going to require self control. If not, you are already ahead of the game.Now that you have the mission, you have to implement it step by step! YOU cannot control the narcissist. Let me repeat. YOU CANNOT CONTROL THE NARCISSIST! You can ONLY control yourself. This means that YOUR OWN SELF DISCIPLINE is going to be paramount here because the narcissist is going to try to push your buttons and goad you into confrontations. You can set boundaries and the narcissist is going to break them. You can want, hope and wish, but that is not going to mean anything to the narcissist. The ONLY thing that will work to minimize the conflict and craziness is STRUCTURE, DISCIPLINE AND CONSEQUENCES! This means that YOU MUST MAINTAIN CONTROL OF YOURSELF at all times. Here are the things you are going to do.If you have not done so already, open up a court case to set up child support. This eliminates another avenue of contact for you and the narcissist and allows you to manage expectations. Adhere to the schedule religiously if the money is not coming directly out of your paycheck. Make sure you pay it via money order OR, if you pay it by check, set up another bank account (a free credit union account works) that you keep NO OTHER MONEY in. Put the child support money into the account right before you give the coparent the check and keep no other money in this account. Set it up so you can electronically transfer the money from one of your accounts over to this account. The reason is simple. A narcissist would think NOTHING of altering the amount of the check and submitting it for payment. By restricting that account and ONLY using it for paying child support, you give yourself a record of all payments AND you stop any bad behavior by the narcissist from interrupting your life. Take pictures of ALL checks you give the narcissist BEFORE you write it! Don’t use your bank’s bill pay service. Although these services are good, the narcissist can always say they didn’t receive the payment and take you back to court. Those services do not provide proof that the payment was delivered. If you mail the payment, mail it with a service that can be tracked (ie. USPS Priority mail). If you hand the payment to the coparent, make SURE you videotape the interaction using your cell phone or using a camera mounted in your vehicle. This ensures that the narcissist cannot come back and say you didn’t give the money to them on time. NEVER…I repeat…NEVER, under ANY circumstances, pay child support in cash! EVER! You must ALWAYS have proof!If you have not done so already, open up a court case to set up a visitation schedule. Although this is not ideal, setting up a schedule will outline when the narcissist has to make the child available to you. This is a schedule that the narcissist must legally follow and will allow you to set expectations and have a legal recourse if the narcissist tries to block you from seeing your child. Adhere to this schedule RELIGIOUSLY! Make sure you set up alternate people who can help if, for some reason, you cannot make it to a pick up or drop off. Hire someone if you need to, but make SURE you adhere to the schedule!Pick a place, other than your homes, to do child custody hand overs. This place should have cameras and be a neutral spot (ie. not at your home or theirs). Now, this may seem extreme, but you are minimizing conflict here, so you are going to need this spot. I suggest a police station. Here is the important part. Have this set up in your visitation agreement. This creates absolutely no ambiguity in the mind of the narcissist and will allow you to have witnesses surrounding issues regarding the hand off. If the children are school age, you can also agree to pick them up from school and return them to school when visitation ends, provided school is in session and use the police station during times when school is not in session. Whatever you decide to do, have this put into your visitation schedule. Also, have allotments put into the agreement that stipulate allowances for being late. No one should be dragging the other back to court because the other parent was 10 or 15 minutes late!Discuss ALL issues regarding the child/children via text message or email. This creates a paper trail that you can take into court. Severely limit ANY phone calls! This has the added benefit of providing a record of what the narcissist actually agrees to that can be used in court.If you do have to have a phone conversation, inform the other party at the beginning of the call that the call is being recorded and keep the recording in a safe place. Purchase a small camera that also records video like a Nikon camera or Canon camera or one of the small inside Ring cameras, put the call on speaker and videotape your phone showing the phone number, date and time, yourself and the audio. Doing this allows you to record both sides of the conversation, the exact date and time the call took place and exactly what was said. KEEP THE RECORDINGS IN A SMALL SAFE (available at stores like Walmart) OR, if you are using Ring, DO NOT FORGET TO DOWNLOAD THE FILES AND KEEP THEM ON A GOOGLE DRIVE (note - make sure you store them on a Google Drive and not just an Apple cloud. If you switch phones or close your Apple account, you may lose access to those recordings. A Google drive account will outlive any phone or phone provider you may switch to in the future).If the narcissist leaves you crazy voice messages, KEEP THEM! DO NOT DELETE THEM! You will need them in court later. Also, your response should be WRITTEN via email or text AND it should reflect calm, emotional intelligence and ONLY address the issue surrounding your child. Here is an example: Voice Message To You From The Narcissist: “You are such an ignorant idiot! If you had half a brain you would have known that you should pick up little Sheila at 2pm and not 4pm from the party! I’m so sick of having to tell you things like this! What is wrong with you?” Your TEXT Response: “I received your message. I will pick Sheila up at 2pm from the party on Saturday”. Do you see how I didn’t even respond to the taunts? Do you see how abrupt and direct my response was? TRAIN YOURSELF to respond dispassionately like this, but KEEP THOSE CRAZY VOICEMAIL MESSAGES THE NARCISSIST LEAVES! You can address those in court if they continue.When you go to court, ask the judge to order that no messages be relayed through the children. Many people do not realize that they can request this. It is not a standard request. However, in high conflict cases, you can and should request that no messages for the other parent be relayed through the children. Your children are not carrier pigeons and many parents in high conflict cases are FAMOUS for making children relay messages back and forth. This is inappropriate. The kids are already stressed enough. NO PARENT should add to that by forcing them to carry messages back and forth between two adults! You are raising children and not USPS robots!Do not lay out your schedule for the narcissistic coparent. Although, in normal situations this would be information you share, you want to avoid sharing that information with a narcissistic coparent. A narcissistic coparent will come up with “emergencies” designed to create conflict for you. For example, if they know you are going out of town, they may call you right before you are about to leave to say that they need you to pick up your children for whatever reason. When you can’t or don’t, they will use that against you. Your objective is to limit the other parent’s connection to your life outside of your connection to your children. This may seem harsh, but it is a necessity. If you decide that this is to harsh and allow the coparent knowledge of your schedule, then you will need to get an alternate person who can help you with emergency pickups BECAUSE YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE THEM!Have all required provisions for your children