All articles by Michael White – Page 15
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CommentMichael White on Tory health policy
The core of the Tory green paper seems to be protecting a locally driven public health budget.
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CommentMichael White on the cost of alcohol
Commons health select committee chair Kevin Barron was enjoying a Sunday night glass of Shiraz when I rang to discuss his report on how to tackle Britain’s costly upsurge in alcoholism.
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CommentMichael White on the Conservatives' election campaign
Why did my heart sink watching David Cameron launching what amounts to the Conservatives’ general election campaign on Monday, complete with well trailed health pledges and a wholesome poster proclaiming “I’ll cut the deficit. Not the NHS”?
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CommentMichael White on public spending
There was a cynical chuckle in the Commons during the pre-Budget Report when Alistair Darling told MPs “we take these decisions from a position of strength”. What decisions? Why, cuts in the public spending deficit, of course.
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CommentMichael White on NHS regulation
Is there enough real news to fill all those newspapers and dedicated TV news channels? In most years there are only two or three serious news items, ones that will be remembered, I sometimes joke.
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CommentMichael White: shamed FTs, Dr Foster, cancer care
Where to start this week? Named and shamed foundation trusts, many of which deny alarming allegations levelled by Dr Foster? Or the news from cancer tsar Mike Richards that late diagnosis kills twice as many Britons as we thought?
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CommentMichael White: the Queen's Speech
For a seven minute royal speech which was criticised for not once mentioning what David Cameron called “the three letters that should be in any Queen’s Speech” - NHS - it was quite a boisterous occasion for health and social services. So let us start on a positive party political ...
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CommentMichael White: lessons from US healthcare
I stumbled on a way of thinking about NHS budgets the other day which I hadn’t previously encountered.
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CommentMichael White: FT freedoms and the election
Barely a couple of days pass without some potentially significant policy shift on the health and social care front from the political parties.
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CommentMichael White on health debates
Handy Andy Burnham, our youthful health secretary and Clark Kent lookalike, slipped out of Britain on Tuesday, heading west towards Washington - safely out of the row over home secretary Alan Johnson’s rash dismissal of David Nutt.
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CommentMichael White on unaccountable PCTs
Rare indeed is a Sunday night call by this column which yields a mention of primary care trusts and ancient Greek philosopher cum intellectual hard man Plato, virtually in the same breath.
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CommentMichael White on public vs private
The line dividing the public sector from the private has been fragmenting for decades.
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CommentMichael White on Tory worries
I was slightly surprised this week to find myself trudging into expenses-gripped Westminster for the last parliamentary session before the election more troubled by the prospect of a new Conservative government than I was a week ago.
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CommentMichael White on the Conservative conference
Even before I set out for the Conservative conference, a neighbour asked me how David Cameron plans to fund residential end of life care for a flat-rate insurance contribution of £8,000.
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CommentMichael White on Labour policy
I had scarcely arrived in Brighton for Labour’s last pre-election conference than a succession of party veterans had pinned me to the nearest wall to explain why the party is doomed - or why it is not.
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CommentMichael White on NHS spending cuts
Gordon Brown’s belated admission of looming spending cuts unleashed a masochistic torrent of bid and counter-bid by leading politicians.
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CommentMichael White on the election battle
This week’s TUC conference signals the start of the political season, when the rhetorical volume gets turned up.
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CommentMichael White on NHS spending and the McKinsey report
As if last week wasn’t more than usually nightmare-ish enough for the NHS’s managerial officer class, with a convicted murderer’s birthmarks and the leaked McKinsey report providing only two of many horrid headlines, this week started with a fresh jolt.
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CommentMichael White: the US healthcare debate
Senator Edward Kennedy’s death struck people my age with an obvious historical analogy. Just as Jack Kennedy’s murder in 1963 allowed allies to clinch stalled civil rights legislation for black Americans, so Barack Obama’s allies can now regain momentum for healthcare reform - Ted Kennedy’s enduring liberal cause.
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CommentMichael White on NHS consultancy costs
Spare a thought for our ex-junior health minister, Ivan Lewis.