All Michael White articles – Page 12
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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.
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CommentMichael White on US healthcare and NHS politics
Oh dear. Turn your back on the politicians for a few days’ holiday and when you get back they’re engaged in all-too-familiar pre-election skirmishing about the NHS being safe in our hands - but not in the other lot’s.
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CommentMichael White on a holiday from the NHS
Are you thinking of driving far on the summer holiday this year? I drive across France every August, a round trip of about 1,500 miles.
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CommentMichael White on swine flu and summer holidays
August has arrived so I delved into my health archive looking for a holiday subject. Straight away I stumbled on the House of Lords science and technology committee, chaired by the redoubtable Stewart Sutherland.
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CommentMichael White: The Tories don't have it in the bag yet
Are we any the wiser about a future Conservative government’s intentions towards the NHS? I think we are and, being determined to ignore those two great 2009 panics, piggy flu and Labour leadership flu, I plan to focus on those here.
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CommentMichael White on the future of healthcare funding
For a politician in his situation, care services minister Phil Hope was in a remarkably cheerful mood when I caught up with him to find out how well - or badly - his department’s latest green paper had been received.
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CommentMichael White on swine flu and infectious attitudes
There comes a time when even a “keep calm” column has to acknowledge that Britain seems to be edging towards a swine flu pandemic. Alas, there is no antiviral to protect more vulnerable groups like politicians from exhibiting alarming symptoms.
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CommentMichael White: on patient safety and savvy spending
I had an odd experience at the weekend. Reading the Commons health select committee’s depressing report on patient safety, I kept thinking of the more visible drama now being played out over public expenditure and pay.
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CommentMichael White: on Bercow, the Autism Bill and politicians doing good
You must have read some horrid things about John Bercow, newly elected Tory Speaker of the Commons: egotistical and pushy for starters. So let me use a new piece of health-related legislation to try to persuade you to keep an open mind until we can all see how he does.
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CommentMichael White: What happened to the government's Health Bill?
Have we lost track of the government’s Health Bill, which has turned out to be not the promised “flagship” piece of legislation but a “rather small” boat, as Andrew Lansley joked during its Commons second reading?