at your home. This includes clothing, specialized food if needed, epi-pens, prescription and non prescription medications, toothbrushes, etc. You should be able to function autonomously with the children at your home. You can contact the medical provider for your children, explain the situation and get them to give you duplicate prescriptions. You will have to pay for them, since insurance is typically only going to cover one set of prescriptions, but it will be worth it. If you have trouble with this, go to court and get a court order covering the medications. Again, having this in place will limit contact.If you have to go to parent teacher conferences at the children’s schools, make prior arrangements to go with a third party or ask the school for separate conferences. Some schools will allow you to do this easily. If a school cannot accommodate this request, ask to meet with the teachers on another day. Again, this is all about limiting contact.Make sure you take care of any homework your children may have while they are with you. If the children need something that they left home, contact the other parent via text to ask about it. If the other parent does not respond, have the child contact the other parent. If the other parent does not respond to the child, have the child contact a classmate to make a copy of whatever assignment information is needed and then do the assignment at your home. Always make sure that your kids have a classmate they can reach out to should they need information so that they don’t HAVE to go back home to get assignment information OR, better yet, make sure YOU have the teacher’s phone number and can contact them yourself. You can also connect with other parents at the school so you can reach out to them as well. Never remain in the dark with your children’s education. There are a myriad number of ways to get details that do not involve the narcissist.Provide a fun, loving, disciplined and secure environment for your child/children! Make being with you completely enjoyable for the children! Do not allow them to be undisciplined, but make your house a place of complete safety for them! If they are dealing with a narcissistic parent, they are going to need that comfort. Listen to your child. Ask questions to gauge how they are feeling. Be WARM, LOVING and, most of all, COMPLETELY EMOTIONALLY AVAILABLE for your children!Do NOT allow boyfriends or girlfriends to interrupt your time with your children. Children in high conflict situations are at risk. They are at risk for a LOT of behavior issues and abuse. Sometimes girlfriends or boyfriends do not understand the setup you have or the way you have to maintain your situation to keep the peace. Sometimes they feel jealous of the time you devote to your children. Be mindful and watchful of this. A person who is not emotionally intelligent can give a narcissistic coparent more ammunition than you could ever imagine! While you may maintain a disciplined approach to things, the third party can be triggered often more easily than you can. Do not allow this to happen. Explain to any involved third parties that your situation is handled in a certain way and then MAINTAIN CONTROL! Don’t get sidetracked by the new partner! Also, don’t be afraid or reluctant to let go of people who are emotionally needy while you are caring for your children. Your children MUST come FIRST!The narcissist is going to mess up at first so you may have to take them back to court, BUT use the courts WISELY as you proceed! If the narcissist is late to a pickup or has some issue, use common sense. If it happens once, take note of it. If it happens again, take ACTION! Do not run to the courts for EVERYTHING, but don’t be afraid of going to the court for something that happens more than one time. Use your common sense, but don’t let things go on! Remember you are “training” this person and you can’t train someone by being inconsistent!If the narcissist does not or will not adhere to the schedule or agreements set forth, then take them back to court ALONG WITH FACTUAL, UNEMOTIONAL PROOF and inform the court that the narcissist is acting in a way that is disrupting your time with your children. Courts do not care about emotion, but they DO care about proof! If you have taken the steps listed above, then you will have all of the proof you need.The measures I have outlined may seem extreme, but dealing with a narcissistic coparent can be a nightmare if you allow it to be. YOU have to set the tone for how you are going to handle things and you have to SEVERELY LIMIT your interactions with them! The only way to do this is to really put the energy and effort into YOUR END of things. Part of this process is really about removing decisions from the narcissist. This is done because narcissists tend to make selfish decisions when they have a choice to make. YOU CANNOT CONTROL THE NARCISSIST! They will break boundaries UNTIL AND UNLESS there are consequences! You cannot just tell them not to do something and have it just be that way. You have to create a system of rules, checks and balances and then FORMALIZE them in court to protect yourself and your children. Run things like a business with this person and, over time, they will refocus their energies on someone else. This is the equivalent of going what many people call “GRAY ROCK” with a narcissist. This is when you make yourself a less attractive target by refusing to engage in a back and forth with the narcissist. You respond, but just slightly. When a person goes “gray rock”, there is no way for the narcissist to rile the person up or get the attention they are seeking, so eventually they direct their energies elsewhere. If you ignore them completely, they are likely to fly off the rails and rage against you. When you handle them dispassionately, they STILL have some access to you, but they are less likely to fall apart as you step down your involvement with them. You have to give them little to no energy, no conversation and as little engagement as humanly possible.Please know that initially, the narcissist is going to be confused by your behavior. They may try a number of methods to engage with you. DO NOT fly a flag and say that you are now handling them this way or that way! That proclamation is unnecessary and sets you up as a challenge for the narcissist. Stating that also requires you to talk to them more than you should. Instead, show them through your ACTIONS! Focus on communicating ONLY via text and email or some other SOLELY ELECTRONIC MEANS (ie. Facebook Messenger or Google Voice) so you can have a record of EVERYTHING AND make sure that your responses are CALM, BALANCED AND TO THE POINT WITH NO PERSONAL FEELINGS INCLUDED. You are RETRAINING this person on how to interact with you AND retraining an adult takes consistency, structure and LASER FOCUS! Do NOT deviate.Before you know it, you will have a situation that will be less than ideal, but will be tolerable and it will allow you to parent your children with a minimum amount of headache and stress. Once your children get older and can make movements and decisions for themselves, these things will be less of an issue. Until then, stay the course, implement structure, REMAIN CALM and run things like a business!I wish you the best on this journey! It won’t be easy, but the relationship you build with your child/children will benefit from the decreased level of conflict between you and your coparent!

