Setting the NHS up overseas is a brilliant idea. We can't carry on trying to...
The idea of setting up foreign branches of NHS hospitals such as Great Ormond Street and the Marsden to generate profits is a brilliant idea. In a fact, it’s such a brilliant idea I’m not sure why no...
View ArticleJeremy Hunt, Health Secretary, thinks homeopathy works
Sorry, spotted this shortly after I published my last Jeremy Hunt post, but I think it's important. The man put in charge of the nation's health policy is on record as supporting spending public money...
View ArticleEd Miliband wants an inquiry into the Savile affair. Should we care?
It has taken a couple of weeks but Ed Miliband has finally waded into the Jimmy Savile row. In an interview on ITV's Agenda last night, he called for an independent inquiry into Savile’s vile...
View ArticleThe 20th-century eugenicists would have approved of the contraceptive implant...
Today’s story about 13-year-old girls being given contraceptive implants is disturbing for a number of reasons, one of which being that after decades of failure family planning may actually work. And...
View ArticleLiverpool Care Pathway: we need to be honest about how much a human life is...
How much suffering avoided is worth an unnecessary death? It's a horrible question, but it's one that we have to at least try to address honestly. Every day we make this call, or one like it, in lesser...
View ArticleThe Liverpool Pathway to death: how the NHS is dressing up palpable evil as...
We ought to ask Jenny Agutter and Michael York to come back and give us a reissue of Logan’s Run, the futuristic film in which people are put to death upon reaching the grand old age of thirty. I have...
View ArticleThe NHS can't go on being free if selfish baby boomers consult GPs for the...
The NHS can’t go on like this. Patients today – baby boomers, especially – bother the doctor with minor complaints when their grandparents would have grinned and borne it, and have unrealistic...
View ArticleAnn Clwyd had the courage to criticise nurses who lack compassion. She should...
On Wednesday Labour MP Ann Clwyd stood up at Prime Minister's Questions and broke one of the last great taboos. In a voice cracking with emotion she asked David Cameron how he will respond to the...
View ArticleThe cult of the NHS, flinging flans and the plight of poor old Richard Dawkins
From Saturday's Daily Telegraph The next Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, was quite poorly before Christmas. Fortunately he made a swift recovery, as he announced on Twitter: “Cold, chest...
View ArticleThe Liverpool Care Pathway is in trouble because the public believes in the...
Dame Cicely Saunders must be turning in her grave. The apostle of the hospice movement and palliative care, who did more than anyone else to spread Britain's image as a good place to die, would hate to...
View ArticleA speech that could transform Britain – and it wasn't David Cameron's
The coverage of Andy Burnham's speech to the King's Fund, outlining Labour's new health policy, has focused on the mechanics: the idea of a compulsory levy to pay for old-age care, aka our old friend...
View ArticleVoters won’t listen if the Tories talk only among themselves
The Mid-Staffs report demands a united front, but the party is rowing over gay marriage Tomorrow will be a bad day for the NHS and the Tories. The report by Robert Francis QC into the failings that...
View ArticleTips to avoid another Mid-Staffs horror story: scrap visiting hours and let...
The Francis Report into the failure of the Stafford and Cannock Chase hospitals will come out tomorrow, and the NHS high command is steeling itself for a battering. Already, Roger Taylor, the chief...
View ArticleHow could a qualified nurse stand by and watch an elderly person starve?
"This is a story of appalling and unnecessary suffering of hundreds of people". So said Robert Francis QC this morning. The Francis Inquiry into the failings of the Mid Staffordshire Foundation Trust...
View ArticleMid Staffs inquiry: spare me the NHS drivel, please
I’ve just turned the TV off. I really can’t take another second of the specious, misleading and hypocritical response to the Francis Inquiry into what happened at Mid Staffs. We have just been...
View ArticleWhere is the liberal outrage over Mid Staffs? The Left is killing the NHS by...
So now we know. Britain’s nurses and doctors are as bad as Britain’s bankers. Our angels in white are just as selfish, just as arrogant and manipulative and secretive, as the barrow-boys in pinstripes....
View ArticleWhy aren't NHS staff as legally responsible as anyone else?
Forgive my ignorance, but one question persists in my mind about the appalling scandal of Mid Staffordshire hospital. Why is it necessary for the Secretary of State to "call for " a police enquiry into...
View ArticleWhy can we get user reviews of a hotel halfway around the world, but not of...
Lucky us, going on holiday this summer. Hurrah, I sing, especially on mornings like this, looking at the snow piled up in the road. No, not climbing a mountain or cycling across the Sahara or learning...
View ArticleMid Staffs was a travesty, but it is only a symptom of modern society's wider...
Allison Pearson, writing in the Daily Telegraph on the 14th of February, was absolutely right: those responsible for the mistreatment or neglect of patients in NHS hospitals should be treated just as...
View ArticleIVF and the NHS: I don't think the state should prioritise being a stork over...
Should the NHS fund IVF? If so, how many cycles should it fund, and at £3,000 a pop, is it right that taxpayers should finance this? And until what age is a British woman eligible for IVF on the...
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