All Michael White articles – Page 11
-
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.
-
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 ...
-
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.
-
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?
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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?
-
CommentMichael White: are the Tories ready?
The Labour government shows plenty of signs of being on its last legs.
-
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.
-
CommentMichael White on Tory health policy
The core of the Tory green paper seems to be protecting a locally driven public health budget.
-
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.
-
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”?
-
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.
-
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.
-
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?
-
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 ...
-
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.
-
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.