That depends entirely on which healthcare system you are referring to - we have more than one.NHS: This is a service first implemented in 1948. The system revolves around the concept of all working adults contributing a very small percentage of their wage (taken at source) to fund a nationwide service to cover everyone: from newborns to the dying. The contribution, which is essentially a tax, is known as National Insurance (NI). NI and Income Tax (PAYE - Pay As You Earn) are both deducted by the employer and are never actually paid to the worker. It goes directly to the Treasury who fund the NHS.Private Healthcare: In 1948, nobody needed private healthcare, since the NHS covered everything. The very wealthy would have been treated by private clinicians in London’s Harley Street (and still are), and there have long existed hospitals which offer Royalty, aristocracy and celebrity a promise of privacy and superior conditions, in location, nutrition and nursing care.In 1948, the U.K. population stood at 49.4m. 70 years later, in 2018, our population had reached 61.4m, an increase of 24%. The NHS that was designed in 1948 cannot be expected to sustain the level of care it once did, to millions of people, free of charge. At its inception, every facet of the NHS was free. We also gave a third of a pint of milk to every schoolchild, and we still give free milk to pregnant and new mothers with children under 12 months old.Little by little, as huge industries were lost, including textile mills, steelworks, the railways, shipyards, tin and coal mining, etc, more people were out of work, which significantly reduced the Treasury’s stream of NI payments. By the 1970s, everyone was on strike somewhere; the miners, the dockers, the Fire Brigade (we brought in the British Army’s ‘Green Goddess’ fire tenders to cover them), the refuse collectors; and that put a greater strain on the NHS, because strikers don’t get paid a working wage.In the 1980s, The Thatcher administration closed a great many facilities that had housed long-term patients who suffered from a very wide range of health issues, some physical, some mental health, some cognitive and learning impaired, some emotionally damaged, etc. Though these reforms were not a new concept, having been mooted in the 1950s, it moved an enormous number of vulnerable people out of residential care, and back into public care, in a scheme named ‘Care In The Community’ Care in the Community. This freed up the cost of long-term residential care, but also put a great many care workers out of a job. Those NI contributions dipped again, as these workers struggled to find equivalent jobs in the community. It also meant that those vulnerable patients now living in the community became the responsibility of local doctors, ambulance crews, A&E departments, local hospitals etc. Instead of a central hub of constant care, they now joined the public in seeking the services of the NHS. For many it was hugely beneficial. Long-term institutionalisation wasn’t always needed, but had been employed anyway. Many suffered for decades in Victorian conditions that they no longer needed to be in. For some, it wasn’t such an easy transition. Being in an institution with a routine and familiarity gave many a sense of security, which was lost when they were placed back into a society they hadn’t seen for 40 years, and no longer recognised. These patients could not be expected to work, but they needed medical attention from the NHS.Over time, the ‘free’ service that had been set up with such high hopes in 1948 found itself struggling. What had once been a totally free service to every man, woman and child in the U.K., was forced to start chipping away at some of those freedoms. When Tony Blair swept to victory in the 1997 General Election, he and his barrister wife set about creating a ‘free’ society, with an open-door policy and the adoption of the new ‘European Court of Human Rights’ act. The U.K. became a permanent member of the ECHR in 1998.During the Blair/Brown administrations, immigration was largely unchecked. Successive administrations have done little to alter that. Consequently, we now have an NHS which is barely fit for purpose - although it does still work, and it is still one of the UK’s best and proudest achievements.It’s now 2019, and we have a population of around 66.85m, and it’s trying to operate a healthcare system designed for a population of 49.4m, the majority of whom were employed. Our population rises every day.In 1948, the NHS offered a totally free health system to all U.K. residents. Today, we have devolved Governments in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Scotland has many differences in its healthcare to England, and as I’m English, I can only tell you what my country’s changes have been, since the NHS was launched in 1948.What has changed: Prescriptions are still free for everyone under 16 and over 60. They are free for 16–18 year-olds in full-time education.They are also free for pregnant women and for mothers with a baby under 12 months. They are free for cancer patients, and for people suffering from a variety of medical conditions, such as diabetes and thyroid problems. People who are eligible for many benefits (welfare) qualify. The full list is here: Get help with prescription costs. For everyone else, the prescription itself is free, but there is now a charge of £8.80 per item, rising to £9.00 this year.Having introduced a charge for some patients and not others, there now needs to be a department which checks for ‘prescription fraud’. There are some people who claim to be eligible for exemption and aren’t. Sometimes it’s fraud, sometimes it’s a genuine error, made by the patient or the pharmacy. Either way, prescription fraud is a criminal offence and it comes with hefty fines, which are hopefully ploughed back into the NHS budget. Here’s a link about the kind of action you can expect if you’re rumbled: Innocent NHS patients are accused of prescription ‘fraud’.Free dental care, which was once offered to everyone has suffered heavily. There are towns and cities in the UK with no NHS dentists because the NHS contribution to the dentist, per treatment, is so low that they are now only treating private patients. Free dental care is still available to: Children under 18, (19 if in full-time education), pregnant women and those with babies under 12 months, those already in an NHS Hospital, prisoners, some out-patients at an NHS hospital dental surgery, and those receiving some state benefits (welfare). Full list of charges and exemptions here: Get help with dental costsEye tests and glasses. Again, this was once a service provided free of charge to all NHS patients. That no longer applies, and opticians now treat both NHS and private patients together. I had free NHS glasses when I was 6 (I have astigmatism), and they were fine. By the time my daughter needed them they were hideous, so we bought her frames. We didn’t pay for the lenses though, they’re still free. Opticians now use an NHS ‘Voucher scheme’, with 10 differing values, listed here: NHS voucher values for glasses and lenses. For a full list of entitlement to free eye care, including conditions such as diabetes and glaucoma, look here: Free NHS eye tests and optical vouchers.Hearing tests and hearing aids. Once free to all, now subject to payment, depending on your financial status or your patience. A GP can refer you for an NHS hearing test which is still free! There will almost certainly be a lengthy wait, during which patients with significant problems will probably give up and pay to be seen privately. A brief rundown here: Hearing tests. A guide to patients requiring hearing aids can be found here: Which Hearing Aid Types Are Available From The NHS?.So what hasn’t changed since 1948?An appointment to see a doctor (GP) for what is usually a 10-minute consultation is still free, provided you see an NHS doctor. Longer specialist appointments for those requiring physical examinations and diagnostics, such as an ECG can be booked in advance and are still free.Referral to a hospital or other medical facility which is run by the NHS is free to everyone.Treatment in an NHS hospital, whether as an inpatient or as an outpatient is still free. This includes all meals and drinks as an inpatient.Some cosmetic/vanity procedures are performed free of charge in an NHS facility where a clinician believes that the patient