All articles by Michael White – Page 19
-
Comment
Michael White on patient choice
Well, well, a stormy end to the Easter season. The Tories rampaged against perceived failures in the government's commitment to deep clean NHS hospitals.
-
News
Michael White on service cuts
On the dry pages of Hansard, there are occasionally brief exchanges that shed light on life as eloquently as a short story by Anton Chekhov.
-
Comment
Michael White: budget politics
No point in spending too much time on this year's Budget, I think, which wasn't much of an NHS event anyway. I'm all for optimism about the future, but Alistair Darling's low-key confidence a week ago has already been overtaken by the gathering financial storm in the Atlantic. Fasten seatbelts.
-
Comment
Michael White on Darling's budget
By the time you read this, Alistair Darling's first Budget will have reinforced Gordon Brown's latest promise to make our great public services more competitive and accountable to their customers. They are all Blairites now.
-
Comment
Michael White on health budgets
Opposition spokesmen as energetic as Andrew Lansley tend to respond to breaking news rather than to make it. It's the curse of opposition. When they're in the headlines it's usually bad news. The Tory health spokesman has been making headlines.
-
Comment
Michael White on NHS reform
I'm always getting into trouble for trying to be open minded. That Hitler, I say, he was kind to animals. So I turned to this week's polemic from the pro-market pressure group Reform so full of good will that I ignored the title, NHS Reform: national mantra, not local reality.
-
Comment
Michael White on social care's big year
This is a big year for social care, possibly the biggest for a generation, says minister Ivan Lewis whenever he gets the chance. 'We've got to get it right.'
-
Comment
Michael White on Johnson's donation troubles
I shall resist the temptation to make fatcat jokes this week. But I don't think I'm sticking my neck out in predicting that Alan Johnson's trouble over that £3,000 donation to his deputy leadership campaign will not lead to the health secretary's resignation.
-
Comment
Michael White on cutting costs
At a high-minded King's Fund breakfast a few months ago I heard battle-hardened NHS veterans agreeing that there won't be the opportunity for serious efficiency savings until the money tap is turned off. Then everyone will remember how to improvise.
-
Comment
Michael White on Brown's plans for health
Gordon Brown's Big NHS Speech, to which HSJ gave front-page treatment last week, was full of virtuous declaration about what needs to be done to manage rising - and costly - demand in healthcare systems around the world.
-
Comment
Michael White on health in the new year
All right, so the Royal Marsden Hospital nearly burned down last week and around 100 wards in 44 hospitals were closed as norovirus swept the country. But it's the start of another year - happy new year - so let's be cheerful.
-
Comment
Michael White on super-sizing the NHS
Huge comprehensive schools which became dysfunctional over time? Huge new 'Titan' prisons which will almost certainly be hard to manage? Ditto hospitals?
-
Comment
Michael White on healthcare rationing
In the week health ministers launched new initiatives on both cancer and stroke, backbench MP Dr Richard Taylor coincidentally staged a Commons adjournment debate on rationing in the NHS.
-
Comment
Michael White on Alan Johnson
I don't know where it came from but in the past few days we've started reading in the papers that Gordon Brown may not last the course. What's more, health secretary Alan Johnson may be the man to take over.
-
Comment
Michael White on data security
When I heard that young Tory thruster George Osborne warn that the fiasco over the two missing child benefit discs from HM Revenue and Customs will prove the 'final blow' to the British ID card scheme, I wondered what it might also mean for the NHS.
-
Comment
Michael White: inside Gordon Brown's mind
Are ministers in Alan Johnson’s health team now finding their feet in their new jobs after a lacklustre start? Are they landing a few blows on the other side too despite renewed talk of a broad consensus on the NHS’s future?
-
Comment
Michael White on Gordon Brown's health policy
Some well-meaning MPs think that Gordon Brown's government is deliberately taking the spotlight off the NHS to give it breathing space to recover from years of political battering.
-
Comment
Michael White on immigration and the NHS
As old favourites like immigration and NHS pay resurfaced in public debate, a conversation I overheard in a Berkshire pub years ago popped up again this week.
-
Comment
Michael White on nursing standards
I didn't know whether to laugh or make plans to flee the country when I read weekend front-page headlines such as 'Nurses to have the power to end a life'
-
Comment
Michael White on getting tough on obesity
Politicians need to do more to tackle the growing obesity problem