All Michael White articles – Page 7
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CommentMichael White: let's back the public sector plan B
At the weekend I rang an old trade union friend, a veteran of countless public sector negotiations, disputes and occasional strikes, to hear him contradict my own excessively rational view (“don’t do it, comrades”) of the pensions dispute which threatens NHS services this month.
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CommentMichael White: don't bank on blaming Brussels for the NHS's ills
I was nursing a cold and watching the Commons EU debate on the telly at home when I was startled to hear David Nuttall, the Tory MP leading the anti-European charge, blame those wily foreigners for the imminent closure of the maternity ward and special care baby unit in his ...
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CommentMichael White: ice cool Professor Grant may have what it takes to succeed
It was a Labour peer who despairingly drew my attention to the vote against Professor Malcolm Grant’s appointment as chair of the NHS Commissioning Board by Labour MPs who sit on the Commons health select committee down the corridor at Westminster.
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CommentMichael White: relief for supporters as Health Bill scrapes through Lords
Before this column embarks upon its weekly moan, it is worth looking at the NHS furore from a wider perspective.
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CommentMichael White: Burnham's return signals the start of a grudge match
Watching the Rugby World Cup I sometimes thought of John Healey, Labour’s health spokesman until Ed Miliband’s autumn reshuffle brought former secretary of state Andy Burnham back to tackle Andrew Lansley and his now notorious bill.
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CommentMichael White: the search for Tory health debate beyond the fringe
Before the Tory faithful arrived in Manchester for their 2011 conference, a veteran party figure predicted the NHS would not feature much, despite the turbulence behind the Health Bill and the frantic applause lines which Ed Miliband effortlessly generated in the service’s defence a week earlier in Liverpool.
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CommentMichael White: lacklustre Labour missing opportunity in Liverpool
Sometimes politicians clash with experts on real-life issues in ways that expose the weaknesses of both groups, especially the political class.
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CommentMichael White: don't get mad, get on with it
By the time I reached Birmingham for the Liberal Democrats’ autumn conference, the threatened drama about the fate of Andrew Lansley’s much-amended Health and Social Care Bill was all over bar the inevitable shouting.
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CommentMichael White: in reality, even a centralised model devolves power
Much fuss was made of Nadine Dorries’ bid to tighten abortion counselling procedures as the Health and Social Care Bill finally left the Commons.
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CommentMichael White: what's wrong with giving overseas providers a crack at managing NHS hospitals?
I was still on my late summer holiday during much of the renewed skirmishing which heralded the return of Parliament and the latest battles over the Health Bill.
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CommentMichael White: through choice comes different outcomes - and that way we learn
Politicians had barely shaken the sand from their shoes or packed away the bucket and spade before they were gripped by that hardy health perennial, proposed changes to Britain’s abortion law.
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CommentMichael White: avoiding the thing called IT
A new report in the Harvard Business Review suggests that big IT projects are spiralling out of control, at considerable cost to taxpayers, shareholders and customers. Naturally it made me think again of the NHS’s own national programme for IT drama, running expensively since 2003.
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CommentMichael White: the riots could change the outlook for health priorities
As we all picked our way through the debris of what I’m tempted to call the “Foot Locker Riots” in search of deeper explanations than the urgent need for new trainers, I found myself thinking several times of Sir Michael Marmot, the man HSJ likes to call “the guru of ...
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CommentMichael White: the strange landscape of US healthcare
Where else but the US should this column spend a few days as punishment for not understanding how inappropriate a mechanism competition is for driving efficiency and innovation in healthcare?
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CommentMichael White: see you later, innovator
Oh dear. The British Medical Association is promising health ministers a long hot summer over the Health Bill, instead of a few calm weeks for leisurely reflection; this is in the misplaced hope that the medics can force its withdrawal before the bill goes to the obstreperous Lords.
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CommentMichael White: Lansley - the boy on the burning deck?
Watching Andrew Lansley performing these days sometimes reminds me of Casabianca, Felicia Dorothea Hemans’ famous poem of 1826, the one about the young French sailor (was he 10, 12 or 13?) who stayed at his post on the doomed warship, L’Orient, during Nelson’s 1798 victory at the Battle of the ...
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CommentMichael White: political meltdown?
Meltdown is an overworked media cliché which I try to avoid. But recent developments look a bit serious for the coalition.
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CommentMichael White: the well-intended Dilnot report may fall on deaf ears
Ministers didn’t sound very grateful for Andrew Dilnot’s report on how to solve England’s elderly care problems and, I suspect, eventually those of the devolved Celtic regions too because they have similar money issues with oldsters who stubbornly won’t die.
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CommentMichael White: Cameron takes Labour to task in Wales
Have you noticed in all the excitement over reform of the NHS in England that David Cameron has taken to poking the NHS in Labour-dominated Wales for cuts being factored into the health budget in Cardiff?
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CommentMichael White: the noisy ghosts of health ministers past
Why are former health ministers being so noisy in these turbulent times? No, I do not mean Frank Dobson’s spat with ministers who want to eject better-off people from council flats like the one opposite the British Museum which he has occupied for decades.