is suffering emotional and mental distress. Such operations include breast augmentation, breast reduction and rhinoplasty (nose job). It also performs tummy tucks following weight loss, surgery to aid weight loss, such as gastric bands and stomach stapling for the morbidly obese who follow initial weight-loss plans at home. Surgeons will operate on obese patients, but usually only after they shed a reasonable amount of weight prior to surgery. The NHS will also perform surgery to outer female genitalia, which while not medically necessary is deemed to be distressing to the patient.All imaging diagnostics are still free of charge to everyone. This includes X-rays, (including dental, if in an NHS hospital), CT scans, MRI scans, and ultrasound scans, external and internal (yes, internal ultrasounds do exist, I’ve had one. While a standard scan (of the pelvis/abdomen area) must be performed with a full bladder, this must be emptied before the internal examination with an ultrasound probe. It’s a little undignified but totally painless).All cancer treatment is free. Everything from the diagnosis onward, including chemotherapy, radiotherapy, hospitalisation for side-effects, and everything in between. I lost a brother to Thymoma in 2004, after a 5-year battle. He had the whole works, which included the big, open-wide, rib-spreading surgery to remove the cancerous thymus gland. We thought that was the end of it. It wasn’t, sadly.Every major surgery you can possibly think of is totally free, provided it is performed in an NHS hospital and deemed medically necessary. Broken bones, skin grafts, amputations, organ transplants, blood transfusions,*** childbirth, some IVF treatments, every kind of ‘ectomy’ you can think of - tonsilectomy, appendectomy, thyroidectomy (sub and total) laryngectomy, hysterectomy and others I can’t think of right off the top of my head.The removal of diseased organs is also free at an NHS hospital. Lungs (singular), kidneys, eyes, tongues, spleens, gall bladders, ordinary bladders, bowels, (and the fitting of stomas) sections of the liver (the liver and the thyroid both regenerate and ‘grow back’).Non-surgical treatment for illness is free at an NHS hospital. Dialysis is free, treatment for hypothermia, diabetic coma, rheumatism, arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, glandular fever, Parkinson’s Disease, Motor Neurone Disease, (ALS) shingles, muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis, cirrhosis of the liver, cystic fibrosis and thousands more, all are treated at no cost.Severe burns tend to have specialist units, such as the Odstock Hospital near Salisbury (the town where Sergei and Yulia Skripal were recently poisoned with the military nerve-agent novichok). Odstock has long been a specialist centre for the immediate treatment of burns, and for trauma requiring skin grafts (often referred to as ‘plastic surgery’). This is not cosmetic surgery. It treats the initial burns or damage (if a body part is injured to such an extent that it requires a skin graft, you’ll likely end up at Odstock or a similar unit further afield. All free of charge providing it's an NHS facility.Rehabilitation: For patients on the road to recovery, many may need to re-learn certain skills. Amputees who have lost limbs will spend long hours with physiotherapists, undergoing the arduous tasks of learning how to walk again, how to use a prosthetic arm to pick up a knife, fork, cup etc. It can be a very lengthy process, but the NHS will never invoice you, because it’s still free.Mental health: Having already explained ‘care in the community’ there are people developing mental illnesses at all stages of life. If an otherwise healthy person suddenly becomes psychotic, they may be a danger to themselves and to others. Psychiatric units still exist for the treatment of patients with an acute mental disorder. While deeply distressing, they have saved the lives of millions. The NHS still has the power to section a patient considered to be a risk. Being ‘sectioned’ means that you cannot leave voluntarily. A typical section would be about 28–30 days, and that would be reviewed nearing the end-date to decide if a longer stay is required. All treatment and medication administered is free of charge.Paediatric care. Most hospitals will have a children’s ward, and if they haven’t, they’ll get your sick child to one that has, in an ambulance with lights and sirens blazing. This one is personal for me. A relative of mine ‘celebrated’ her eldest son’s 1st birthday with the customary array of relatives, cards, gifts, balloons, a cake with a candle, and lots of whooping and cheering. Her son wasn’t celebrating. He wasn’t crying, but he was very red and he was ‘grizzling’ - clearly having no fun whatsoever. In the early hours of the following morning, he pitched a fit in his cot. Thankfully, his mother was awake and saw it. While she was ringing for an ambulance, he had 2 more seizures. Rushed to our local NHS hospital, his paediatrician diagnosed a strain of meningitis. Despite having a very capable children’s unit of their own, he deteriorated so quickly that they transferred him to a University hospital 60 miles away. Eventually he came back to our local hospital. He really was as close to death as it’s possible to be without actually dying. After he was transferred back locally, a nurse told another relative that she truly didn’t expect to see him again. He spent months in 2 different hospitals with a dedicated team of experts fighting to keep him alive. He’s a teenager now and loves nothing better than a good game of rugby. He’s fine. He didn’t develop sepsis and he lost no limbs. He hasn’t suffered any signs of epilepsy or brain damage. It really was a miracle. His mother said she lost count of the times they were gently encouraged to prepare for the worst. A bunch of NHS doctors and nursing staff saved a baby who was expected to die. No charge. Not a penny. All of his treatment and the drugs given to him via multi cannula-ridden veins was free.The unexpected. There are far too many for me to list, but a few honourable mentions are: a road traffic accident (driver, passenger, or pedestrian), heart attack, stroke, acute asthma attack, appendicitis, domestic accident (cuts with a sharp knife, falling downstairs etc), food poisoning, fever, organ failure. All of these will be treatable at an NHS hospital free of charge.Any catches?Yes. Unless your loved one is on a cancer ward, parking in my local hospital is almost as stressful as the ailment itself. There is a severe shortage of parking spaces. Many are reserved for doctors and consultants. The public and the nurses often drive very slowly around the car park, desperately looking for an empty space, and grimly watching for anyone who may be reversing out, or looking as if they are walking toward a car, because that’s an indication that they might be leaving. If you do finally squeeze in somewhere, prepare to be Royally ripped off by extortionate parking fees, which we all hope will be ploughed back into the NHS, whilst really knowing that it won’t, because the car park is now operated by a third party business.The nurses who work at these hospitals struggle so much with the astronomical parking charges that many of them are resorting to food banks to get them through the montb. The nurses who helped keep my relative alive have to eat from a food bank.Hospital food is neither inedible nor sumptuous. It’s closer to inedible. Patients usually share a ward, so privacy is often compromised. And only 2 visitors at any one time. Family and friends frequently take turns, each spending 10 minutes on the ward, then leaving again so that another relative can enter the ward,In addition to the sky-high parking fees, NHS hospital patients have, in the past, been encouraged to use bedside consoles which incorporate TV with a phone. The calls made from home to a patient’s personal console