Health Matters | Paul Corrigan's blog

Yesterday’s paper from the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) – The Government’s Health Reforms. An Analysis Of The Need For Clarification and Change by The Royal College Of General Practitioners – is a really important document in a number of ways. It is well worth a couple of day’s posts. So I will deal with some of the detail of the important issues they raise about competition in my post tomorrow and the day after. But today I want to gauge why the overall impact of the day’s media coverage of the Report shows how deeply the Government have lost control of its health policy.

Ever since 2005 when David Cameron became leader of the Conservative party,  he has made it clear in speech after speech that he believes in the basic principles of the NHS. Almost certainly by the time of the election a year ago a majority of the public believed that this was true. In fact if they hadn’t most of those that voted for him then would probably not have done so.

So a year ago it would have been odd for anyone to have attacked him for not believing in the basic principles of the NHS. Of course a few people did, but most people involved in the NHS took him at his word.

We are now a year on and no speech he has made about his NHS reforms have at any time expressed a wish to move away from the basic principles of the NHS. In fact nearly every one has underlined his basic belief in the NHS. Read the rest of this entry »

Every now and again you catch people who are not very interested in the detail of an issue that really matters to you, like NHS reform policy, encapsulating how the rest of the world sees that issue.

Last Friday and Saturday, following the pretty historic elections in Scotland and on voting reform (and less game changing elections in England and Wales and Northern Ireland) there was a lot of general political comment on the airwaves. There was an occasional mention of the NHS. Read the rest of this entry »

We had an election a year ago today.

Like a lot recent history it both feels like yesterday and a long time ago. It seems a good time to reflect on how on earth the current chaos of NHS policy has come to pass and what lessons might be learned. Read the rest of this entry »

May 4^th saw a really interesting breakfast seminar at the Kings Fund on choice and competition in the NHS. There were three very interesting presentations and then reactions from the floor. The whole experience demonstrated what deep trouble the Government is in with its reform programme. It’s only been a year and they have completely lost the initiative (and the plot). Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday I argued strongly that given the central fact that the NHS is paid for out of national taxation, and given this is key to the principles of the NHS that the public want to keep, the role of local government should not be to have an executive say in the commissioning of health care. NHS spending is 100% national resources from taxation and accountability should be with central and not local government. Read the rest of this entry »

For the last few weeks I have been developing arguments that relate to the first two of the four listening themes that the Government set up when they had a very  belated pause for a bit of a think about their NHS reforms. I talked about choice and competition and, over Easter, blogged concerning the second group “How to ensure public accountability and patient involvement in the new system” Read the rest of this entry »