This week the Daily Mirror exposed another NHS privatisation scandal — the government has handed a contract to treat NHS brain tumour patients to the Hospital Corporation of America (HCA).

This means profit for the US company. But it will stop NHS patients going to University College Hospital — because HCA got the deal, University College will be stopped from treating brain tumour patients.

Privatisation will both take money from the NHS and take NHS patients from a world-class brain tumour centre.

The Mirror noted that HCA gave the Tories £17,000 from 2010 to 2011.

The Tories, following the Blairites, argue that private firms like HCA bring “market dynamism” to the NHS.

But I want to show what HCA does in its native United States.

In short, it commits crimes.

Just last September the US Department of Justice announced a $16.5 million (£10.6m) fine on HCA to settle claims that it made “improper financial arrangements” with doctors.

In Tennessee HCA thought of a novel way of drumming up business. Instead of offering the best treatment, it decided to offer cash to doctors in return for referrals.

HCA wanted doctors to send patients to its Parkridge Medical Centre in Chattanooga.

So it paid a group of doctors for referrals. The doctors were looking for cash because they had bad debts.

HCA paid them secretly in a sneaky way — the doctor’s surgery had some spare office space, and they rented this to HCA, which deliberately paid overinflated rents.

The scheme came unstuck when a whistleblower, a real estate surveyor who priced the offices, went to the Justice Department.

US Assistant Attorney General Stuart F Delery said these dubious payments “can corrupt a physician’s judgement about the patient’s true healthcare needs.”

The US Hospitals Inspector General said “improper business deals between hospitals and physicians jeopardise both patient care and federal programme dollars.”

So HCA wins business by breaking what the US calls “anti-kickback” laws. HCA has been criticised for deals with doctors in Britain as well.

In the US it got fined, but in Britain it just got told off in a report.

This month the Competition Commission looked at how private health care firms work in Britain.

It said there wasn’t really a free market. Private firms overcharge patients.

The commission said firms including HCA “substantially and persistently” overcharge, which they can do because there is a “lack of competition.” That’s bad enough, but the commission also found the British health firms were offering “incentive schemes” in “cash or kind” to persuade consultants to send patients to their hospitals.

The Commission says it will ban the practice. But unlike in the US none of the firms will be taken to court.

So by bringing in private firms like HCA, the government doesn’t bring in the “free market.” It brings in firms with a history of shady deals.

The Chattanooga kickbacks case was shocking, but HCA has done much worse.

In 2003 the US Department of Justice announced fines for the “largest health care fraud in US history.”

HCA paid $1.7 billion (£1.1bn) to settle the wide-ranging fraud case.

The Justice Department got HCA to pay because of “a variety of allegedly unlawful practices, including cost report fraud and the payment of kickbacks to physicians.”

So in 2003 HCA had a breathtakingly huge fine for the “payment of kickbacks and other illegal remuneration to physicians in exchange for referral of patients.”

In 2012 the firm were fined for the same bad behaviour. HCA seems to be a habitual criminal, a kickbabck recidivist.

The 2003 case also involved another major crime. The Justice Department said “HCA systematically defrauded Medicare, Medicaid and other federally funded health care programmes.”

The United States has much weaker versions of our National Health Service. They have poorly funded schemes that help only the poorest. HCA, a massive corporation, decided to squeeze cash out of these schemes by simple over-billing.

HCA was fined for “inflating its entitlement to funds to treat indigent patients.” It saw the poorest ill people as an opportunity to cheat the system.

The Department of Justice said HCA was involved in “claiming of excessive costs” and “false claims in Medicare cost reports” in many US states.

Patriotically, HCA also cheated the army’s health care system.

The HCA case shows what kind of firms are taking over the NHS. The US case is a grim warning of what happens when you replace public hospitals with private corporations.