phone are charged at the premium rate, or higher. I can’t remember if the patient has to pay to make calls, but the cost of activating and using the console is stupidly expensive. I don’t think they’re used any more. Having been told that mobile (cell) phones weren’t to be used on the wards, because they would interfere with hospital equipment, they seem to have rowed back on that. My late husband had a phone and an iPad on the wards.An NHS hospital is usually very basic. Comfortable but sparse. Flowers are no longer allowed on the ward. While patients are offered hot drinks regularly, throughout the day, if you want something a bit different you’ll need to buy it from a vending machine. Visitors will either have to do the same, or use the hospital canteen, These sell basic fare (sandwiches, drinks, snacks etc) but not necessarily at a basic price.The waiting time to see a specialist, following a referral from a GP is often several months. For some, the wait is too long, and they die before they’re seen. These days there’s a possibility that you may not even get an appointment with your GP for several weeks. Private patients are often seen the day after you ring them. You can be on the operating table 3 days after your private consultation. This is encouraging more workers and employers to sign up to private healthcare. A sick worker who is sick for months while he waits to see a specialist cannot compete with a colleague who can be seen, treated and discharged in a week. If I were an employer, I’d include private healthcare insurance for all my staff.So….. how can I possibly compare the NHS to US healthcare?A sizeable chunk of our senior consultants (the guys with the highest rank) also do private work on the days they aren’t slumming it in their NHS scrubs. They do the same job with the same expertise. What separates them is the vast increase in their fee, and private patients will be treated in much nicer surroundings. Same doctor, same expertise, same treatment. If he operates on a private patient he’s going to get some serious money. If he performs an identical procedure on you in an NHS hospital, there is no fee. I suspect most senior NHS consultants also undertake private work. The gynaecologist who oversaw all 5 of my pregnancies did a lot of work at a nearby private hospital. I was NHS and he was wonderful. He was warm, funny, friendly, and sympathetic. He was the same man with the same experience and personality in both locations. While my treatment was always free, those who went private paid a hefty price.The NHS nursing staff are wonderful. Despite the huge cuts in Government funding, the food banks and the drama of trying to park their cars, they are truly professional. They’ve seen everything that can be seen a million times, but they still seem genuinely sympathetic to every patient and their families. They have an uncanny ability to make your time in the hospital feel very personal and unique. Having watched my husband die in 2014, my daughter and I sat with him for a while, trying to take in the shock. 2 nurses then took us to a ‘family room’. I don’t remember much of what was said there, but I asked one nurse if I could have the hospital-issue pyjama jacket my husband was wearing. (I never found out why he was wearing it - he had plenty of his own). With no hesitation she said ‘Yes, of course’. About an hour later she handed it to me. I treasure it.While no longer a totally free service, I still believe it to be the best in the world. The NHS doesn’t discriminate against rich or poor, black or white, young or old, anorexic or obese. If it discriminates at all, it tends to be against smokers. A few doctors feel strongly enough to decline treating smoking-related illnesses in patients who are still smoking.Overall, I think we will be OK. More and more working men and women are assisting the NHS by not using it. With hectic schedules, many can’t wait months just to be seen by a specialist, and they are turning to private healthcare with schemes like BUPA Health insurance | Private healthcare | Bupa UK.This reduces the number of patients still accessing the NHS, and despite going private, they still pay their NI contribution every payday. Nobody can opt-out of NI.The NHS will race an ambulance to your home when you suffer a major heart attack. It will rush you to a hospital where dedicated doctors and nurses battle to save your life. They’ll put you in intensive care, where you’ll probably have a 1:1 nurse assigned to you. Everything that can be done will be done.The NHS will push themselves beyond their own limits to save your child’s life. They’ll offer tea and sympathy to frantically worried parents. They never stop trying if there’s the tiniest glimmer of hope, which they’ll recognise and we won’t. They know what a medical glimmer of hope looks like; I don’t.The NHS isn’t perfect any more. It was once and it can be again. Should we leave the European Union on March 29th, we will probably do so without a deal, and without the eye-watering divorce settlement of £39 billion. We also won’t be paying them huge amounts of money annually for continued membership of the EU. Some of that unspent cash will go to the NHS, (and education too, I hope).Our population may start to fall, post-Brexit. We are told that we will regain the right to operate our own border control. That will hopefully prevent us hitting a population of 70m by the end of this year.The NHS will save your life no matter how hard it is to save. They’ll give you whatever you need - surgery, medication, food and liquids. You’ll be monitored by genuinely caring nurses. They’ll do all they can to reassure your family. They’ll bath and shave you. They’ll wash and comb your hair.Once you’re fixed, you’ll be sent home with any medication you still need to continue taking. They’ll arrange any backup treatment you may need, such as physiotherapy, counselling, access to a mental health team, outpatient sessions for ongoing hospital checkups.The NHS will bring our babies into the world, and many decades later they will help them out of it, with quiet dignity and unrivalled compassion. They’ll support those they leave behind.The NHS will bring you back when you are standing on a thin ledge, gazing into the abyss while your head is full of Simon & Garfunkel singing ‘Hello darkness my old friend’.The NHS will straighten your crooked teeth. It will correct the squint in your left eye. It will provide your deaf ears with hearing aids. It will give your children all the medication they’ll ever need throughout their youth.The NHS will never shrink when you vomit, when you crap in your bed, when you wet your pants, when they shower you, or when they wipe your bottom after a hefty dose of diahorrea.I think the best arguments I can make regarding the U.K. and the US healthcare services are down to just 2 points:When you or one of your loved ones is taken ill, they should be allowed to concentrate on getting the best treatment at the best time. You should not have the added worry of the massive medical bills when/if you recover. The worry of the financial cost of your treatment may, in fact, slow down your recovery. Stress isn’t going to cure you. People who are sick should be able to be treated without all the anxiety about the cost. How many Americans die every week because they couldn’t afford to visit a doctor? People who would still be alive if their care had been freely available?I really don’t think there is anything constructive in these kinds of questions. Pitting your care against mine smacks a bit of ‘My Dad’s bigger than your Dad’. It’s petty and confrontational. I’ve written a very lengthy response to a question I don’t think should have been asked. I’ve done that in the hope that you might not do it again in future. By all means ask about similarities and differences, but the tone of your question is a little harsh. The reality is that while you think America has the edge, and I think the NHS has the edge, it actually doesn’t matter. I don’t live in the US and you don’t live here. There is ample room on Planet Earth for both our health services, (and our pride in them) and they should not be thrown against each other like dog fighters. Dog fighting - Wikipedia*** Blood transfusions.Unlike the US, we don’t sell our blood, we donate it, with the promise of a cup of tea and biscuits, and a short lie-down if needed.Blood donations are recorded and small milestone badges are given to those who reach such milestones.Recognising donorsThe rules covering donations has been relaxed since I first gave blood. Back then it was limited to one donation every six months. That has been reduced to every 12 weeks for men, and every 16 weeks for women.There are height and weight criteria that must be met in order to donate.

