For once, just for the sake of argument, let’s take Andrew Lansley at his word and assume that however keen he is on getting private providers in to do the work of the NHS, he’s not doing it because he’s corrupt, or because his wife is, or because he’s ideologically hell-bent on privatising whatever he [...]
In all the discussion about why we should be opposed to Andrew Lansley’s NHS reforms, one of the points which seems to pop up most frequently (in this excellent article here, for example) is the potential conflict of interest that could exist when healthcare commissioning powers (and budgets) are handed to GPs. The argument is [...]
It has come to light, quite formally, what the government plans to do with the NHS. David Cameron’s senior health advisor, Mark Britnell, declared that the NHS will be “shown no mercy” to a conference of health executives eager for news of how deep the axe will fall in their sector. It seems for them, [...]
The Coalition’s plans to overhaul the NHS are idiotic, but they are also the culmination of a decade of stupid thinking about the National Health Service. The Conservatives plan to get rid of all 10 strategic health authorities and the 152 management bodies known as primary care trusts. In their place, GPs will be asked [...]
I did something different this Saturday. I stood in a freezing park in London and took a deliberate overdose of tablets in the company of some of the UK’s most well known scientists. No I haven’t joined some kind of doomsday cult. In fact, none of us were ever at any risk. We were overdosing [...]
Massachusetts was not won by the Republicans, it was lost by Obama Yesterday’s big news from the far side of the Atlantic was the loss of one of the safest Democratic seats to Scott Brown, a man who represents possibly everything that should make us very worried about the Republicans. In Ted Kennedy’s former seat, [...]
The Obama administration will be breathing a sigh of relied today as the House of Representatives narrowly approved the President’s flagship health reforms. A battle still remains in the Senate, of course, and amongst the crazed zealots in the country crying ‘freedom’ whilst attempting to deny millions of the poorest Americans the right to basic [...]
Guest post by Chris Girffiths It’s not been an easy summer for Barack Obama. This month has seen yet more shrieking from the right-wings as he attempts to introduce a ‘radical’ scheme to offer US Government-backed health insurance scheme so the poorest people can get medical treatment. Hardly trying to append “SR” to the “US”, [...]
Watch how Barney Franks reacts to a woman pushing the Obama=Hitler line.
I was planning to avoid writing about the US healthcare row. A lot of very good stuff has already been written on it, not least on this blog, and I wasn’t sure I had anything to add. But then this article on the Telegraph website caught my eye, and I couldn’t help myself. In case [...]
