Controlling NHS Costs Will Be A Radical Achievement

I don’t care to delve too deeply into the clump of giant hogweed that is health policy but if Andrew Lasley succeeds in freezing health spending in real terms then he will have been one of the more successful cabinet ministers even if his ambitious reforms go nowhere or achieve nothing. It is annoying, as Pete says, that this will have to be a secret triumph since it has become an article of faith, apparently, that spending more money on the NHS is always the virtuous thing to do. Nevertheless, a secret triumph that cannot be proclaimed is better than failure.

Every developed country must confront the horror of sharply-increasing health costs as the price of human ingenuity becomes ever more expensive. If Lansley can achieve a real-terms freeze over the next four years then he’ll receive envious looks from some of his counterparts in other countries. Then again, by international standards the NHS is pretty cheap and delivers pretty average, just-about-good-enough outcomes.