Marx’s vision of communism was society in which the workers owned the means of production. It was stateless, moneyless and classless. “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”The Soviet Union has been called “communist.” This is a colloquialism. Lenin said the Soviet Union was “socialism working toward communism.” The Soviet Union was Marxist Leninist.Lenin advocated the importance of centralized planning and control to resist imperial attack. Early democratic forms of socialism were destroyed by capitalists and imperialist forces. The most notable was the Paris Commune.The Paris Commune was a democratic socialist community set in the middle of Paris in 1871. There was no private property but communal ownership of the means of production. The workers managed themselves. It was a democratically ran community. It was classless. But it wasn’t long before the French Army slaughtered them. 20,000 people were brutally killed.“Influence on Marx and LeninVladimir LeninAlmost immediately after the defeat of the Communards, left-wing radicals analysed why the revolution had failed. These critiques were very influential. None more so than that of Karl Marx, the founder of Communism. He studied the reasons for the failure of the revolt and published his findings in his work the Civil War in France (1871). He believed that the Commune failed because it was not ruthless enough and that if it should have been led by some professional revolutionaries. Marx believed that the Commune was the first example of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, that is a form of participatory government, where all power was in the hands of ordinary people. The Communards and their revolution were to have a huge influence on Lenin. The Russian Revolutionary studied the works of Marx on the history of the Communards. He came to the conclusion that professional revolutionaries were needed to ensure that a revolution would succeed and not be quashed as were the Communards. Lenin was also influenced by the organisation of the Communards and wrote extensively on their ideas and revolution. He modelled his Soviets or workers’ councils on the democratic councils established by the French Revolutionaries in 1871. The revolution of 1871 was to have an important influence on the Russian Revolution in 1917.”What was the impact of the Paris Commune of 1871 on Revolutionaries?“The Paris Commune was a failed revolution. It attempted to fulfil the more radical ideas of the French Revolution in 1789. It was savagely repressed and there was to be no similar revolution in France until 1968. The repression of the Communards encouraged many left-wing groups to adopt more violent tactics and in the decades after the revolt, terrorism became a feature of European life. The ideas and the example of the Commune of 1871, were to have a decisive influence on both Marx and Lenin and continues to this day, in left-wing circles.” Id.Revolutionary CataloniaRevolutionary Catalonia was a democratic socialist society that had similar characteristics as the Paris Commune. It was also crushed by the fascist Franco. This happened in 1936.What happens when anarchists run a country? History has an answer.Anarchism in Action - The LandIt was in the countryside that the Spanish revolution was most far reaching. The anarchist philosophy had been absorbed by large layers of the downtrodden peasants and the outbreak of revolution was the opportunity to put these ideas into practice.“Collectivisation of the land was extensive. Close on two thirds of all land in the Republican zone was taken over. In all between five and seven million peasants were involved. The major areas were Aragon where there were 450 collectives, the Levant (the area around Valencia) with 900 collectives and Castille (the area surrounding Madrid) with 300 collectives.Collectivisation was voluntary and thus different from the forced ‘collectivisation’ in Russia. Usually a meeting was called and all present would agree to pool together whatever land, tools and animals they had. The land was divided into rational units and groups of workers were assigned to work them. Each group had its delegate who represented their views at meetings. A management committee was also elected and was responsible for the overall running of the collective. Each collective held regular general meetings of all its participants.If you didn't want to join the collective you were given some land but only as much as you could work yourself. Not only production was affected, distribution was on the basis of what people needed. In many areas money was abolished. If there were shortages rationing would be introduced to ensure that everyone got their fair share.Production greatly increased. Technicians and agronomists helped the peasants to make better use of the land. Scientific methods were introduced and in some areas yields increased by as much as 50%. Food was handed over to the supply committees who looked after distribution in the urban areas.However, slander was also thrown at the collectives. It was claimed that each only looked after itself. This was rubbish as in many areas equalisation funds were set up to redistribute wealth. Machinery and expertise were shifted to areas most in need. One indicator of the solidarity is the fact that 1,000 collectivists from the advanced Levant moved to Castille to help out.Federations of collectives were established, the most successful being in Aragon. In June 1937 a plenum of Regional Federations of Peasants was held. Its aim was the formation of a national federation "for the co-ordination and extension of the collectivist movement and also to ensure an equitable distribution of the produce of the land, not only between the collectives but for the whole country". Unfortunately many collectives were smashed by the Stalinists before this could be done.The collectivists also had a deep commitment to education and many children received an education for the first time. The methods of Francisco Ferrer, the world famous anarchist educationalist, were employed. Children were given basic literacy and inquisitive skills were encouraged.Anarchism in Action - IndustryAlthough the revolution didn't go as far in the cities as it did in the country, many achievements are worth noting.To give some idea of the extent of the collectivisation here is a list provided by one observer (Burnett Bolloten, The Grand Camouflage. By no means an anarchist book!). He says:"railways, traincars and buses, taxicabs and shipping, electric light and power companies, gasworks and waterworks, engineering and automobile assembly plants, mines and cement works, textile mills and paper factories, electrical and chemical concerns, glass bottle factories and perfumeries, food processing plants and breweries were confiscated and controlled by workmens's committees, either term possessing for the owners almost equal significance". He goes on "motion picture theatres and legitimate theatres, newspapers and printing, shops, department stores and hotels, de-lux restaurants and bars were