All Opinion/columnist articles – Page 48
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Comment
Michael White on pharmaceutical price regulation
I am indebted to Fred Curzon, 7th Earl Howe and veteran Tory health spokesman in the Lords, for a little gem of a debate in the upper house the other evening. It was doubtless neglected because of the Yachtgate affair in Corfu and relative trivia like the global financial collapse.
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Ruth Thorlby on the price of healthcare in the US
For a new arrival to the US, embarking on the Health Foundation's Harkness Fellowship in New York, it is hard to take in the full litany of facts about the 46 million Americans with no health insurance.
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Comment
Nigel Edwards on NHS exceptional case panels
Over the summer no media report on the state of the NHS was complete without mention of the postcode lottery in treatments, either through challenges to primary care trust exceptional case panels or the perceived ethics of the current rules on top-ups.
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News
Emma Dent on the credit crunch
When I was young my local council lost the equivalent of about £40m in today's money when the bank BCCI collapsed.
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Comment
Michael White on keeping patients out of hospital
It is not often you read of a new controversy in the Sunday papers and stumble on what looks like the answer in Hansard before bedtime. It happened this week. Here goes.
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Comment
Media Watch: patient referrals
A US pilot sent to shoot down a UFO on a dark night in East Anglia some 50 years ago only to find nothing but, well, dark night, recalled in Monday's Guardian that it 'was like being a one-legged man sent into an ass-kicking contest'.
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David Amos on aiming for NHS perfection
The 2008 Olympics reaffirmed the proposition that it is possible to keep improving on excellence and perfection in sport.
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Comment
Helen Bevan on large-scale change in the health service
A sea change is happening in the way we approach large-scale change in the health service.
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Comment
Media Watch: binge drinking
Unlike so much else in the past seven days, the value of a drink is on the way up. The Department of Health's next attempt to reduce binge drinking will include curbs on free samples and happy hours, according to press reports.
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Comment
Michael White on the financial crisis
The deepening financial crisis is changing how we look at everything now. For instance, aren't NHS finance directors glad they didn't have surpluses to invest unwisely during the years when Patricia Hewitt's stiletto was on their necks?
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Comment
Stephen Eames on managing by fear
Up here in the North East the community is still reeling from the collapse of Northern Rock and is now watching with horror the ongoing farcical spectacle that is Newcastle United Football Club.
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Comment
Your Humble Servant on party conferences
To: Don Wise, chief executiveFrom: Paul Servant, assistant chief executiveRe: His-Tory lesson
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Comment
Maggie Rae on giving blood and glory
Yes, it is my fault - I think I am to blame for our terrible weather over the summer. I supported the introduction of the national system to monitor the effects of excessive heat over the summer months.
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News
Emma Dent on an early coughs and colds season
Is it me or has the sniffles season started early this year? Autumn has barely begun but already my unfortunate colleagues have been laid low by a variety of bad colds, respiratory infections and various as yet unidentified viruses.
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Comment
Jon Restell on party conferences
The party conference season heralds the least productive element of my job. Attending them means - roughly - receptions, speaking at fringes, talking to anyone who will listen and eating too much and too richly.
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Comment
Media Watch: public health Jamie Oliver style
When a celebrity ventures into the inhospitable terrain of public health, the results tend to be predictably cringe-inducing.
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Comment
Michael White on the NHS and political miscalculations
With the global banking network near meltdown, we're all on a sharp learning curve. So here's a tip for David Cameron: don't use the distress of NHS patients such as the late Elizabeth Woods to make party-political points.
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Comment
David Lee on foundation trust constitutions
In 1968 John Lennon wrote this lyric in the song Revolution: 'You say you'll change the constitutionƒ we all want to change your head'. It is still relevant today.
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Comment
Your Humble Servant offers tips on avoiding meetings
To: Don Wise, chief executiveFrom: Paul Servant, assistant chief executiveRe: If not now, when?
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Media Watch: cabinet reshuffle
What's in a name? Plenty according to the papers, which were this weekend reporting that a crop of senior ministers including health secretary Alan Johnson are determined to hang on to their titles in the event of a reshuffle.