NHS
Saving Lewisham hospital – saving the NHS
Last week I visited my GP surgery. After a much more protracted wait than any prior visit, I was given a homily about the state of the NHS, advised that it might be easier to seek a scan (already advised by another practitioner) through a private route.
Jeremy Hunt’s Catherine Wheel of spin
"That is the most extraordinary speech I have heard from a secretary of state for Health in all my years in this House - this is the first speech in which a secretary of state has claimed he is not responsible for anything."
A&E waiting times at 9-year high
The number of patients having to wait more than four hours in A&E has reached its highest level in nine years.
Ring-fencing the NHS and schools is no longer viable
The chancellor went on the Today programme this morning to trumpet his success in getting seven government departments to agree on their budgets for 2015-16 as part of the Spending Review that he will announce on 26 June. It is reported that they have all agreed to cuts of between 8 and 10 per cent.
An open letter to the next chief executive of NHS England
To Whom it May Concern, Congratulations on your appointment as the next chief executive of NHS England. You take over an organisation in a volatile state, facing funding cuts, despite the government’s rhetoric.
In place of fear: It’s time to tackle alarming health inequalities
In Place of Fear, the title of Aneurin Bevan’s book published on the 10th anniversary of the Beveridge Report, is synonymous with all that the welfare state stood for and what it sought to achieve. In 2013, as the principles of Bevan and Beveridge are being killed off, the belief that inequalities should narrow is also under attack.