likewise sequestered".In each workplace the assembly of all the workers was the basic unit. Within the factory workers would elect delegates to represent them on day-to-day issues. Anything of overall importance had to go to the assembly. This would elect a committee of between five and fifteen worker, which would elect a manager to oversee the day-to-day running of the workplace. Within each industry there was an Industrial Council which had representatives of the two main unions (CNT and UGT) and representatives from the committees.Within workplaces wages were equalised and conditions greatly improved. Take for example the tramways. Out of the 7,000 workers, 6,500 were members of the CNT. Street battles had brought all transport to a halt. The transport syndicate appointed a commission of seven to occupy the administrative offices while others inspected the tracks and drew up a plan of repair work that needed to be done. Five days after the fighting stopped, 700 tramcars, instead of the usual 600, all painted in the black and red colours of the CNT were operating on the streets of Barcelona.With the profit motive gone, safety became more important and the number of accidents was reduced. Fares were lowered and services improved. In 1936, 183,543,516 passengers were carried. In 1937 this had gone up by 50 million. The trams were running so efficiently that the workers were able to give money to other sections of urban transport. Also, free medical care was provided for the work force.In 1937 the central government admitted that the war industry of Catalonia produced ten times more than the rest of Spanish industry put together and that this output could have been quadrupled if Catalonia had the access to necessary means of purchasing raw materials.”1936-1939: The Spanish civil war and revolutionGeorge Orwell wrote about Revolutionary Catalonia and the Spanish Civil War in his book “Homage to Catalonia.” Homage to Catalonia - WikipediaRevolutionary Catalonia - WikipediaConclusionMarx’s vision of communism was not authoritarian. But Marx also recognized the problems associated with socialist communities under threat of imperial attack.Lenin advanced these theories further and developed Marxism Leninism. His answer to imperial attack was to have vertical power structures where the Communist Party represented the interests of the workers by exercising a dictatorship of the proletariat. This was to ensure that bourgeois enemies do not corrupt the system and destroy it from within and from outside. Lenin talked about how liberal democracy is actually bourgeois democracy, a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, built for the rich and ran by the rich. Politicians would be bought by campaign contributions and laws would be passed for those who owned property, not the public. This system worked well in the Soviet Union so long as the high ranking party members in the government did not develop into their own class of bourgeoisie. To prevent this there was a regular rotation of leaders based on ideological commitment, job performance, and dedication. During the Brezhenev period this stopped. It wasn’t long that the party elites decided they would rather dissolve the Soviet Union and outright steal the public goods. China has done the opposite and the state is strong. This is quite apart from socialism vs market capitalism.In the modern day there are communities ran by the Mondragon Corp model. These are democratically managed, cooperative communities that build socialism from the ground up. Using open source software, non hierarchical management systems, and sharing they have achieved success by leveraging cooperation and community solidarity to become successful.Mondragon: Spain's giant co-operative where times are hard but few go bustCo-operatives in Spain - Mondragon leads the way"The Mondragon Corporation is based on a commitment to solidarity and on democratic methods for its organisation and management," says Mikel Lezamiz, director of Mondragon's c-ooperative dissemination unit. Mondragon demonstrates an alternative to the 'business as usual' mantra of shareholder-owned companies, he maintains: "Our mission is not to earn money, it is to create wealth within society through entrepreneurial development and job creation."Mondragon has grown to be the tenth largest business in Spain and it certainly dominates the Basque economy, historically one of the industrial powerhouses in the Spanish state. Having begun with the manufacture of domestic appliances, it continues to have a strong presence in the white goods industry (mainly under the brand name Fagor). It also has major interests in other areas of manufacture as diverse as bicycle production and lift manufacture (the latter including its UK Quality Lifts subsidiary, based in Wiltshire). It counts as its competitors firms such as Hitachi, Mitsubishi, GE and LG. Mondragon also has major interests in retailing, in finance (where it operates a savings bank and an insurer) and in education, where it operates schools, technical colleges and a cooperative university. There are also 14 research and development centres.Given this breadth of activity, there are obvious questions to ask in relation both to Mondragon's overall strategic management and corporate governance. Mondragon, in fact, operates less as a single corporate entity of the kind familiar from conventional multinational corporations and more as a network of more than 120 separate co-operative ventures, each of which are managed semi-autonomously. This means, for example, that workers in individual businesses within the Mondragon framework have the sort of rights of membership and control more often found in smaller workers' cooperatives. Co-operative membership – and with it the right to benefit from profits - is usually open to employees after an initial six or twelve month period.Mondragon has also explored some interesting models of stakeholder co-operative governance, an area where its ideas may prove to be valuable elsewhere in the world. Its retailer Eroski, for example, is jointly run by representatives of consumer members and employee members. Its schools and universities give formal governance roles not only to staff and students, but also to a wider group of stakeholders, including other co-ops and local authorities.The individual co-operatives within Mondragon contribute financially to the Corporation's development, exchange staff (particularly as an alternative to redundancies in one business) and jointly establish Mondragon's strategy. This is done through the Co-operative Congress (650 delegates, representing each member firm) and the General Council it appoints. One interesting issue which Mondragon has begun to address is the way in which staff working in overseas subsidiaries can be included in the internal cooperative democracy. Mondragon was historically criticised by some for leaving these workers disempowered.This is becoming more important as Mondragon Cooperative Corporation increasingly becomes a global business. International sales now represent 65% of total turnover. Its President José Maria Aldecoa talks of the cooperative's " firm commitment to reinforcing Mondragon's international business", both in Europe and in the BRIC countries of Brazil, Russia, India and China.Mondragon also has something to teach other cooperatives in its approach to capital, always an issue for businesses not using equity-based capital markets. Employee members are required to make a financial investment in their business, typically of €14,000, which is automatically deducted from salary over the first three or five years of their membership. Profits paid across to members are also retained in the cooperative, being distributed only at retirement or if a member of staff leaves. Interest on members' capital is paid, however, when businesses are profitable.If Mondragon is a unique creation, the impulse which led to