Posts Tagged conservatives
Labour’s record on the NHS
Posted by James Gubb in Health on 08/04/2010
Over the past, and upcoming weeks, Civitas is releasing a series of briefings on key social policy issues intended as useful resources for the public. Here’s the one on the NHS. Essentially, it provides key statistics and brief, impartial, analysis (3 pages) of where the NHS is now; what Labour have achieved over the past decade; and what the Conservatives are proposing. See what you think.
Nudge, nudge, Daddy Cameron’s coming
Posted by James Gubb in Civil Liberty, Health on 14/01/2010
You can tell the Tories are being advised by Richard Thaler, the famed ‘nudge’ economist. It’s now, apparently, part of their life and blood. Public health, after the latest health policy announcement yesterday, may just as well be called ‘nudge’ health. Here’s the idea. Point one. Cash for public health initiatives will be separately identified (not necessarily a bad thing in itself). Point two, local directors of public health, who will be joint appointments between the NHS and local authorities, will be ‘paid by results for achieving goals such as reducing teenage pregnancy, infant mortality, childhood obesity and alcohol-related hospital admissions’.
How about a bonfire on the inconsistencies?
Posted by James Gubb in Health on 20/07/2009
Here’s a good question: where are the Tories going on health policy? Do they even know? It doesn’t seem so. First, the macro stuff. Is health spending to increase in real terms as pledged, or has – as today’s response to the King’s Fund and IFS’s projections for the NHS tends to suggest – reality finally struck? Is NHS pay to ‘not depend on how much money the government has’, or is there to be an acknowledgement that the NHS cannot be immune to the effects of the dire fiscal situation? Read the rest of this entry »
A small step, but where’s the giant leap?
Posted by James Gubb in Health on 25/06/2008
The Conservatives made a first small step in the right direction on NHS policy yesterday, reaffirming their pledge to scrap the endless targets that have – to not put too fine a point on it – bludgeoned the life out of the health service over the past decade or so; and instead focus on outcomes. As this blog has written many times – such as here and here – targets are a sure way to demoralise staff and distort clinical priorities like none other. Outcomes are what we should be looking at.
Not quite far enough Mr Cameron
Posted by James Gubb in Health on 21/06/2007
There are aspects of the new Conservative White Paper on health to applaud, but they are, by and large, pretty much restricted to the supply-side. That advocated for commissioning is quite a different matter.