All articles by Michael White – Page 14
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CommentMichael White on NHS reorganisation
I am very fond of my regular GPs. But Dr A treats the NHS’s budget cautiously, as if it was his own life savings, while Dr B is usually quite happy to fork out on my behalf.
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CommentMichael White: the case for devolving power
Before we turn to the miserable stuff, here is something which may cheer you up. Naoto Kan, the new prime minister of Japan, is a former social activist who first made his name as health minister in the 1990s.
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CommentMichael White: Richard Sykes' resignation
Before last weekend’s manure hit the coalition fan I had taken the trouble to dig out the Orange Book for further scrutiny. No, not the widely consulted guide to generic drugs, but the volume of essays published by the free market wing of the Liberal Democrat party. It caused so ...
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CommentMichael White on coalition compromises
When is the glass half full and when is it half empty? It’s all a matter of temperament, in my experience. The 400-point Lib-Con coalition agreement seems to have been a relatively painless negotiation as far as the 30 health (plus four on public health) points are concerned. Should we ...
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CommentMichael White: the new Lib-Con government
Well, it’s not going to be dull, is it? At a stretch you could even say that one of the dullest things about the new Lib-Con government is that Andrew Lansley was appointed health secretary.
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CommentMichael White: what the new government will mean for health
Cheer up, the election campaign is more or less over now and the country is finally bracing itself for the tricky bit.
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CommentMichael White: on the campaign trail
Always in search of a scoop, I tried to track down a speech about the NHS which I had heard that Gordon Brown made last weekend. It did not seem to have been widely reported, but this was not entirely the media’s fault.
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CommentMichael White: the election debate
In turbulent times this column’s reputation as a non-panic zone serves it well. Swine flu, Alan Johnson for PM, delinquent volcanoes, we take them all in our stride. So too the Lib Dem election surge since Nick Clegg’s quite good performance in the TV debate.
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CommentMichael White: the election campaign
How is the election going so far for you? No, don’t answer that if you would rather not. What with that ritual controversy over the relative merit of rival tax hikes, week 1 was quietly unimpressive, although the NHS surfaced in the campaign at the weekend.
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CommentMichael White on social care funding and the election
As the election hype went into overdrive after Gordon’s trip to Buck House I got into a tiff with a Conservative chum over the party’s “death tax” poster, the one which wrongfooted Andy Burnham on the delicate question of funding care for the elderly.
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CommentMichael White: Darling's Budget
The Budget joke I liked best was not the one about the tax haven deal with Lord Ashcroft’s Belize. It was that Alistair Darling had offered money to fill potholes in our roads after the long, hard winter, but not the black holes in the public finances after the even ...
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CommentMichael White: good news for health
As we all braced ourselves to disentangle what Alistair Darling’s last Budget will mean for the NHS I took the conscious decision to write an upbeat column to ease the circling gloom.
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CommentMichael White: NHS policy pronouncements
Is the pace of policy pronouncements speeding up or am I just slowing down? Or is it the imminence of that election and the all too understandable desire of elected politicians to cover all their bases?
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CommentMichael White on political spin
It is rarely easy to spot when a policy statement or media report has undue political spin on it. As a hard fought general election approaches it can be near impossible.
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CommentMichael White on the Mid Staffs inquiry
An anecdote and a think tank boffin came to mind as I ploughed through the undimmed horrors of Robert Francis QC’s report on the disaster at Mid Staffordshire Foundation Trust.
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CommentMichael White: NHS reorganisation row
By chance I stumbled on an NHS row which intrigues me. It is the sight of Labour ministers and their Tory shadows and wannabe successors joining forces to denounce disgraceful “scaremongering” about a hospital reorganisation.
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CommentMichael White: the personal care row
Seatbelts on please, crash helmets too. The pre-election row over personal care for the elderly shows alarming signs of blundering on to polling day.
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CommentMichael White: NHS spending pledges
Which is the more alarming spectacle: David Cameron and George Osborne promising real term cuts in public expenditure (but not “swingeing” ones) in the coming Parliament? Or Gordon Brown behaving as if he can carry on making new spending pledges for the NHS?
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CommentMichael White: are the Tories ready?
The Labour government shows plenty of signs of being on its last legs.
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CommentMichael White: the four nations of the NHS
The devolved regions have consistently had more money per head from central government but have drawn back from the more radical target driven and choice oriented agenda promoted in England.