its development has also been at work elsewhere within Spain, particularly in the Basque country and Catalonia. The Basque coop confederation KONFEKOOP represents over 800 coops operating in the Basque autonomous region, whilst the equivalent Catalan body is the active Confederació de Cooperatives de Catalunya. Catalonia has over 5000 coops, in broad terms one in five of the total for Spain, and although they are predominantly small ventures (on average, employing about seven staff), they operate in many sectors, especially services and construction, but also in industry and agriculture. Proponents of cooperative schools in the UK may be interested in the Catalan experience, where about forty cooperative schools are currently operating.Workers' cooperatives– there are about 18,000 across Spain, together employing 300,000 people - have their own organisation in Coceta. Coceta, which has just celebrated its 25th birthday, points proudly to recent data from the Spanish state suggesting that coops have in total created 19,000 new jobs in the last quarter of last year. Coceta's president Juan Antonio Pedreño says that coops are providing a valuable solution to Spain's current chronic unemployment problems. "In moments of crisis, coops are capable of creating jobs while other forms of business are destroying them," he says.More generally, cooperatives in Spain are seen as an important constituent part of the broader social economy, which also brings in not-for-profit associations and foundations. "The concept of the social economy is relatively strong in Spain, and cooperatives are seen as one of the key actors," says Klaus Niederlander, Director of Cooperatives Europe. The Spanish social enterprise association Cepes, analogous in some ways with Social Enterprise UK, is a member organisation of the International Cooperative Alliance.” Id.Yes, there is an alternative to capitalism: Mondragon shows the way | Richard Wolff“MC is composed of many co-operative enterprises grouped into four areas: industry, finance, retail and knowledge. In each enterprise, the co-op members (averaging 80-85% of all workers per enterprise) collectively own and direct the enterprise. Through an annual general assembly the workers choose and employ a managing director and retain the power to make all the basic decisions of the enterprise (what, how and where to produce and what to do with the profits).As each enterprise is a constituent of the MC as a whole, its members must confer and decide with all other enterprise members what general rules will govern MC and all its constituent enterprises. In short, MC worker-members collectively choose, hire and fire the directors, whereas in capitalist enterprises the reverse occurs. One of the co-operatively and democratically adopted rules governing the MC limits top-paid worker/members to earning 6.5 times the lowest-paid workers. Nothing more dramatically demonstrates the differences distinguishing this from the capitalist alternative organization of enterprises. (In US corporations, CEOs can expect to be paid 400 times an average worker's salary – a rate that has increased 20-fold since 1965.)Given that MC has 85,000 members (from its 2010 annual report), its pay equity rules can and do contribute to a larger society with far greater income and wealth equality than is typical in societies that have chosen capitalist organizations of enterprises. Over 43% of MC members are women, whose equal powers with male members likewise influence gender relations in society different from capitalist enterprises.MC displays a commitment to job security I have rarely encountered in capitalist enterprises: it operates across, as well as within, particular cooperative enterprises. MC members created a system to move workers from enterprises needing fewer to those needing more workers – in a remarkably open, transparent, rule-governed way and with associated travel and other subsidies to minimize hardship. This security-focused system has transformed the lives of workers, their families, and communities, also in unique ways.The MC rule that all enterprises are to source their inputs from the best and least-costly producers – whether or not those are also MC enterprises – has kept MC at the cutting edge of new technologies. Likewise, the decision to use of a portion of each member enterprise's net revenue as a fund for research and development has funded impressive new product development. R&D within MC now employs 800 people with a budget over $75m. In 2010, 21.4% of sales of MC industries were new products and services that did not exist five years earlier. In addition, MC established and has expanded Mondragon University; it enrolled over 3,400 students in its 2009-2010 academic year, and its degree programs conform to the requirements of the European framework of higher education. Total student enrollment in all its educational centers in 2010 was 9,282.” Id.Mondragon Corporation - WikipediaThe Mondragon model: how a Basque cooperative defied Spain's economic crisis“The essentials of the Mondragon story are simple. What arose in 1956 as a handful of workers in a disused factory, using hand tools and sheet metal to make oil-fired heating and cooking stoves is today a massive conglomerate of some 260 manufacturing, retail, financial, agricultural, civil engineering and support co-operatives and associated entities, with jobs for 83,800 workers, and annual sales in excess of $US20 billion.Mondragon co-operatives now own or joint venture some 114 local and overseas subsidiaries, and are committed to their conversion to employee ownership on a case-by-case basis, consistent with local laws, customs and other cultural and economic considerations.As equal co-owners of their workplaces, members enjoy job security together with individual capital holdings, equal sharing of profits on a proportionate basis and an equal ‘one-member one vote’ say in their governance. Remuneration within the cooperatives is egalitarian, with the highest rates payable other than in exceptional circumstances being no greater than six and a half times the lowest.And members share at one remove in ownership of a unique system of secondary support co-operatives, from which the primary or frontline co-operatives draw resources including financial services, social insurance, education and training and research and development.For example, capital for expanding existing businesses and establishing new ones is drawn in part from the group’s bank and social insurance funds and workers are skilled to high levels at a university of technology, which is itself structured as a co-operative and attracts students in disciplines such as engineering and metallurgy throughout Spain.Reflective of the high priority attached by the primary co-operatives to the competitive advantage of intensive research and development is the augmenting of the original Ikerlan research and development support co-operative with thirteen sister bodies, specialising in the needs of particular aspects of manufacturing activity and product development.Faced repeatedly over their 50-year lifespan with cyclical economic downturns, the co-operatives have been able to avail themselves of significant flexibilities. For example, non-members employed on a temporary basis can be put off until conditions improve.Members can agree to forfeit or postpone entitlements such as one or more of their fourteen per annum pay packets or the payment of interest on their individual capital accounts, or in extreme circumstances authorise individual capital account draw-downs.Co-operatives experiencing reduced demand are able to transfer members to ones where it is increasing, without detriment to their rights or entitlements. And supplementary capital can be accessed from centrally held inter-co-operative solidarity funds.”The Mondragon model: how a Basque cooperative defied Spain's economic crisisDocumentary about Mondragon