Tim Worstall

I’ve never really quite believed Cuban health statistics. Who would believe the output of a communist dictatorship in an rea where they claim that they’re world leaders? But put that aside for a moment over this latest study. The hard times experienced by the people of Cuba in the early 1990s – when food was [...]

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Until now care was bought mainly from NHS hospitals, community trusts or independent GPs (not companies running GP services). But the purpose of CCGs is to bring in maximum competition. NHS services will find themselves bidding against the likes of Virgin Care or the American giant United Healthcare, which are likely to cherry-pick easy and [...]

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More children die unnecessarily in Britain than in any of 14 other western European countries, according to a study which found that thousands of lives could be saved each year. For the NHS performs badly on the one health care measurement that matters: deaths amenable to medical treatment. That there are excess treatable deaths in [...]

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In recent years, nursing has become a graduate profession, prompting fears that caring has suffered. Perhaps the mistake was in making it a graduate profession? Ministers believe that a return to basic nursing is crucial following the Mid Staffordshire scandal and criticism that some graduate nurses are “too posh to wash”. In future, trainees will [...]

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Often the private company is only cheaper until it’s the only provider – then it is suddenly radically more expensive, but there’s nothing you can do about it. You’re quite right of course Zoe. Monopoly suppliers do tend to exploit their monopolies. This is of course the reason to bring competition into the NHS. To [...]

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Well, yes: On health inequalities Field is scathing. “Despite record investment in the NHS over the last 12 years the gap in life expectancy between the richest and poorest has widened. In some areas it’s become shockingly bad. A woman in north Somerset is likely to live 20 years longer than a man in Blackpool. [...]

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Only one in 1,000 people is truly ‘heart healthy’, according to doctors examining lifestyle guidelines. Given that it is very much less than 999 out of 1,000 who keel over from heart disease we might therefore conclude that the rules being used to define “heart healthy” are a little too tight.

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A new criminal offence to stop NHS hospitals “fiddling” official figures is to be introduced by ministers in the wake of the Mid Staffordshire scandal, The Daily Telegraph can disclose. If you stopped trying to manage the service by figures that can be fiddled then no one would bother to try and fiddle them. Perhaps [...]

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No, don’t get your hopes up: Britain is failing to keep pace with improvements in public health in other Western countries despite NHS spending tripling over the past 20 years. The figures are quite stunning: Figures from the House of Commons library show that NHS spending has risen from £46 billion in 1990 to £122 billion this [...]

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As many as 1,165 people starved to death in NHS hospitals over the past four years

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International evidence suggests that increasing marketisation and privatisation of healthcare services leads to greater expenditure, greater variations in care, reduced access to services, and erosion of professional standards. Does it really? My word. Then that would mean that the NHS is the very finest health care system in the world as it is the only [...]

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Worth reading the whole thing actually but: One of Britain’s leading neurologists has revealed his fears about the use of the Liverpool Care Pathway as he disclosed how one of his patients survived for 14 months after being taken off it. Hmmm. The consultant neurologist said the case demonstrates that doctors should not be allowed [...]

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Circle Holdings became the only private company running an NHS hospital last year when it began a 10 year contract to run Hinchingbrooke Hospital, Cambridgeshire. But new NHS figures show it is now ranked as one of the highest for patient happiness and has also recorded shorter waiting times. Circle Holdings, whose operating subsidiary is [...]

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What exactly does “bankruptcy” mean anyway, in an NHS paid for by taxes where no service can go to the wall like Woolworths? It means that the management who have fucked up get turfed out. Woolworths did indeed go bust. But we didn’t then start dynamiting the buildings the moment the receiver was appointed. When [...]

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She’s absolutely right of course. We are indeed running out of effective antibiotics.And we assuredly do need to change something so that we continue to discover new classes of them. I have a feeling, based on no evidence at all, that the problem is at the consumption end: the incentives provided to manufacturers. I’m unconvinced [...]

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Colin Leys that is. Used to be editor of Socialist Register. One of Ralph Milipede’s more attractive offspring. In the pages of The Guardian Colin tells us the following: But Monitor is tasked with creating a market in healthcare and faces the problem that making money out of acute (hospital-based) healthcare is very difficult unless [...]

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The pluperfect of politics: The Liverpool Care Pathway – the controversial set of clinical guidelines for those close to death – should undergo a name change, a minister has suggested. People are just beginning to understand that the Liverpool Care Pathway is the method by which the NHS kills 125,000 people a year. In order [...]

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NHS economic regulator Monitor has said private firms such as InHealth, Specsavers and Virgin Care could be exempt from the tax in line with public sector hospitals to rectify the problem of an “unfair playing field” in health care. Currently public sector hospitals do not pay corporation tax and VAT on supplies, unlike private companies. [...]

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Hospitals treating Liverpool Care Pathway as just another ‘thing to do’ Hospitals are placing patients on the controversial “pathway” to death without proper training for staff or even understanding how it works, some of Britain’s leading specialists in care for the dying have acknowledged. Take something difficult, requiring great judgement and tact, that has been [...]

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Obese and other unhealthy people could be monitored to check whether they are taking exercise and have their benefits cut if they fail to do so under proposals published on Thursday by a Conservative-run council and a local government thinktank. Westminster council and the Local Government Information Unit say new technologies such as smart cards [...]

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