Sunday 18 July 2010

The white paper, or is it toilet paper?

Another extensive political document outlining yet more restructuring of the health system, yes it is time for another white paper and this one has been delivered by Andrew Lansley. It's a shame that with all the talk of reducing costs and minimising the bureaucratic inefficiency, these new reforms will see almost 2 billion pounds ring fenced for yet more deckchair rearrangement.

The market remains, and until the market is destroyed then any hope of an efficient public system is dead. Commissioning is doomed to failure, whoever does it, it is a definite poisoned chalice that GPs would do well to avoid it at all possible.

The logic behind this reform is sadly lacking. GPs are the providers of primary care and are not trained/suited to hold the purse strings for secondary care. Handing the vast majority of NHS funds to GPs is barking mad, it is something that could only have come from a stupid politician with no grasp of how healthcare is delivered.

Billions and billions are being wasted yet again in moving around a set of failing market based deckchairs. All that will be proven by this latest white paper is the fact that our politicians have no clue as to how to run a health system. Lansley is clueless, but so is Burnham, the NHS has been tampered with by successive groups of morons and it will not get better until be have a sensible moderate centrally funded system run by the clinically and medically aware.

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